Updating Profit Center Actual Values

The assignments of all profit-relevant objects to profit centers play an important role. The assignments determine how your business is divided into areas of responsibility. You make these assignments in the master data of the original objects (materials, cost centers, orders, projects, sales orders, assets, cost objects, and profitability segments). Every profit center is assigned to the Controlling (CO) area organizational unit. All profit centers of a CO area are assigned to a profit center standard hierarchy that reflects the organizational structure in PCA at your company.

When you make manual general ledger account postings in the general ledger, you can specify the profit center or the partner profit center. For primary cost elements, the profit center or the partner profit center is derived automatically from the cost-relevant account assignment. You cannot enter the profit center manually for receivables, payables, or automatically generated line items. If you use document splitting, the system can supply these items with a profit center.

If an allocation in CO results in a change of the profit centers, it also leads to a change of the affected items in the profit and loss statement.

To begin with, the system determines a profit center on the basis of the origin of the document and any special conditions. It does so by one of the following methods:

• The system assigns the profit center dynamically on the basis of certain characteristics in the document itself. When this method is used, the currently assigned profit center is always determined.

• The system assigns the profit center indirectly on the basis of certain characteristics in a preceding document. When this method is used, the system does not take into account any assignment changes occurring after the date of the preceding document.

For all types of documents, the system checks whether one of the following cases applies: The profit center assignment which may arise from this step always has priority over the assignment determined in step 1 on the basis of document type.

Cost- or Revenue Type: This is defined in the general ledger account master data. The so called general ledger account type determines how the general ledger account can be used in financial accounting and controlling (= primary costs or revenue) or in controlling (= secondary costs).

Substitution: The specific input values are checked against one or more user-defined conditions where the check takes place when the entry is made in the SAP System. If the condition is met, the entered values are replaced with other values defined by the user. You will find the definitions of substitution in Financial Accounting (FI) and Controlling (CO) in customizing centrally under IMG: Financial Accounting→Special Purpose Ledger→Tools→Maintain Validation/Substitution/Rules→Maintain Substitution.

Default Profit Center (Transaction FAGL3KEH): Default profit centers do not reflect an organizational area of responsibility. They are used to collect costs, revenues, and postings to balance sheet accounts within a posting period. At the end of the period, you can assess or distribute the posted data from the default profit center to the desired profit centers.

The procedure for creating master data for default profit centers is similar to the one you use to create master data for your normal profit centers.

You can define default profit centers for each company code and account interval in Customizing for Financial Accounting under General Ledger Accounting→Master Data→Profit Center→Assign Default Profit Center to Accounts.

You can enter a default profit center for each company code and account interval. This profit center is derived under the following conditions:

• A profit center cannot be derived from the cost element (such as on the basis of the cost center or the order).

• No profit center is specified in the posting.

The default profit center will be derived in the document, before document splitting will be processed. This means that derivation is only useful for Profit and Loss (P&L) and balance sheet accounts in cases where the profit center cannot be derived or specified (for example manually).

Document Splitting: In general, document splitting process the account assignments which have been provided in the document entry screen of the accounting document and do not overwrite any assignments.

For exceptions and further information, refer to SAP Note 1085921.

Similar to the default profit center (FAGL3KEH), the document splitting offers you to assign a default account assignment (such as a profit center or segment) as a constant that is used whenever this object is missing in the item.

This example in the figure illustrates the passive document splitting by posting an outgoing payment.

In the vendor line item display, the payment document and original invoice document appear (after the payment) as cleared items, as in previous releases. The document splitting rule for the payment of a vendor invoice is provided in the standard SAP system.

Document splitting also works for acquisition postings with multiple assets (and different account assignments). The asset reconciliation accounts (balance sheet and value adjustment accounts) are already classified internally as asset item categories. For example, you can use the analytical Fiori apps or analysis for office, to create financial statements for profit center or segment immediately.

