ERPCorp SAP FICO Blog

Many SAP installations experience long run-times during Material Ledger close. This Blog explains a function that can help expedite Material Ledger close.

Knowing how much a product costs is essential to determining actual profitability. Yet most decisions are based on the standard cost of the product, given that it is not always easy to get an accurate picture of the actual cost. Actual costing functionality provided by the Material Ledger component of SAP Controlling bridges this gap. It provides the ability to capture actual costs by tracking variances at the material (product) level. This section provides an overview of actual costing in SAP Material Ledger.

I often get asked about difference between a Production Order and Process Order. When is it beneficial to use one over another?
As such, from controlling point of view, both objects have similar features. It is mainly on the Production Planning and Shop Floor Execution side where we see a difference. The main advantage of using Process Order is use of Process Instruction Sheet, or PI Sheet for day-to-day shop-floor activities. Whereas both the scenarios use Material Masters and Bills of Materials; Production Orders use Work Center (Machine) and Routing (sequence of operations) – Process Orders use Resource (Machine) and Recipe (sequence of operations and which component is issued during which operation). The decision on whether to go with Production Orders or Process Order would depend upon type of industry and fitment and is largely driven by the Production Planning team.

While we are on this topic of Production Orders and Process Orders, it might be beneficial to speak about other Cost Objects that are offered in Controlling.

Several colleagues have asked questions about integration between Materials Management (MM) and Financial Accounting (FI) module:

- How do postings from MM flow into FI?

- How do we find out what occurs behind-the-scenes?

- How do we identify which movement types are pointing to a specific GL Account?

- Is there a way by which we can change the posting to a different General Ledger (GL) Account?

- How does one create a new movement type and assign it to a specific GL Account?

Many SAP practitioners – IT and business alike – are in similar situation and do not know where to start on MM-FI data flow and reconciliation. This blog is an attempt to clarify the fundamentals of MM-FI account determination.

Configuration transaction OBYC forms the core of SAP’s integration between the MM, FI, and Controlling (CO) modules in a traditional SAP ERP system.

Several colleagues have asked me questions about the integration between Materials Management (MM) and Financial Accounting (FI) modules:

- How do postings flow from MM into FI?

How can we make Trading Partner a required entry while posting financial accounting documents for certain GL Accounts?
There are three possible alternatives to achieve this goal: Field Status Groups, Document Types and FI Validation. We will look at each of these options below.

Trading Partner: Definition
Trading Partner is a term used in trade and commerce and is generally defined as:

One of the two or more participants in an ongoing business relationship.