Distribution and allocation

Hi Gurus,
Please could you help me clarify the difference between distribution like top-down and Allocation as in cost allocation concepts?
Thanks
Markus Z.

Thanks Gurus,
Are the concepts the same in the context of cost center ? The online help link showed that it was for profit center. Can I assume these concepts are the same and same meaning in both contexts?
Finally, can I say that both assessmt and allocation effectively does the same things but with conditions being slightly different, as stated by Ramesh?
In lay man terms, can I say that assessment and allocation is like dividing an overhead cost into respective components based on some factors?
regards
Markus Z.

Similar Messages

Difference between Assesment,Distribution and allocation

HI,
What is the difference between Assesment, Distribution and allocation.
Thanks in Advance,
Regards,
Chandu

Hi,
1) Allocations: Allocations enable you to periodically allocate amounts and quantities from sender objects to receiver objects. The two main types of allocations are assessment and distribution. You can allocate both plan and actual data. You perform the allocation using the allocation cycle function. You use allocation rules to determine how amounts and quantities should be allocated from sender object to receiver object.
To effect the allocation, you have to make various settings in Customizing. You make the settings in Customizing under Financial Accounting (New) -> General Ledger Accounting (New) -> Periodic Processing -> Allocation.
2) Assessment: A business activity used to allocate quantities and amounts (actual and plan values) from one sender object to one or more receiver objects.
The assessment process posts the sender amounts to an assessment account. The SAP system then allocates the amounts from the assessment account to the receiver(s) - not directly from the original sender account.
The assessment works in the same way as the distribution. However, with the assessment, the debit and credit postings do not occur under the original account or the original cost element but under an assessment account or an assessment cost element. The information of the original account/original cost element are lost.
3) Distribution: A business activity used to allocate quantities and amounts (actual and plan values) from one sender object to one or more receiver objects.
The distribution process distributes the balance(s) from the original sender(s) to the receivers. The original sender account is credited and the original receiver account is debited by the distribution. The debit and credit postings for the distribution occur under the original account/original cost element with which the amounts and quantities are posted at the sender. The information of the original account/original cost element remains intact.
I hope it will help.
If helpful, please assign points.
Regards,
Manju

Distribution and Assessment

Hi,
I want to know what is the exact difference between distribution and assessement in CO. What situation we do distribution and assessment.
Regards
Babu

Hi,
Distribution: Distribution allocates primary costs only.
Example: your company has Admin dept, HR dept and Canteen Dept all are cost center.
At the month end company wants to distribute the costs of canteen to both Admin and HR dept in 40 and 60 % respectively.
If you are talking abt distribution it will allocate primary cost to admin and HR dept.
Example :- Canteen expenses incluedes Rent 1000/-, Power bill 1000/- so the total expenses of canteen will be 2000/- Rs and if i run distribution cycle. System will post 400 as Rent and 400 as electrity in Admin and
600 as rent and 600 as electricity in HR dept.
so when you see the report of Admin you can trance teh cost of rent from canteen and cost of electricy for canteen costs." Here you can trace the costs"
If you use Assessement it will be allocated using the assessement cost element .
once you run assessemnt cycle system will simply post 800 as canteen costs(As assessement cost elemnts). orighinal cost element will lose its identity.
." Here you cannot trace the costs"
Assessement : Assessement allocates primary and sencondary cost elements
Best Regards
Ashish Jain.
Message was edited by:
Ashish Bohara

Distribution and Assessment Cycles

Could anyone tell me the difference between distribution and assessment cycles?

hi,
in distribution the original primary costs are sent from the sender to the receiver. thus the original costs can be seen in the receiving cost centre.
in assessment the primary costs are assigned to a secondary cost element in an Allocation structure and the secondary cost elements are seen in the receiving cost centre
assign points if useful.
regards

Difference between Distribution and Assessment cycle

Hi,
Can any one help me regarding the above(Difference between Distribution and Assessment cycle)
Thanks in advance
Rajani

