At the beginning of every fiscal year we are requested to change the assignment on various cost centers to new profit centers. We lose the history and occasionally have new year's plan data pointed to the incorrect profit center. Have you experienced this lately and do you have any solutions?
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There aren't many details included in this question to explain the annual
turmoil in the cost center to profit center relationships. However, here
are a few thoughts on what you're seeing.
The loss of history should not happen just because an existing cost center
is reassigned to a new profit center ... SAP is designed to handle this so
reorganizations can be easily accomplished. Check the dates in the profit
center master data screen to make sure there are no inconsistencies with the
dates for cost centers beneath it. For example, if a cost center is set up
with a validity date of January 1, 1999 but a new profit center has a
validity date of January 1, 2002, SAP could get confused with cost center
data for 1999, 2000, and 2001 when that cost center gets re-pointed to this
new profit center. This would look like the history was lost, but if the
dates are re-aligned I believe the history will re-appear.
As for cost center data showing up under the wrong profit center ... check
the cost center master data screen to make sure each cost center is pointed
correctly. I've seen a number of instances where incorrect profit centers
were keyed into cost center master data screens, but I've yet to see an
instance where SAP misreads a profit center in the cost center master data
screen. Another possibility: if the errors include inventory that is
charged directly to cost
centers, check the profit center in each product's material master - SAP
would pull the profit center directly from the MM screen and would never
look at the cost center master data for that type of transaction.
One other consideration for the management of your company would be the
reasons for these annual changes. Annual reorganizations, while not
infrequent in the real world, are often symptomatic of a "less than robust"
planning process.
This was first published in May 2002
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