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Top-Down Distribution of Actual Data

Created by Jeffrey Holdeman, last modified on Feb 05, 2014

Purpose
The purpose of this page is to introduce the topic of top-down distribution of actual postings in Profitability Analysis (CO-PA). This allocation capability has been available in the CO-PA application since
the inception of R/3. However some new features have been added and others have been improved which warrant explanation.

Overview
Our goal is to highlight several enhancements to CO-PA top-down distribution which have been delivered due to a reinvention of the SAP Business Suite to run on the SAP HANA platform. Subsequent
explanations and screen prints are based on SAP ERP 6.0 EHP7 SP01 with a SAP HANA database. However the transactions described here can work on any database and many (if not all) of the new
features have been back ported to earlier releases and are thus valid starting with SAP ERP 6.0 EHP5 SP07 with implemenation of the related SAP Notes. If your system is already upgraded to the
following releases, you already have the enhancements and corrections to top-down distribution transactions in your system.

Software Component SAP_APPL

Release 605 SP12
Release 606 SP10
Release 616 SP05
Release 617 SP02

Profitability Analysis > Actual Postings > Period-end Closing > Top-Down Distribution
Top-down distribution of actual data is a periodic function that lets you distribute aggregated data to more detailed levels in CO-PA on the basis of reference information. In earlier releases of Profitability
Analysis, the SAP Easy Access menu had only two transactions related to top-down distribution of actual data:

KE28 Execute top-down distribution

KE29N History of Periodic Adjustments

With the current EHP7 for SAP ERP 6.0 release, the KE28 transaction has been enhanced for useability. The KE28A transaction is is new and is used to start a group of top-down distribution variants to
execute. A new history log transaction KE28L has replaced KE29N in the SAP Easy Access menu. Although it is not shown in the SAP Easy Access menu, transaction KE28T can be run direclty or
launched from within KE28A. KE28T is used to manage technical settings related to top-down distribution. Finally, transaction KE28R is also available now to initiate mass reversals of top-down
distribution runs or to clean up the history log.

CO-PA Line Item Example

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To set the stage for understanding this topic of top-down distribution, consider below is an example of a typical costing-based CO-PA line item document that can be found in any operating concern. It is
posting related to price variance for a material. However this could alternatively be a posting for an inventory gain/loss, or a production related variance.

1. Observe in this document, the customer-related characteristics are blank (otherwise known as "not assigned" or "unassigned" in CO-PA) because the customer is not known when the price
variance is recorded in the general ledger and the costs flow real-time into the CO-PA (sub-ledger) tables.
2. Notice in this document, the product-related characteristics are populated (otherwise known as "derived" in CO-PA) because the material is known at the time of the posting, and consequently, any
additional fields which is available from the material master (material group, profit center, etc.) are easily be captured in the CO-PA document.
3. The amount associated with the price variance is stored in a seperate costing-based CO-PA value field.

It can frequently occur that other CO-PA documents might arise with the opposite derivation result – where the customer-related fields are populated, but the product-related fields are blank/unassigned.
For example, if cash discount expense is recorded at the time of customer payment, rather than being accrued at billing, then such an outcome may occur because the cash discount is applied against an
invoice(s) which is likely resulting from the sale of more than one product. In other words, the cash discount cannot be assigned directly to any specific products during the payment processing task, so it
is left blank.

Manual FI postings (journal entries) to the general ledger which have CO-PA as an account assignment object, can lead to many unassigned fields related to customer and product. Typically these record
type B postings might post at only the company code and/or profit center level. Similarly, settlement transtions (record type C) which post into CO-PA tend to be high level, or they might carry product
characteristics, but customer-related derivations are not possible. Finally, assessments from cost center accounting to CO-PA (record type D) often post at summary levels in profitaiblity analysis, rather
than at detailed customer/product levels. All of these partilally derived cost flows contribute to the need to use top-down distribution in CO-PA.

KE30 CO-PA Reporting Example

Below is an example of a KE30 Profitability Analysis report executed twice. Each report highlights a different navigation view to demonstrate what CO-PA data often looks like to business analysts before
use of top-down distribution.

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1. In the first example, the report is drilled-down by customer group. You can see that the Price Variance is 100% shown against the "Not assigned" characteristic value. If the report user had
selected any one of the valid customer groups, or if the report had be designed in such a way to omit the unassigned value, then the price variance would not have been visible at all.
2. In the second example, the report is drilled-down by product. You can see the Price Variance is 100% assigned to valid products.

The unassigned characteristic values that flow into CO-PA are often a cause of confusion by casual users of Profitability Analysis reports. Since CO-PA data is expected to be sliced-and-diced, when
analysts select certain drill-down paths in their profitability data they may encounter results that they do not expect, especially if the report definition has not been setup in a way to easily spot the situation.
More importantly, many organizations seek to report full customer or product P&Ls using CO-PA information. Therefore they will utilize the top-down distribution tool to allocate not assigned costs to
relevant profitability segments using a driver value.

KE24 Line Item List : Before & After Top-Down Distribution

In the screen print below consider the following three CO-PA documents shown from transaction KE24 the Actual Line Item List.:

1. In document number 1, record type F (Billing Invoice) with the Gross Sales amount is posted into CO-PA with full characteristic derivation of both customer and product related fields.
2. In document number 12, a record type B (FI posting) related to price variances is transferred into CO-PA where only the the product related characteristics are derived. Customer related fields are
blank/unassigned.
3. In document number 27, a top-down distribution run effectively cancelled the original record type B posting, but it also generated a new line item which distributed the PPV to the customer and
product fields.

In the following pages, we'll look at the setup of top-down distribution to demonstrate how the price variance can be assigned to customer dimensions using gross sales as reference data.

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Related Content
Top-Down Distribution of Actual Data

KE28 - Execute

KE28A - Variant Start

KE28T - Technical Settings

KE28L - History Log

KE28R - Mass Reversal

Related Documents
Help | SAP Library | Profitability Analysis Top-Down Distribution of Actual Data

Related SAP Notes/KBAs

SAP Note 1695850 : CO-PA: Technical enhancements for top-down distribution

SAP Note 1800763 : KE28L: Selection screen for KE28L

SAP Note 1816729 : KE28L enhancements

SAP Note 1824548 : KE28A: background jobs execution improvement

SAP Note 1928710 : KE28 Enhancements

SAP Note 1933479 : KE28 Enhancements

SAP KBA 1822415 : Message KG873 in Top Down Distribution after upgrade

co-pa ke28 top-down_distribution profitability_analysis

5 Child Pages
 KE28 (Configure and) Execute Top-Down Distribution of Actual Data
 KE28A - Variant Start of CO-PA Top-Down Distribution
 KE28L - History Log
 KE28R - Mass Reversal
 KE28T - Technical Settings for CO-PA Top-Down Distribution

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