HI,
Assessment:
Assessment was created to transfer primary and secondary costs from a sender cost center to receiving controlling objects. During assessment, cost centers or business processes can be used as senders .n The receivers for an assessment can be a cost center, WBS element, internal order, cost object, or a
business process. You can restrict the number of receiver categories in customizing. n Primary and secondary postings are allocated at the end of the period by means of the user-defined
key.
n During assessment, the original cost elements are summarized into assessment cost elements
(secondary cost element category = 42). As the system writes fewer totals records, the assessment
has a better performance than periodic reposting and distribution.
n Line items are posted for the sender as well as for the receiver, enabling the allocation to be recorded
exactly. The system does not display the original cost elements in the receivers. Therefore,
assessment is useful if the cost drilldown for the receiver is not important, for example, as in the case
of the allocation for the "cafeteria" cost center.
n Similar to distribution, the partner is updated in the totals record during distribution.
n You can reverse assessments as often as required.
n You use the Cycle -Segment method to define sender-receiver relationships.
Distribution:
Differences between periodic reposting and distribution are due to information content and
performance.
n For periodic reposting, no separate credit record is written on the sender for the cost element in the
summary report. Instead, the totals record for the cost element is reduced on the debit side, which
means that the original debit amount can no longer be checked there ("unclean credit"). However,
during distribution, the system writes a totals record for the credit ("clean credit"). The information
on the receiver is the same for periodic reposting and distribution ("clean debit").
n Compared with periodic reposting, during distribution, the system also updates the partner in the
totals record for the sender. This means that the partner can be displayed in the information system
on the totals record level.
n As fewer totals records are written during periodic reposting, performance is better than during
distribution. See customizing for an example with figures that illustrates this aspect. Under utilities,
make settings for the SAPscript text display, then call up the text by choosing Periodic reposting,
Distribution, or Assessment from the menu.
Regards,
Meenakshi

Overhead structure and allocations

Hi All,
I am little bit confused with cost accounting and product costing.
Can anyone explain how cost accounting allocations, distributions and assessment effect product cost controlling, How the overhead data flow from cost center accounting to product costing.
Can anyone explain in brief the difference between direct activity allocation and indirect activity allocation with real time scenario,
Thanks
Kumari

Hi Kumari,
1. Cost allocation is nothing but adding cost to production process directly or indirectly. Direct cost includes equipment and machinery which are directly invovled it the production. We create activity based on different activities and diverted the same to production process through work center and routing.
Whereas, indirect cost which no where directly involved in the production process but support the process as Rajneesh said. Some of indirect costs are plant visiting, supportive admin and maintenance cost of the production and canteen facilties to labour at site. We will charge the indirect cost to production process in various methods based on requirement.
Some of methods to charge indirect cost are Costing sheet, which is used to apply a certain percenage of cost to produce a particular product (ex: 20% of total produced material will be consider as material overhead). We can use quantity based overhead using costing sheet, i.e. $10 for every machinery hour. We also use Template allocation method to charge overhead on production process.
2. Distribution/Assessment are used to transfer the cost between cost centers for different requirements.
a) The main difference between these two is: Distribution can transfer only primary cost elements whereas Assessment can transfer both primary and secondary cost elements.
b) Another difference is: Distribution carries the values to the receiving cost center with all cost elements available from sending cost centers. Whereas, in Assessment, all the cost from sending cost center will be accumulated and transfer the same to receiving cost center via a 42 category secondary cost element.
Its up to you which method you follow based on the requirement.
BR, Srinivas Salpala

Skf and allocation/settlement

Dear All,
I have 2 item to seek advice.
1) SKF only applicable to use in allocation(distribution/assessment) but NOT settlement. correct?
2) Allocation(which consiste of distribution and assessment) and Settlement. How should I call them? Cost allocation tool or Cost transfer tool? If it is called allocation tool then meaning settlement also called allication tool which may be confusing.
Thanks

Hello Srina,
There is a bit difference in the way SAP names a transaction and the way the people in industry name them. Generally all cost allocations irrespective of distribution, assessment or setllement might be called simply allocation or transfer but in SAP each of them is different because of the results they produce. The term allocation in SAP is used more in context of allocation of overheads / production costs posted in a cost center to the following :
a. Production/Process Order or to a Product Cost Collector;
b. WBS Element or Netwok;
c. Internal Order; or
d. Plant Maintenance Order.
Therefore it means that the allocation happens to cost objects where something new comes out and the term is not used in SAP in respect of other transfers for example from cost center to cost center the terms used are distribution/ assessment etc. The best way to call all of them together is ' Cost Management, Analysis and Allocation Tool'.
Settlement is applicable to the cost objects mentioned above (a,b,c and d) and the objective of the settlement is to valuate the the costs accumulated in these objects and transfer the effect of those back into Finance in form of posting to GL accounts and to other objects like assets, cost centers, another order, profitability segment etc. Therefore settlement can not be called allocation in any respect.
The SKFs can not be used in settlement nor there is much requirement as you can post percentages in the settlement rule if you want to distribute the settlement results into two cost objects.
Kind Regards // Shaubhik

