In the following, we will focus on features which can either be used in SAP Easy Access transactions or using SAP Fiori tile Plan Internal Orders (KO12).
During order planning, you enter costs, activities and business processes that you expect to incur during the life cycle of an order. With order planning, you can compare plan and actual costs, and carry out differentiated variance analysis.
Your administer the approved cost framework for an order or an order group using Budget Management. The budget is the approved cost structure for an order and differs from the cost plan in that it is binding. The budget is the means by which management approves the expected costs for an order over a given time frame.
You can enter the order budget manually or copy budget information from any plan version.
Cost planning is generally performed on orders with long durations. Orders that only exist for a very short period, such as orders for unexpected small repairs, are usually not planned.
Internal order planning provides three different levels of cost planning:
Overall planning is the simplest way of planning costs for orders. You can estimate overall and annual values for an order separately from the cost element.
When more detailed information is available for an internal order, you can use primary and secondary cost and revenue planning. This should be done in Embedded BW and data should be retracted afterwards or saved online back to S/4 HANA. Afterwards the data should be seen in the Overall Planning monitor. In automatic planning, you can charge the order with overheads, distribution costs, periodic reposting costs, assessment costs, indirect activity allocation costs, process costs, and settlement costs. If the order is integrated into planning, you can carry out a plan credit using periodic repostings or settlement.
If you have access to more detailed information on sources of supply, quantities, and prices, you can perform Unit Costing in S/4HANA using the Overall Planning monitor. With unit costing, you can plan one level below the cost element level.
You can plan Statistical Key Figures as a basis for allocations and as a means to calculate the management key figures for your orders.
For overall planning, you need to create a planning profile (not a planner profile) and assign it to the order type. Of course you can use delivered standard SAP profiles as well.
Within the profile, you can specify the time horizon and whether you want to plan on a yearly or overall basis.
Please note that only those cost centers, cost elements, activity types and statistical key figures that are organized into groups and stored in the planning profile can be taken into account during planning.
For Unit Costing, you need to define and assign a costing variant (CO-PC). The costing variant will be the interface to the bill of materials, material master data and routing (the so-called quantity structure) that you need for planning on this level.
Overall planning is the most basic form of order planning. Here, you create a plan by estimating the likely costs that will be incurred for an order. In addition to the detailed, cost element-based planning values used in cost center accounting, you can also save general overall planning values for each fiscal year separately from cost elements. You maintain these values at the same time you maintain those from cost element planning and unit costing.
You can plan either overall values or values for individual years. During overall planning, you need to create a planning profile and store it in the order type.
You can call up the primary cost planning, unit costing, revenue planning, and activity input planning functions straight from the overall planning screen. As well as the Overall Values column, the system also displays the planned total, the unit costing values, and the cost element plan. The total planned value is the sum of all the cost planning forms used (overall, cost and revenue element, unit costing, and activity input planning).
You can plan your internal orders in multiple versions.
When you create a controlling area, the SAP system automatically creates version 000, which is valid for five fiscal years. You can also plan alternative versions. Note that the SAP system always uses version 000 when referencing actual postings.
Alternative versions only allow you to store planning data for internal orders, or, if you are using transfer prices, it will allow you to store parallel valuations.
There are two indicators used for integrated planning in the version:
Integrated Planning
This indicator governs whether planning data is passed on to Profit Center Accounting and the Special Purpose Ledger. It also ensures that each planning change is documented with a plan line item.
Integrated planning with cost centers/business processes
To ensure that internal order planning is included in Cost Center Accounting and Activity-Based Accounting, this indicator must be active in the plan version.
To use integrated planning for individual orders, you also need to set the relevant indicator in the order master. You can create a default setting for this in the order type.
Within integrated planning for internal orders, you can integrate cost element and activity input planning for an internal order into cost center or business process planning. All the planned business allocations on the internal order are then automatically updated on the sender/receiver cost center or on the sender/receiver business process.
You can only use integrated planning for internal orders if the internal order already exists when the cost centers are planned. In the case of long term orders, you can use integrated planning.
If you are planning activity inputs for an integrated planning order, the planned activity is updated to the cost center providing the activity.
During planned settlement of the order, the order costs are debited from the receiver.
Overhead calculations on plan-integrated orders debit the internal order and credit a cost center.
If you are using assessment and distribution, the planned costs of a sender cost center are allocated based on pre-defined assessment and distribution keys.
Periodic repostings of plan-integrated orders to cost centers are supported.