ERPCorp SAP FICO Blog

In the make-to-stock production process, production or process orders are the manufacturing order types that collect costs during production. Materials are produced based on a set production plan using MRP (material requirements planning), and not based on actual customer demand.

One of the major tasks for functional SAP professionals is configuration. You configure SAP to perform properly based on business requirements during the realization phase. On your first SAP project, it can be overwhelming to know where to start when configuring a module.

How do you back track from a costing sheet to find out where it is actually used?  Unfortunately, there is not an easy way to verify this without going through configuration screens or table data. This is also complicated because costing sheets can be attributed to material masters or orders. I recommend you use two tables in transaction SE16 or SE16 to determine where costing sheets are used in a standard cost (table KEKO, field KALSM) or on an order (table AUFK, field KALSM).

How do settlement rules, settlement profiles and allocation structures work together?  This question was posed specifically about project systems, but this applies to all cost objects in SAP that require settlement: Production orders, process orders, sales orders, and internal orders. 

To learn more about settlement rules and other SAP FICO topics please visit our new SAP FICO Learning Center please click here.

When does the activity type on someone’s personnel record trump the rate on a material or routing? 

How does SAP determine costs from material master through production orders, and settlement (including WIP settlement) including material, labor and overhead costs?

The cost component structure is used to indicate which costs should be included, whether to include the variable or total costs, and how to group costs in cost components. You can create cost components for major cost categories like raw materials, packaging, overhead, labor, and setup. 

The chicken or the egg, vanilla or chocolate, red or white wine, consulting or industry? Are these some of the biggest questions in the universe? You may argue not, however for a SAP professional, deciding between a consulting or industry position is an important career choice. This is one career choice you may reevaluate throughout your career depending on personal life events, career goals, and present opportunities. The truth is, there is no wrong choice. It’s about what opportunity works best for you at that point in your life and career. 

A significant, but often overlooked, part of an SAP professional's career is remaining cognizant of the latest SAP trends and technologies. While many of us are in the nitty-gritty details of our SAP implementation, a big picture view of our organization, project, and SAP as a technology company allows us to stay focused on what’s really important. To be successful SAP professionals, we need to know the latest and greatest news about SAP upgrades, enhancement packs, and strategies and understand how they impact our focus area. 

This week we are starting a new blog series on the most common SAP Controlling pitfalls and how to avoid them. SAP Controlling 2013 speaker Tanya Duncan is up first.

In my opinion, the most common Controlling pitfall is choosing design alternatives without understanding the ramifications. Controlling is an interesting and, in my opinion, more fun module compared to Finance and other SAP modules. It is more flexible in how you achieve requirements, but it also requires attention to building a robust, sustainable design.  

I recently used an interesting piece of configuration in the valuation variant to value externally and intercompany purchased materials.  My client has unique challenges because they are vertically integrated. They produce almost every raw material that goes in to their finished goods including packaging and the machinery to produce finished goods. The amount of intercompany purchases is massive and we needed a sustainable way to value purchased items and reference the purchasing conditions for intercompany markups and other charges like freight and shipping labor. This configuration is a multi-step process, but it’s fairly simple when you have all the pieces configured correctly.

This week we are profiling Tanya Duncan, SAP FICO Consultant with Deloitte. Learn more about Tanya and her start with SAP through the SAP University Alliance program.