For postings with cost accounts (to G/L accounts with account type "primary costs" or "secondary costs") the costs or revenues respectively must be assigned to one and only one real CO object. However, statistical postings may be assigned to one or several additional objects.
A real account assignment allows you to further allocate the value to other objects and in the end affects the profit in Margin Analysis; if the assignment does not affect the profit in Margin Analysis, the assignment is statistical.
In SAP S/4HANA, the Universal Journal (table ACDOCA) captures both real and statistical account assignments within a single line item, rather than storing them as separate records. The real account assignment is identified through the primary CO object field, while up to three statistical account assignments are held in the dedicated fields CO_ACCASTY_N1, CO_ACCASTY_N2, and CO_ACCASTY_N3. Each of these fields contains a type indicator for the respective statistical assignment — identifying, for example, a cost center, an internal order, or a WBS element. This design is one of the key simplifications introduced with the Universal Journal, as it eliminates the need to manage separate document lines for real and statistical postings.
Note
In SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, direct access to table ACDOCA is generally not available to end users. The explanation above therefore serves the purpose of theoretical and technical understanding only. In practice, the distinction between real and statistical postings is reflected in standard reports: statistical postings can be included or excluded by selecting or deselecting them as a reporting characteristic.
For example, during an invoice entry for company car expenses, the costs for company cars are assigned to the cost center Car Fleet as the real actual assignment. In addition, the costs need to be evaluated for each single company car. Therefore one statistical WBS element exists for each company car. In the corresponding ACDOCA line item, the cost center Car Fleet is recorded as the real account assignment, while the respective WBS element is referenced as a statistical account assignment in CO_ACCASTY_N1.
As a result, the total costs for the car fleet can be evaluated on the cost center and each single car can be controlled on its WBS element. Only postings to the cost center have an effect on the overall result for the P&L and margin analysis reporting.
Differences between Real and Statistical Objects
A profit center is the only object type which is always statistical. As described above, profit center accounting is statistical management accounting. On the other hand, object types that cannot be created as statistical objects are the logistics cost objects, namely the production order and the sales order item.
Note
There are other logistics cost objects, for example, maintenance order or quality management order which are not discussed in this training.
The posting to accounting resulting from a logistical process is always real, meaning it affects the overall result. Such postings can additionally be assigned to a statistical CO object. For example, the profit center in a production order is posted statistically, whereas the production order itself received the real actual values.