Data Source to upload plan data for CO_OM_CCA_: CC: Costs and Allocations

Hi Guru's,
We have Data source that which upload Actual data for CCA (0CO_OM_CCA_1 - Cost Centers:cost and allocations). Every time it is full upload before loading the data deletion of previous load request will be done.
One more information required that i have checked in the BW cube for plan data it is available in the info cube for one cost center and rest of the costcenter i don't have the data now the users are requesting to upload the plan data for rest of cost centers.
Now as per the business requirement the users are requesting to upload the plan data in to the same i am not sure whether it will pull the plan data with actuals in to BW cube. Is there any alternate with the same data source or else is there any specific data source for uploading Costs and Allocations plan data
Please suggest me how can i go a head with this requirement.
Thanks in Advance.
Ganni

You can use the same datasource to load plan/budget data to the cube for all the costcenters. And regarding the actuals, you can use 0CO_OM_CCA_9 datasource to load to actuals cube and create a multi on top of both plan and actuals cube for reporting purposes.

Form Layer 2 to Layer 3 on Distribution and Access

Hi,
Our LAN topology have Core "L3" , Ditribution "L2" and Access "L2". We want to get rid of spanning tree by moving from layer 2 to layer 3 on Access and Distribution layers.
My questions is:
1) Any advice/document on this?
2) in the access switches did I have to configure each interface on 3750 as routed port by issueing "ip routing" and giving an IP address of each port ????. if this is the case than I will need huge amount of IP addresses.
Thanks

Hi
Much of this has already been covered off.
Just to add, I have implemented both routed access-layer and L2 access-layer and each has advantages and disadvantages.
Major advantages for L3
1) STP contained with wiring closet. Yes you can use RPVST+ but you still are extending L2 links between the distribution and access-layer with all that implies eg broadcast traffic. In addtion to utilise both uplinks at the same time requires a lot of extra configuration ie. setting root bridges for odd and even vlans and matching that to active HSRP gateways etc.
2) Automatic equal cost load-balancing (see previous point )
3) Easier troubleshooting. As previous poster said this is a matter of opinion and i have more experience with switching to be honest but i think troubleshooting L3 routing problems is generally easier than L2 STP problems.
Disadvantages
1) Vlan's cannot be extended across floors. May or may not be a problem for you.
2) If your distribution layer utilises 6500's with service modules eg the Firewall Service Module then layer 2 links give you more flexibility in deployment.
3) Cost can be an issue although your 3750's would support EIGRP stub functionality with only the base image.
As another poster pointed out, STP has come a long way from it's 50 seconds failover and with the correct setup it is nowhere near as important that you try and remove it.
I am just as much in favour of L2 access as L3 and most of major sites utilise L2 from the access-layer but with the speed/performance and cost of L3 switching you can get nowadays using L3 is a viable alternative.
HTH
Jon

Plan Assessment and Allocation for Service Orders (CS)

Hello,
I'm trying to run plan assessment (KSUB) and plan allocation (KO9E) for a service order (created via IW31), but I'm not able to do it.
I can do assessments (KSU5) and allocations (KO8G) with real values, but since I'm not able to do it in plan mode, I can't have comparative values between real and planned values (no value is flowing to allocation secondary cost elements).
Can anyone let me know if this is some sort of limitation for Service Orders? Because I checked SPRO in transaction code KOAI and for this type of orders there is no Indicator for Integrated Planning, nor it's possible to assign a planning profile.
Many thanks for any help you can provide!
Regards,
Cátia

I created a SAP message and they confirmed that this is not possible.

How sales and distribution and customer service are related

Respected,
I am sales and distribution consultant but at present I am working on customer service and sales and distribution simultaneously and I use to face the problems in customer service part of CRM so do they co relate with each other .

Hi Avanish,
Please note Customer Service is a combination of Sales & Distribution and Plant Maintenance. the difference in between them, it is that:-
1. Plant Maintenance is being done withing a company / plant, so billing is not get generated.
2. Customer Service is used to external customer, so billing gets done and customers settles the bill.
Thanks & Regards,
Rahul Verulkar

Grant access to help desk users to add members to distribution and security groups

Hello,
I am trying to create a set of help desk users that has full access to add or remove members from distribution and security groups as well as update users. We want it to bypass owner approval and essentially allow this group to add or remove members
in the FIM Portal and flow it down to ADS.
This obviously works fine if one is a member of the Administrators set, but we want a second tier of power users with limitied rights compared to FIM Admins. We have added the help desk team to the Security Group Users and Group Users set as
well as MPR "Security group management: Users can read selected attributes of group resources".
The help desk users can update users in the Portal with no issue. The can search groups with no issue but when they try to add members to a group they get the error "Access Denied".
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

I'm having very similar problem - I have users with delegated right to modify group membership only. User can add someone to group and it works fine, but when the same user is trying to remove and user from a group (even if this is the same user
which was added a minute ago) he gets Access Denied:
The
request included members which the requestor is not authorized
to add and/or remove from this group."
It is caused by default MPR:
Group management workflow: Validate requestor on remove member
Question is how this activity validates this request - any insight?