The following are the statistical key figure categories:

• Fixed value:

  This is carried over from the period in which it is posted to all subsequent periods of the same fiscal year. You only have to enter a new posting when the value changes. Fixed values are defined when key figures remain constant over a significant period of time (such as the number of employees in a cost center).

• Totals value:

  This is not transferred to the following period but must be entered for each individual period, and is preferable for statistical key figures whose values fluctuate in individual periods (such as the power consumption in kWh).

You can use transaction FAGLSKF to enter actual values for statistical key figures directly in Profit Center Accounting.

To access the relevant transactions, on the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Accounting→Financial Accounting→General Ledger→Statistical Key Figures.

You can maintain statistical key figures within SAP General Ledger Accounting directly. These figures can be transferred from Overhead Cost Controlling (CO-OM) or posted directly in the General Ledger.

Allocation (assessment and distribution) of overhead costs is performed at period closing. Allocation is usually performed directly at cost center level. The postings are automatically posted on the profit centers in SAP General Ledger Accounting.

If postings were made to a default profit centers, you allocate them to the production profit centers as assessments during period-end closing. The system uses an assessment account to consolidate the individual accounts in the sender profit center for assessment. This means the head of the receiver profit center now only sees the assessment account and no longer the individual accounts that were posted to the default profit center.

In many cases, you allocate certain balance sheet items (raw materials, real estate, and so on), which you initially posted to a single profit center, to several receiver profit centers. We recommend that you use distribution because it allocates items specifically to the cost element. This means a material stock account remains with the receiver.

Assessing or distributing data in PCA is only beneficial after you have completed all the period closing activities in all the feeder applications (FI, CO, SD, MM, and so on).

The cycle segment method described here defines both distributions and assessments. To display the allocation relationships between the senders and receivers in the system, you make entries for each (allocation) segment.

Each segment has the following entries:

• Sender values:

  Which costs do you want to assess and from which objects will the costs be assessed? Sender values can be posted values, fixed amounts, or fixed prices. If you use posted amounts, you can work with plan and actual values. You can specify a percentage under 100%, which leaves a corresponding amount on the sender profit center.

• Receiver values:

  Costs are allocated to which objects? On the receiver side, you can store fixed amounts, fixed percentages, fixed portions, and variable portions as rules.

• Tracing factor:

  On what basis are the costs split among the receivers? The tracing factor of the variable portion identifies a posted value on the profit center as an allocation base (for example, statistical key figures).

In an allocation segment, sender profit centers are combined with receiver profit centers according to the allocation relationships as described in the allocation segment. Multiple segments are combined in a cycle and a cycle must always be assigned to a version.

Distribution is used to distribute values from one profit center to another. An allocation between profit centers in FI does not change the debit on the energy cost center. The values arrive in the receiving profit centers with the same account in which they were originally posted on the sender profit center where processing uses the original account. In the figure, the accounts are 416100 and 416110.

The FI document number is displayed in the basic list of the allocation. You can reverse distributions as often as required.

You use the cycle segment method to define sender-receiver relationships.

Practical example: Distribution is used to distribute material stocks to different profit centers. This is necessary when several profit centers at a plant are responsible for a material. Because only one profit center can be defined in the material master, you allocate the stock values (using the stock account) from the defined profit center to the others.

You use the assessment when the original accounts cannot, or must not, be posted on the receiver side. In practice, assessment is often used to clear a standard profit center. In the assessment cycle, a temporary assessment cost element is used to distribute the costs from the source to the target. You want an individual assessment account to be defined in each case for the assessment in G/L. This is account 499900 in the example shown in the figure.

The assessment account must not correspond to any secondary cost element in CO. This means that you cannot simply use the assessment cost elements (cost element type 42) from CO.

The receiving objects do not display the account with which the original invoices were entered. You use the assessment when the original accounts cannot, or must not, be identified on the receiver side. You can reverse and repeat assessments as often as required. You use the cycle segment method to define sender-receiver relationships.