Welcome to the tutorial about Periodic Reposting in SAP. This tutorial is part of our free SAP CO training. We will study what is periodic reposting in SAP and how it is different from transaction-based reposting. You will learn about prerequisites for performing periodic reposting and see where to maintain them in SAP customizing.

Periodic reposting in SAP is one of the allocation methods and it is a month-end closing activity. It is a posting tool that enables the user to transfer postings that have been posted to internal orders, cost centers, business processes or WBS elements. Periodic reposting is similar to transaction-bases reposting. The only difference between transaction-based reposting and periodic reposting is that the former has a direct effect on the actual costs of the sender and receiver, whereas the latter is a period-end closing activity and a one-time effect on actual costs.

Posting relevant to cost (e.g., postal charges, insurance premium, telephone costs, electricity charges, etc.) are recorded in financial accounting (FI) and simultaneously posted to an allocation business process or cost center in management accounting (CO). They are only used for cost collection which enables to reduce the number of account assignments when you enter the postings in financial accounting (FI). Now, during the month-end closing, the cost which has been collected will be allocated or reposted to the original cost centers or business processes which are the original receivers of the costs with the help of user-defined keys.

Below are the requirements for defining periodic reposting in SAP:

• Define sender and receiver types for allocations
• Define a cycle
• Define segments for a cycle
• Define tracing factors (optional)
• Define receiver weighting factors (optional)

So, basically the user or the cost accountant should know which cost has to be reposted or allocated and how the cost will be distributed among the receiver objects. This can be achieved by fulfilling the above requirements.

SAP Periodic Processing Example

Let’s consider an example. A cost center (cafeteria) collects the costs for the whole month and this cost has to be allocated to all the other cost centers in the organization at the end of the month. The cost can be divided on the basis of number of employees in each department. Therefore, number of employees in a department serves as a statistical key figure on each of the cost centers.

So, the cafeteria is the sender cost center and all the other cost centers in the organization will be the receivers.

Defining Sender and Receiver Types for Allocations

The first requirement for periodic reposting is definition of sender and receiver types for allocations. This is done in the transaction SPRO by navigating to the following menu node:

Controlling – Cost Center Accounting – Planning – Planning Aids – Periodic Reposting – Determine Sender/Receiver Types for Periodic Reposting (KCAP)

Here you maintain the customizing of field attributes of the actual and plan allocation attributes for the field names:

• Tables which are active for the given allocation
• Options for entering individual values, intervals, or groups in the fields.

Defining a Cycle and Segments

You can define a cycle with iterative processing of cycles. Iterative processing of cycles is chosen when the segments should be executed sequentially. It is selected when there is cyclical relation between the cost centers. This is also done in the transaction SPRO by navigating to the following menu node:

Controlling – Cost Center Accounting – Planning – Planning Aids – Periodic Reposting – Define Periodic Reposting (KSW7)

Here, fill in the Controlling Area, Cycle and Start Date and press Enter on the keyboard.

On the next screen, enter the Text and validity dates. Then, click on First segment button.

On the screen with the segment details enter the segment name and go to Senders/Receivers tab.

Here you should enter cost objects or groups of costs objects that will serve as senders or receivers.

Finally, click save  button to finish definition of the cycle and segments.

Example: Periodic Reposting of Telephone Charges

Let’s consider one more example. The telephone charges for a particular company are received in full and this cost has to be divided among the cost centers of the company based on the statistical key figure of the number of calls made by each of the individual cost centers.

After starting the transaction, you should enter the Controlling Area. Then, enter the period for which you want the reposting to take place. Next, choose the processing type. It is recommended to click on Test Run first to verify that there is no errors and then execute it in Background Processing mode later.

Enter the cycle which you maintained earlier and the start date. You can enter more than one cycle to be executed in the background.

After executing the user should check if the receiving cost center(s) have received all the costs using an appropriate line item report.