Characteristic

What you should be aware of

FM area

You must specify this characteristic if you want to create a form with a key figure in FM area currency. You must likewise specify an FM area if you have defined hierarchy nodes as selection criteria for funds centers and commitment items in the form. All specified FM areas must have the same fiscal year variant.

Version

To improve system performance in drilldown reporting, you should always specify a budget version in the form. How you specify the version depends on the situation:

If you want to display commitment/actual data and the budget from budget version 0, you can specify the version by choosing Gen.data selection in the form.

If you want to display budget/actual data but the budget from a budget version other than 0, you must specify budget version 0 in the commitments/actuals column and the version that you want to see in the budget column.

Activity for budget/plan (Act. Bdgt/Plan)

This characteristic contains the budget updates (e.g. supplements, returns etc.). If you want to display the total of all the budget updates in a report, either enter no individual characteristic values for this characteristic, or enter all of them.

Period/Year

You must specify this characteristic if you want to carry out evaluations across fiscal years (such as 010/1998 - 003/1999).

Value type

This characteristic serves - with regard to the commitment/actual data - to differentiate the various accounting transactions (e.g. purchase order, invoice etc.)

With regard to the budget data, it serves to differentiate between budget and releases of budget and between commitment budget and payment budget. The budget key figures therefore only make sense in connection with the characteristic Value type .

Transaction currency

You must specify this characteristic if you want to create a report with a key figure in the transaction currency. Note that no budget key figures can be delivered in transaction currency in the standard.

FM account assgmt

If you have specified the option Hierarchy of the FM account assignment when defining forms and reports, the funds, funds centers and commitment items are automatically represented as one characteristic. The characteristic values correspond to the budget structure elements defined.

You should only execute reports defined in this way if you work with budget objects and posting objects and you want to evaluate these. If you are not working with budget objects, performance problems may arise when using budget structure elements in the drilldown.

You cannot use this characteristic when defining forms.

Statistics indicator

You use this indicator when you want to evaluate statistical postings. Statistical postings are updated but there is no active availability control. What is more, statistical postings do not consume any budget. For further information on identifying and tracing statistical postings, see Identification of Statistical Postings

Amount type

This characteristic classifies document amounts. If, for instance, a purchase order of 100 EUR is created, this amount is identified in the info system under the amount type "Original". If the invoice for this purchase order is posted, then another item is displayed for the purchase order, with the amount type "Reduction".

Besides this, you can use the amount type to display the different approval stages, if you execute analyses with commitment key figures referring to approval procedures.

Funds center

You use this characteristic when you want to evaluate particular funds centers. The characteristic also has the effect that a key date has to be specified in a dialog box, which appears automatically on entering the funds center. This key date is then used for all additional funds centers.

Commitment item

You use this characteristic when you only want to evaluate particular commitment items. The characteristic also has the effect that a key date has to be specified in a dialog box, which appears automatically on entering the commitment item. This key date is then used for all additional commitment items.

G/L account

This characteristic requires the specification of a chart of accounts.

Year-end closing carryforwards

This characteristic signifies, for the new and old fiscal years, whether a posting has been carried forward to the new fiscal year by year-end closing operations.

For postings that have been carried forward to the new fiscal year, two lines are displayed. In each case the field Year End Closing Transfers is selected: one line in period 1 of the new fiscal year and one line in the first special period of the old fiscal year, whereby the amount for special periods is displayed with the opposite +/- sign.

Carryforward level

The characteristic "Carryforward level" means that the trigger of a process originates from previous year.