ERPCorp SAP FICO Blog
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 37856
By Tom King
When I was a charter member of my company's SAP FICO product costing team, the first item I encountered was activity type. I discovered that activity types are not cost drivers but instead they allocate costs from cost centers to cost objects. First, in this article, let's create an activity type.
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 84161
By John Jordan
What's the difference between process and production orders in SAP S/4HANA?
SAP production orders and process orders are both manufacturing orders used to plan, collect, and analyze production costs, but they support different manufacturing environments.
Production orders are typically used in discrete manufacturing, where a bill of material (BOM) and routing define the components and operations required to manufacture a product.
Process orders are designed for process manufacturing, where a master recipe, materials list, operations, and phases define the production process. Although the terminology and production functionality differ, both order types support product cost collection and analysis in SAP S/4HANA.
Read more: SAP Process Orders vs. Production Orders in S/4HANA
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 45895
By Rosana Fonseca
Material price determination in SAP S/4HANA controls how material prices are calculated and how inventory is valued in SAP Material Ledger. The material master Accounting 1 view contains two important settings: Price Control and Price Determination.
Price control determines whether inventory is valued using a standard price (S) or moving average price (V). Material price determination specifies whether SAP uses transaction-based price determination (2) or single-level and multilevel price determination (3).
SAP Material Ledger is mandatory for inventory valuation in SAP S/4HANA, while Actual Costing remains optional.
The available material price determination settings are shown in Figure 1.
Read more: Material Price Determination in SAP S/4HANA Material Ledger
- Category: Blog
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What Is SAP Mixed Costing?
By Ross Christoph
SAP mixed costing allows organizations to calculate a material cost estimate using multiple procurement or production alternatives. It is useful when the same material can be manufactured using different production versions, master recipes, or procurement methods.
Instead of calculating a standard cost based on only one alternative, mixed costing calculates the costs of the selected alternatives and combines them using weighting factors.
The resulting mixed cost estimate represents a weighted average cost that can be used to establish a material's standard price and support inventory valuation.
For example, a manufacturer may produce the same material using two production versions with different production costs. Mixed costing allows both alternatives to contribute to the material's standard cost according to their expected production quantities.
Read more: SAP Mixed Costing in S/4HANA: Procurement Alternatives and Mixed Prices
- Category: Blog
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By Ashish Sampat
How to Make Trading Partner Mandatory in SAP FI Using Validation Rules
In SAP Financial Accounting (FI), the Trading Partner field (VBUND) identifies the affiliated company involved in an intercompany transaction. Maintaining this field consistently is important for accurate intercompany reporting, reconciliation, and consolidation in SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA.
A common configuration challenge is determining how to make Trading Partner mandatory during FI document posting. Although field status settings can control whether certain fields are displayed or available for entry, making Trading Partner mandatory may require additional validation logic, depending on the posting scenario and system configuration.
In this second part of our series, we explain how to use SAP FI validation rules, configured through transaction OB28, to check whether Trading Partner has been populated and prevent a document from being posted when the required value is missing.
We cover the validation prerequisites, the use of relevant document and line-item fields, and the configuration considerations that should be evaluated before implementing this control in a production SAP system.
For background on Trading Partner configuration and master data, see Part I: How to Make Trading Partner a Required Entry in SAP.
Read more: How to Make Trading Partner Mandatory in SAP FI – Part II
- Category: Blog
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By Ashish Sampat
What Is a Trading Partner in SAP?
A Trading Partner in SAP identifies the company involved in an intercompany transaction. The Trading Partner field (VBUND) helps organizations identify transactions between related companies and supports intercompany reporting and financial consolidation.
Trading Partner information can be maintained in company configuration and relevant master data, including customer, vendor, and general ledger (G/L) account records.
Accurate Trading Partner assignments are important for identifying intercompany balances and supporting the elimination of intercompany transactions during consolidation.
This article explains how Trading Partner information is configured and maintained in SAP master data. Part II explains options for making Trading Partner a required entry during financial document posting.
Read more: SAP Trading Partner Configuration and Master Data — Part I
- Category: Blog
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By Ross Christoph
SAP Enhancement Pack 4 provides additional functionality for processing outsource manufacturing or subcontracting operations.
Read more: SAP Enhancement Pack 4 for Outsource Manufacturing or Subcontracting Operations
- Category: Blog
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Learn More: 100 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT CONTROLLING WITH SAP
SAP Material Ledger has two main functions:
Carry inventory in up to two additional valuations and actual costs, as we explain in detail below:
Read more: SAP Material Ledger - Excerpt: 100 Things You Should Know About Controlling with SAP
- Category: Blog
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By Janet Salmon
SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA introduced significant changes to financial accounting and management accounting by simplifying data structures and enabling more flexible reporting.
Originally introduced in 2014, the solution was part of SAP's transition toward simplified financial data structures and was followed by SAP Simple Finance and the subsequent evolution of SAP S/4HANA Finance.
This article, originally written by Janet Salmon, answers frequently asked questions about SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA, including its architecture, reporting capabilities, deployment options, and business benefits.
Historical context: The discussion reflects SAP technology and implementation options available in 2014. Since then, SAP S/4HANA Finance has introduced the Universal Journal, further integrating Financial Accounting (FI) and Controlling (CO).
The original technical explanations remain valuable for understanding the evolution of SAP Finance.
Original 2014 Article
I've been working with the first accounting customers to validate and implement SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA.
SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA became available on August 1, 2014. This article explains how the solution differed from earlier SAP accounting architectures and shares what I learned from early customer implementations.
Read more: SAP Accounting Powered by SAP HANA: FAQs and S/4HANA Evolution
- Category: Blog
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By Paul Ovigele
When you are using SAP Controlling Profitability Analysis (CO-PA), you know that mapping objects to value fields is the key to ensuring that the reports are complete and accurate. The standard scenario involves assigning amount fields, such as sales conditions, general ledger accounts, and production variances.
However, it is also important to map quantity fields, such as sales and production quantities, to value fields (which are set up with a quantity attribute in transaction KEA6). Most sales and contribution margin reports include these quantity values (for example, the Net Weight of products sold) to provide the appropriate context for the reported revenue and cost of sales figures.
There are three main areas where you can assign quantities to fields in CO-PA.