Validations And Substitutions in SAP

July 20, 2006


This article outlines some salient points in SAP’s implementation of validations and substitutions from a FICO perspective.

Indirect Assignment of Relationships


In addition to the organisation structure relationships that are directly defined in the Enterprise Structure / Assignment section of the IMG, there are further ways that one may need to define these relationships.  These definitions are still donein the IMG, but are buried in a module somewhere.  These are module specific: ie only required if one is using that module.



Is there anything I have forgotten ? Note that pure master data relationships and account determination configuration is covered in other chapters.


Profit Centre Relationships


When one is using profit centre module and the various logistics modules, then one has to define the relationships in IMG / Enterprise Controlling / Profit Centre Accounting / Assignments to Profit Centres. However before we get too deep into that…



  • If you are using SD and not using CO-PA (Profitability Analysis) either instead of or in addition to Profit Centres you should have a good business reason.  Please see my chapter on Profit Centres vs CO-PA for more information.
  • If you are not using SD and using EC-PCA (Profit Centres) for Profit Reporting only, then I suggest you read my chapter on Profit Reporting

































































Table Describing how transactions and balances are assigned to profit centres
Module Element / Item Comment
Default any unassigned item One of your first steps in PCA configuration is to define the dummy profit centre.  If the system at any stage cannot identify a profit centre from your configuration, then it will post to the dummy profit centre instead.
CO Controlling Area    The first time you do anything in CO (IMG or user menu), the system will prompt you to choose a controlling area.  This defines the environment for all further CO work. All profit centres will therefore be created relative to one and only one controlling area.
MM Plant / Material (see Sales Order substitutions too) The profit centre is defined on the material master record in the Sales: General/Plant Data or Storage views.  Don’t panic – there are tools to do ‘fast assignment’ of material masters by plant and then by material type, a material group or a product hierarchy. See IMG.

These assignments are used :



  • to propose a default profit centre when you create a sales order item or a production order (to eventually post the revenue or costs); or
  • to derive the profit center from the material master for internal goods movements (such as stock transfers or goods issues) and profit-related postings in Materials Management (such as inventory differences) if no other assignment is available; or
  • when material stocks (raw material, finished and semi-finished goods) are transferred to Profit Center Accounting (PCA can do some balance sheet item reporting at period end).
SD Sales Order substitutions The sales order default is taken from the profit centre on the delivering plant / material master combination.  If you do not want this, you can define substitutions to override this. A substitution is basically where the system allows you to specify your own piece of conditional logic to determine which profit centre to post to.  You can base your conditions on a variety of fields available on the Sales Order.  Usually used if you want to base your mapping on Sales elements rather than on products.
  Business Transactions – ignore !! The next 4 menu options in the IMG are to do with assigning an individual business transaction to the profit centre.  This is something that should happen at the time of entering the business transaction if it cannot be determined from the default.  Therefore for configuration purposes, I suggest you ignore the “assign to sales orders, production orders, process orders, CO Production orders”.
Master data assignments: The next 6 menu options in the IMG relate to master data assignment to a Profit centre.  Basically the profit centre should be assigned when you create the master data record.  Some special comments :
  Cost Centre If not done manually, there is a ‘create profit centres’ from cost centres program which will create an equivalent hierarchy for you – only really possible at start up of the system – thereafter manually maintained.  I suggest that if you do have such a one to one mapping then the following is probable:

  • you have too many profit centres or not enough cost centres – their business definition should be different
  • if you are not using SD, then maybe you don’t need profit centres?
  Fixed Assets Implicitly assigned by assigning every asset to a cost centre.
Assignments needed for Balance Sheet Items in Profit centres
FI AR Debt System will determine from the assignments made on the Sales Order – similar to business area processing.
FI AP Payables are assigned to the profit center of the material ordered for purchase orders to warehouse and to the profit center of the posting for orders which receive direct postings.
FI Other Balance Sheet Items not in a submodule The profit centre is actually specified by individual GL journal line item (like the business area).  It is not possible (other than by substitution) to assign a GL account to a profit centre.
CO Work in process Assigned via the relevant project or order.
AM/IM Assets Implicitly assigned by assigning every asset to a cost centre.
MM Material stocks Assigned to profit centers via their master records (see above)

 


Relationships created in CO-PA (Profitability Analysis):


In CO-PA it is possible to ‘derive’ relationships for use in CO-PA.  This could be useful for groupings that are only required for CO-PA reporting. 


The derivation could be of entirely new elements or fields that are not being used elsewhere, or perhaps using an existing SAP field that is not being used by other modules.  The derivation can be based on any or a combination of fields in the data that is being passed to CO-PA.   A sophisticated example might be a derivation based on the SD Customer hierarchy.


It is not a good idea to try ‘overwriting’ values assigned in other modules as this would be confusing and complicate any reconciliation attempts.


See the configuration documentation on CO-PA for more information.  Note that there are ’standard derivations’ that the system does too.  We were talking here about creating new derivations.

– Main.IvanWong – 23 Jan 2002

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