Tip Doctor, Insider Learning Network
This tip is excerpted from the Financials Expert article “Tips and Tricks to Turbo-Charge Integrated Planning and Cost Object Controlling” by Kehinde Eseyin, which offers many more tips on the same subject. The original article was published in March 2011.
The management of data is a key consideration in ensuring optimal performance of all applications and components in the SAP system landscape. As a result of the productive use of the SAP system, database size is bound to increase. If the growth of the database is not controlled, it can lead to performance degradation…I’ll show you a trick on how FI/CO functional users can use standard customization settings to manage the growth of database tables by adopting data prevention and data deletion strategies in the areas of integrated planning and cost object controlling.
Target cost versions are used to determine the basis for target cost calculation. Target cost versions are used primarily to control the variance type (e.g., total, production, or planning) in variance calculation. They form the basis for calculating variances for a cost center, an order, or a cost hierarchy, and splitting the actual cost posted to a cost object hierarchy to individual product. You can configure target cost versions via transactions OKV5 (Figure 11), OKV6 (Figure 12), and OKV7 for cost centers, orders, and cost object hierarchy, respectively. The screen that transaction OKV7 produces is identical to Figure 12.
Figure 1 Target cost version setting for cost centers
Figure 2 Target cost version setting for orders
The standard target cost used in the SAP system includes:
- Target cost version 0 (total variance)
- Target cost version 1 (production variance)
- Target cost version 2 (planning variance)
- Target cost version 3 (production variance of the period)
A rule of thumb with target cost versions is that the higher the number of target cost versions, the higher the amount of data recorded. To reduce the number of data entries in these tables, it is a best practice to objectively examine if the calculation and analysis of all target cost versions is needed or relevant to your business, especially if the calculation of only target cost version 0 is sufficient for your business needs.
Find more ways to keep your databases under control in Kehinde’s original article on Financials Expert.
