COPA Cost of Sales vs. BCS Consolidated COS

[Former Member]

Hi,
I am trying to understand the difference between Cost of sales accounts in COPA and BCS Consolidations system.

1. What is the difference in COPA between the Gross COS and the External COS?

-Is the External COS meant to show the consolidated COS?

2. I reconcile COPA gross COS to SAP FI COS g/l accounts, as well as to BCS Unconsolidated COS.

Should I also be able to reconcile the COPA External (or net) COS to the Consolidated BCS COS Account? Or will this not be possible because of intercompany eliminations and profit in inventory?

Any help would be appreciated!

[Former Member]

Hi Mandy,

I didn't work much with COPA. Just had been learning it and observed how our CO guys and girls tryed to use COPA functionalitis in order to not implement SEM-BCS.

And know what - they failed! I left the project before it became too obvious. AFAIU, the reason - different analytics. COPA has too aggregated analyrics. Predefined. SEM-BCS may have as many analytics as the business needs. How could one reconcile figures with different granularity and analytics?

It's my deep beleif that COPA data are USELESS for SEM-BCS. Maybe something might be reconciled with those characteristics that COPA has. But it has nothing useful for BCS.

Certainly, I might be wrong. But do not think that this is a case.

[Former Member]

Hi Eugene,

it's good to see you back posting on SCN. while i agree that CO is less of a business case for consolidations than FI, but that doesn't diminish the value of CO as the primary accounting method for internal or management allocations. i'm not sure how much priority is assigned to BCS internally as far as development euros go, but since both ECC and BW are still supported, the same must be true for SEM-BCS. it also depends where ACDOCA (a merged table for both BSEG and COEP) is destined as any reporting off of it should allow for interco and m&a flows for both internal and external reporting.

thx,

greg

[Former Member]

Hi Greg,

Glad to hear you too.

I agree with you that COPA data might be useful on aggregated level. According to COPA data model.

Reconciliations outside SEM-BCS.

But, on the detailed level (dealing directly with SEM-BCS data), they, most likely, incomparable.

I say it again, that I might be wrong. Just telling my own experience with it.

Best regards,

[Former Member]

thank you Eugene and Greg for your input! I am just catching up on this now.

Can you elaborate on the "merged table for both BSEG and COEP"? I tried looking this up in SE16 but wasn't successful?

I think the ultimate issue is that eliminations are performed in BCS but not in COPA and I have no way to tie back the 2 at the detailed product level, if that makes sense.

Any input is greatly appreciated!!

[Former Member]

Mandy,

Both tables will form ACDOCA table in Central Finance which becomes available once you migrate to S/4. SE16 should work as well, but I think Calculation Views is where your eliminations would take place.

i don't have access to S/4 any more, but this is what I remember from my CAL tests this past July.

not sure if your organization is ready for the S/4 upgrade or not, so you may have to keep reconciling FI and CO in the near future.

thanks,

greg

[Former Member]

thanks Greg! I do use S/4 (BI) but I currently just use this from the portal standpoint for limited queries and haven't yet tried to use further.

Currently I run the eliminations in BCS using the list of total records to see what was eliminated. To reconcile this with COPA Net Cost of Sales (gross + uplift or intercompany profit in inventory) I do not have the transparency to do this at the product level.

Are you saying I could use s/4 or BI to pull out the eliminations at the product level to help with reconciling cost of sales COPA to BCS COS, using this table ACDOCA? Let me know as this would be huge in giving some more transparency!

[Former Member]

I just followed up and turns out my version of BI Hana doesn't include the Simple Finance module (i'm not too familiar with what this entails, but in any case this isnt an option because our SAP solution is too old...)

let me know if you have any additional input! Appreciate the insight!!

[Former Member]

actually, it entails a great deal and the most recent support pack containing the functionality is SAPK-73002INSAPFIN.

your basis folks should be able to find its equivalent in your ECC system.

[Former Member]

Hi,

As a follow-up to the above post regarding differences between COPA Cost of Sales vs. Consolidated BCS Cost of Sales, do you have any insight to the below? Thanks!

1. We use PA as a forecasting tool to review Net Cost of Sales and Net Revenue at the product level. As mentioned, the Net amounts in PA differ from what ends up in Consolidated BCS. Given that these will be different, are there any recommendations for how to take this into account when forecasting off of PA data before we consolidate in BCS?

-For example, some months the difference between Net Cost of Sales in PA vs. Consolidated BCS Cost of Sales is larger than other months. Are there known reasons for this that we could take into account when forecasting? Or, any conditions that may cause these differences in Net Cost of Sales in COPA vs. BCS Consolidated COS?  (e.g., could selling to third parties change the amount of differences, timing of goods issue, etc?)

[dan_sullivan]

Mandy,

The only change to COS that may typically occur in BCS are the currency translation from local to group currency and elimination of intercompany items. The automatic eliminations occur only in the group currency.

[Former Member]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your feedback! Right, I am aware of how the eliminations occur and effectively change Gross COS (unconsolidated) to Net or Consolidated COS in BCS. However, in COPA the Net COS is not the same as the Consolidated COS in BCS. I am trying to come up with a way that we can forecast off of the COPA Net COS amount at the product level (and have it be in line with the consolidated COS reported/in BCS).

Are you saying that the differences could be because of the currency translation in BCS vs. COPA?

Let me know if you have any feedback!
Thanks!

[dan_sullivan]

Mandy,

Depending on the currency being compared between BCS and COPA, the BCS translation could cause differences between BCS and COPA.

Dan

[Former Member]

thanks! Do you have a suggestion for how we could capture this difference in total? (i.e., reports we could run or compare to see how these are causing differences?)

[dan_sullivan]

Mandy,

It is suggested you initially prove the difference is translation related by applying the BCS translation to the COP COS. If this ends with the BCS COS then it is proved.

Once proven, then the COS forecast would translate initial COPA forecast values using the planned exchange rates for COS.

[Former Member]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the quick reply! When you say "apply the BCS translation to COP COS", can you elaborate on how we'd do this?

Our COPA COS is in USD (converted from various currencies in SAP FI or other modules of SAP).

Do you mean, Convert back the COPA COS to the foreign exchange rate and re-convert using the BCS rates? If so, can you suggest an easy way/report to help with this? (how can I see the rates used in COPA easily?)

[dan_sullivan]

Mandy,

I do not know of an easy way to do this. However if you do the proof for a small sample initially, such as a single account and company code, then it may be enough proof of the cause.

Once proven an approach for forecasting such differences can be determined.