An Invaluable Real-World Performance Tip They Don't Teach

Implementation Teams and Designers in CO-PA Class:

"Characteristic Group"
by Tony Rogan, Senior Applications Consultant, et alia
The most common "Characteristics" that report readers like to have associated with revenue or cost data in CO-PA
include Product #s, Customer #s, Sales Representatives ID #s, and Locations. But depending on the kind of
revenue or cost that is being updated to CO-PA, there may be a business need to record other "Characteristics" at
the same time. Or, perhaps end users are populating too many Characteristics in source transactions that require
manual entry of Characteristics values. This article explains how such cases can be managed with consistency by
creating and maintaining (in the CO-PA configuration) rules in a "Characteristic Group," which can then be
enforced during attempts to update a particular revenue or cost in CO-PA.
The CO-PA module usually acts as a "Gross Margin" analysis tool, rather than as a full-blown "Earnings-Before-
Interest-and-Taxes" ledger. But, regardless of how your particular site uses it, each CO-PA debit or credit entry will
have two — and only two — parts to it:

 The "Who/What/Where," or "Characteristics" part of the entry.

 The "How Much Quantity or Money," or "Key Figures" part of the entry.1

"Characteristics" vs. "Key Figures"

The most common "Characteristics" that report readers like to have associated with the profit-related (revenue or
cost) data in CO-PA include Product #s, Customer #s, Sales Representatives ID #s, and Locations (such as
Shipped From and Shipped To cities and countries).
But there can be many other "Who," "What," or "Where" bits of information that should be recorded at the same
time as the "How Much" value(s), depending on the kind of revenue or cost that is being updated to CO-PA.
Or, perhaps the opposite business need exists. Perhaps the end users of source transactions that require manual
entry of values into Characteristics fields — transactions such as manual postings to CO-PA or "settlement"
allocations to CO-PA from the Project Systems module — sometimes populate too many Characteristics.
To help you manage these cases with consistency, the CO-PA configuration can include rules (created and
maintained in a "Characteristic Group") that can be enforced during any attempts by end users to update a
particular revenue or cost in CO-PA.
I’ve used this feature since the days of R/3 Release 3.1. The navigation path from the latest release (4.6D as of
press time) is shown in Figure 1 (next page).
Once you create a "Characteristic Group," you can then assign it to the source transactions in which you want that
logic to be always enforced.
Figure 1 The Characteristic Group Navigation Path in R/3 Release 4.6D
Required Entry vs. Blocked Entry
Configuration allows you to express your choice of Characteristics to be "required," and Characteristics to be
"blocked." This typically means that it might be a good idea to choose Blocked Entry logic for Characteristics fields
for which CO-PA derivation rules already exist, as a way to prevent end users from unintentionally interfering with
that derivation. But, ultimately, the choice is yours as to which fields to make required manual entry, and which to
protect against manual entry.
For example, let’s pretend that you have warehousing expenses posted to the G/L via a FI journal entry, and that
your CO-PA design calls for these expenses to also update CO-PA directly from that FI journal entry. In this case,
the FI journal entry end user will be navigating to a special data entry screen, where he or she will have to type in
values for one or more CO-PA Characteristics.
You — as the CO-PA designer — want to be sure that Accounting personnel responsible for posting the entry
always populate two specific product-related Characteristics, and never the Customer and other organizational
Characteristics.
To solve this issue, you create a Characteristic Group that requires population of the two product-related
Characteristics, and which blocks all the other Characteristics. (Other Characteristics that are part of your
Derivation Rules will still be automatically populated, such as Company Code and site-specific, product-related
Characteristics, such as Product Hierarchy — they just cannot be populated manually, by the end user.)
Once you then assign the Characteristic Group to the desired transaction for which it should be used (or to the CO-
PA "Record Type" itself, making it used for all transactions that post to CO-PA with that record type), the
Characteristic Group becomes active.
Summary
The CO-PA "Characteristic Group" functionality offers a useful way to establish consistency in regards to which
Characteristics (i.e., Who/What/Where fields) do and do not get populated from each kind of Revenue and Cost
source transaction that updates your particular CO-PA system.
In addition to an obvious benefit of making the data more consistent — and thus easier to interpret in the reports —
the consistency also helps out in terms of overall CO-PA response speeds.
For more details about CO-PA functionality, FI/CO Expert subscribers may download a free copy of Tony Rogan’s
"Performance Tips for CO-PA" white paper from www.FICOExpertOnline.com/downloads.
Tony Rogan is a Certified FI/CO Consultant at et alia with over six years of SAP consulting experience. He began
his SAP career in 1995 with a Big 5 consulting firm, and over the years has worked for various industries, including
utilities, non-profit, high-tech, consumer goods, and process manufacturing. Tony’s expertise lies in the Financial
and Controlling modules, with emphasis on Cost Center Accounting, Product Costing, Internal Orders, Profit
Center Accounting, Special Ledger, Project Systems, and Profitability Analysis. He also has experience with
Enterprise Consolidations, LIS, and Business Warehouse.
1
The concept of a "Key Figure" can be quite confusing at first, especially if you’re used to thinking about G/L
accounting concepts. In CO-PA, the "Key Figure" is not only a quantity value or a money value. It is also a
category of quantity or money. For example, three commonly used "Key Figures" related to Cost of Goods Sold
are "Raw Materials Cost," "Fixed Manufacturing Cost," and "Variable Manufacturing Cost." In G/L accounting, all
three would simply be represented as a debit value to a Cost of Goods Sold G/L account #. In contrast to a CO-PA
"Key Figure," a CO-PA "Characteristic" represents a Who, What, or Where fact, unrelated to money or quantity —
e.g., the "Sold To" Customer # or the "Product" material #.