Introducing the Concept of an Operating Concern

Characteristics are the analytic dimensions of CO-PA. Characteristics define items or objects that the user can evaluate. Several characteristics, such as customer and product, are predefined automatically for every operating concern. Also, the organizational characteristics, such as company code, controlling area, and plant, are automatically predefined. These characteristics are known as fixed characteristics. They play a central role for integration in the system and the master records. For technical reasons, the characteristics are needed to enable the posting of value type, version, period, and fiscal year. These fixed characteristics are automatically predefined in an operating concern and cannot be removed.

In addition to the fixed characteristics, up to 50 non-fixed characteristics can be added to an operating concern.

Before you can use the non-fixed characteristics to define an operating concern, they must be added to the field catalog. You can access the characteristics in the field catalog in any client.

The field catalog contains some suggested characteristics for use in a new operating concern definition.

The following are ways to add other characteristics to the field catalog:

• Choose an existing field from certain SAP tables, with a maximum length of five characters.

• Create a characteristic independently. Make sure that the characteristic begins with WW and contains four to five characters in total.

Behind every characteristic, there is a check table with valid characteristic values for CO-PA. In this way, the data that flows into CO-PA is checked. When you manually create a new characteristic in the field catalog, you can decide if the system should generate a check table for this characteristic.

The categories of characteristics are described as follows:

You can divide the characteristics into the following categories according to how and when they are defined:

• Referenced to SAP tables:

  You can use characteristics that already exist in other applications when you define your operating concerns. For example, you can copy fields from tables for customer master records, material master records, and sales documents. You can also copy partner roles defined in the structure PAPARTNER in the Sales and Distribution (SD) application as characteristics in CO-PA.

• Custom-created characteristics:

  You can create characteristics that are only required in CO-PA, and define your own derivation strategy to derive values for these characteristics.

• Predefined characteristics:

  In addition to fixed characteristics, a number of other predefined characteristics, such as customer group, customer district, and country characteristics, are available in the field catalog. You can add these characteristics to your operating concern.

• Fixed characteristics:

  A number of fundamental characteristics, such as product number, company code, billing type, business area, and sales order characteristics, are automatically predefined in every operating concern.

In costing-based CO-PA, value fields store the base quantities and amounts for reporting. Value fields can be highly summarized, for example, representing a summary of cost element balances. Alternatively, they can be highly detailed, for example, representing just one part of a single cost element balance.

The sales-related key figures, such as revenue types, discounts, and surcharges, are presented in a detailed way. In comparison, the items based on periodic costs, such as period cost types, are aggregated.

Unlike characteristics, there are no fixed value fields for a new operating concern.

Value fields can be maintained in the field catalog as follows:

• All the value fields must exist in the field catalog before they can be used to define a new operating concern. The field catalog is valid in all clients. The field catalog contains some suggested value fields, which you can use in a new operating concern. You can define value fields independently, which should begin with VV and should be four to five characters in total.

• It is not necessary to create the value fields, such as net sales and contribution margin. These items are calculated from the base values stored in the value fields when the report is executed. However, when using an ad-hoc report, those key figures can be defined using a Key Figure Scheme in costing-based CO-PA. If you do not create value fields for calculated items, the data storage requirements are minimized.

• In Margin Analysis, all values are updated to cost and revenue elements. Each amount is stored in up to three different currencies under fixed basic key figures, which are accessed in reporting.

You can use value fields with the aggregation rules sum (SUM), average (AVG), and last (LAS) in CO-PA drill-down reports.

Value fields are defined when you create them in the field catalog, and then pulled into the data structures when you create your operating concern.

Attributes are client-specific parameters of an operating concern. They have different effects, depending on the type of CO-PA you are working in.

The attributes of an operating concern are as follows:

• Currency types for costing-based CO-PA

  • Operating concern currency:

    In costing-based CO-PA, the actual data is posted in the operating concern currency. You can change the operating concern currency if no data has been posted in the operating concern.

  • Company code currency:

    You have the option of storing all data in the currency of the corresponding company code. This option is relevant if your company operates internationally and is concerned with daily fluctuations in exchange rates. This attribute allows you to avoid differences due to fluctuations in exchange rates, and helps you to reconcile your CO-PA data directly with Financial Management.

  • Profit center valuation:

    In addition to storing data in the operating concern currency and company code currency using the legal company code and valuation view, you can also store data in the currencies that are valuated from the viewpoint of transfer prices between profit centers.

• Fiscal year variant:

  The fiscal year variant determines the number of posting periods for each fiscal year. The fiscal year variant must be identical between the assigned company codes, controlling areas, and the operating area.