Material distribution and division wise

hi experts,
I need to take report what are all the items belongs to a particular distribution and division.
regards
arun

Dear SP ,
You can get sales orders report Material wise through VA05 transaction.
In the VA05 selection screen you enter Sold-to-party ,Material and selection date then click on Further sel,criteria tab (Push button) in the top of the screen ,system will take you to the selection fields there you enter the distribution channels(or Division or any other fields) from and to then execute the report.
System will give the details of the report with that selection fields.
I hope it will help you
Regards
Murali.
Edited by: Murali Mohan.T on Mar 30, 2008 10:17 AM
Edited by: Murali Mohan.T on Mar 30, 2008 10:26 AM

Regarding po error:buiding default account distribution and please wait....

hi ,
i 'll appreciate if any one can help me in this:
we have applied patches to our system here OAPPS 11.03,after this whenever i go to create purchase orders or requisitions ..shipment and then distribution ,i am getting error that "BUILDING DEFAULT ACCOUNT DISTRIBUTION AND PLEASE WAIT..." but i don't get values for charge,budget,accrual and variance accounts on distribution screen.i checked the wfstatus.sql(account generator workflow file) and run that by giving item_key and item_type for PO,i didn't get any output i.e no rows selected for every activities.Then i used trace on and read the trace file in which i saw one error ORA:00936 which means missing exp(i think) and one wrong sql statement is appearing in trace file.it has comma before from clause..i am not able to understand why is it happening?if any one knows about this then please let me know...is it workflow problem or something else?
thanks in anticipation

Muthu,
Thanks for the quick reply.
Please find below the example:
PO item qty - 100
Cost distribution:
Line 1 - 50
Line 2 - 30
Line 3 - 20
Now the PO has been ordered. PO in backend is showing three account assignments.
After that, I have deleted the fiirst 2 account assignments (1 & 2).
Now the PO will show like:
PO item qty - 100
Cost distribution:
Line 1 - 50 (deleted)
Line 2 - 30 (deleted)
Line 3 - 20
Now the Po item qty and account assignment qty are not same. In this it should give an error. But I am still able to order the PO. When the PO has been transfered to backend, I could see only one account assignment in ME23N but the PO item qty is showing there. Because of that I could able to process confirmation and invoice.
Now, if I change the qty of this specific item, then the new qty is getting updated in teh account assignment tab against the third item.
Rather, if I try to add another item to the PO, then at that time it is giving the error messasge: Sum of quantities > xxx < sum of total quantities.
Till invoice has been posted, it is not giving the error message.
Thanks,
SS

How to export "Managed by" field of Distribution and Security groups and import with new values? (Exchange 2010, AD 2003)

My Active Directory environment is 2003 functional level and we have Exchange 2010.
I am trying to find out the best way to do a mass edit for the "Managed by" values of our security and distribution groups.
I know we can export the "managed by" field by csvde but I am not sure this is the correct way to do it. Also in the case that there are multiple users assigned to be managing a distribution group it only shows one value. Also powershell from Exchange
2010 can be used with "get-distribution" but as our AD environment is 2003 is this correct also?
Finally once the data is exported to csv can it be edited to then reimport and udpate the existing group managed by fields with new values?
Not really sure that the best way to go about this is.
Summary - We have 2003 AD with Exchange 2010 and I am trying to export a list of all our Distribution/Security groups showing the group name and managedby values so we can edit and update the
existing managedby values with new ones. In some cases we have multiple users as the owners.
Appreciate any advice on how this can be best achieved. Thank you.

Hi,
We can use the following command in Exchange 2010 to export "Managed by" field of Distribution and Security groups:
Get-DistributionGroup | Select-object Name,@{label="ManagedBy";expression={[string]::join(“;”,$_.managedby)}},Primarysmtpaddress | Export-Csv
C:\export.csv
After you changed the Managed by field in export.csv and saved it as a new file named import.csv, we can run the following command to set with new value:
Import-Csv C:\import.csv | Foreach-Object{ Set-DistributionGroup –Identity $_.Name –ManagedBy $_.ManagedBy}
Hope it works.
Thanks,
Winnie Liang
TechNet Community Support

Distribution and allocation

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