Lesson 3 of 6
Actual postings, derivation and reposting
11 min
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Costs reach cost centers from many directions: supplier invoices in accounts payable, goods issues from the warehouse, payroll, depreciation, travel expenses. Most of these postings are made by people who are not controllers, so the system has to help them choose the right cost center, and controllers need clean ways to fix the ones that still go wrong.
- Accounts payableAna posts a Lakeside Components invoice; the expense line names cost center 17101102
- Inventory managementA goods issue to a cost center (movement type 201) consumes parts in Detroit maintenance
- Payroll and depreciationPeriodic postings carry cost centers from employee and asset master data
- Automatic postingsPrice and exchange rate differences use default account assignments
- Cost center line itemsAll of them appear as Universal Journal lines with the cost center, and the profit center derived from it
Helping postings land in the right place
SAP S/4HANA offers three tools, and testers should know all three. Default account assignments propose a cost object (cost center, order or profit center) for postings on a G/L account of type primary costs; users can overwrite them, and they are required for automatic postings such as price differences, exchange rate differences and discounts. SAP's material places them in Customizing under Manage Default Account Assignments. Validations check entries against rules and can warn, give an error or stop the posting; SAP's example is that a given expense account must not be posted without a specific cost center. Substitutions replace values when a condition is met, without telling the user; when a substitution conflicts with a validation, the validation message wins.
| Tool | What it does | User sees it? | Contoso example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Default account assignment | Proposes a cost object for an account | Yes, as a proposal they can change | Price differences in plant 1710 go to Detroit Assembly |
| Validation | Checks a rule; warns, errors or stops the posting | Yes, as a message | Maintenance materials account requires a Detroit or Chicago maintenance cost center |
| Substitution | Replaces a value when a condition is met | No | Travel postings with no cost center get the employee's home cost center |
Real and statistical postings
Remember the rule from sap-co-101: one real management accounting posting per line, with up to three statistical ones. Cost centers can receive either. If a line carries a real internal order and a cost center, the order is real and the cost center statistical; the cost center report shows the amount for information, but the cost cannot be allocated from there. Testers checking cost center totals must know which they are looking at.
Correcting postings: reposting
Mistakes still happen: $2,400 of maintenance parts for Chicago posted to Detroit Maintenance. Deleting documents is not an option; corrections must leave an audit trail. SAP's material describes two reposting methods for primary costs:
| Reposting of costs (event-based) | Reposting of line items | |
|---|---|---|
| Reference to the original FI document | None | Required; the original document is referenced |
| Effect on the sender | Credit without a sender check; the sender can show negative costs | Acts as a reversal of the original line on the sender |
| Receivers | A receiving cost center | One or more receiver objects |
| Audit trail | A management accounting document | The link from the correction to the original line |
| Use when | A simple shift of an amount between cost centers | A specific original line was assigned wrongly |
For manual corrections of actual primary and secondary costs, SAP S/4HANA also provides the Reassign Costs and Revenues app; SAP's material notes it applies to actual data only and cannot be used with secondary cost accounts of category 43 (activity allocation). Corrections of activity allocations are made by reposting the activity allocation, which keeps the total amount unchanged and must happen in a later period of the same fiscal year. In SAP GUI the same corrections are KB11N (repost costs), KB61 (repost line items) and KB65 (repost activity allocation); whichever tool you use, the evidence is the correction document and its link to the original line.
What would you do?
Each month, about 30 maintenance invoices land on the wrong plant's maintenance cost center and are reposted by hand. What is the best long-term fix?
- Costs arrive from AP, inventory, payroll, depreciation and automatic postings.
- Default account assignments propose; validations check; substitutions replace silently; validations win conflicts.
- One real posting per line; cost centers can be real or statistical receivers.
- Repost line items with reference to the original; repost costs without reference for simple shifts.
- Reassign Costs and Revenues handles manual actual corrections, not activity allocation accounts (category 43).
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. A cost was posted to the wrong cost center. What is the standard correction?
2. What happens when a substitution conflicts with a validation?
3. Which reposting method references the original FI document?
4. Which postings need a default account assignment to work?
5. Which SAP GUI transaction reposts a specific original line item with reference to its document?