Variance between KE30 (COPA) Balance versus GL Balances (GR55)

Question

Hi all,
Would you know what are the main causes of the variances between COPA Report (KE30) versus GL Balance (GR55)? How to avoid it? I've been encountering this for the past months. How to resolve also the variances? Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Hi,
It is not necessary in costing based COPA for FI and COPA to be equal. It basically depends on your
customizing. In SD you map the value fields to condition types in tcode KE4I (there is no 1:1 mapping to
a cost element). In FI/MM you have a PA transfer structure. Here you could have a cost element group
mapped to a single value field or different assignment lines posting to the same value field. So again
there need not be a 1:1 mapping.
The cost element is not filled in CO-PA when transferring values from SD. The reason is that we transfer
several conditions (each condition can be assigned to a different cost element) with one line item to COPA.
So it would not make sense to choose any of the affected cost elements by chance to the line item
as the line item stands for several cost elements. Also in SD only cost elements of category 11 and 12
are relevant to CO-PA.
At time of settlement you can post the values from different cost elements to different CO-PA value
fields, but in one line item in CO-PA. The idea of costing based COPA is to describe the meaning of
values with different value fields and not with the cost element. Therefore the system maps original cost
elements to CO-PA value fields and this leads to the fact that we summarize over the cost elements.
Since costing based CO-PA does not use cost element as a key, but the different value fields, there is a
summarization through the technical field KSTAR in CO-PA. Therefore, the field KSTAR in CO-PA
makes only sense if you deliver only one cost element to CO-PA. This means that we have only space
for one cost element (one flat CE1 line is assigned to several lines from the sender distinguished by cost
element), but since one could have several cost elements during the settlement we can take only one
(the first or the last one - as described in note 763516).
Due to the reasons mentioned above please check if it is really necessary to reconcile G/L accounts
with value fields in KE30.
regards
Waman