Activity Type Post Blog Series Final Recap

Over the last seven weeks expert Tom King has shared detailed information on SAP activity types . This blog post provides a recap and link to each post in the series.

Activity Postings Part 1: Activity Types an Overview

My company began its journey with SAP back in 2007, and I was a charter member of the FICO team because of my work with product costing in our legacy world. I quickly discovered the way SAP handles costing and Controlling is different. The concepts were familiar, but the structures and processes were not. One of the first items that I ran into was the activity type.  Ah, I thought, a familiar concept!

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Activity Postings Part 2: Category 1 Activity Types and Posting

Our journey through activity type postings begins with activity type category 1 (manual entry, manual allocation).  I think of category 1 as the vanilla ice cream of posting activity. This is the most common and straightforward method to use and understand. Activity types defined with this category must be directly posted to a cost center and at the same time have a receiver cost object assigned.  Look at the definition of activity type CATEG1 below.  In this case, the actual allocation category is left blank, which means that it will be the same as the plan activity type category.  For CATEG1, that means the actual category is 1.

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Activity Postings Part 3: Category 2 Activity Types and Posting

Category 2 activity types are for indirect determination and indirect allocation.  If category 1 activity types are vanilla ice cream, category 2 activities are more like hot fudge sundaes.  There is a lot of power built in to how postings are made with these activity types.

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Activity Postings Part 4: Category 2 Activity Types and Posting – Part 2

Previously, we discovered how to automate activity type postings using the indirect activity allocation cycle and category 2 activity types.  The example chosen was to use a statistical key figure which was posted to the receiver cost centers as the means for calculating the sender activity type quantities.  This still required some manual postings for the statistical key figure, but the calculation of the activity type quantity and the actual postings were handled automatically when running the cycle.

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Activity Postings Part 5: Category 3 Activity Types and Posting

We have gone into a lot of detail on how indirect activity allocation cycles work with category 2 (indirect determination, indirect allocation) are used.  The main takeaway from category 2 type activities is that the quantity of activity posted is calculated based on information derived from the receiver cost objects.  You either don’t know or find it difficult to determine how much activity should be posted.  What if you do know how much activity should be posted, but don’t want to manually determine how to allocate the posting to other cost objects?  That is where category 3 (manual entry, indirect allocation) activity types come in.

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Activity Postings Part 6: Category 4 Activity Types and Posting

Category 4 activity types are unique in that they do not allow any sort of allocation at all.  They are manually posted like category 1 and category 3 activity types, but that is the extent of it.  The activity stays in the cost center.  You might be saying to yourself, “Why have an activity type that cannot allocate costs between cost objects?  Isn’t that the main purpose of the activity type?”

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Activity Postings Part 7: Category 5 Activity Types and Posting

We come to the end of our tour of activity type posting with category 5 (Target=actual allocation).  This one is the low-fat frozen yogurt of activity types.  It tastes great, but you don’t have to work as hard to keep a trim figure.  This works similarly to the category 2 activity type, but does not require an indirect activity allocation cycle in order to post the activity.

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