Post SAP Purchase Price Variance PPV to Purchasing

By John Jordan

You typically obtain the SAP standard price for purchased materials from purchasing info records during a costing run. Purchasing info records store vendor quotations per material and estimate your plan purchase price.

You post purchase price variance (PPV) during goods and invoice receipts if the actual purchase price is different from standard. You use it to measure Purchasing performance and have Purchasing explain an increase in unfavorable PPV postings.

You can easily analyze PPV postings by nominating the purchasing cost center to receive PPV postings and then run a standard cost center report.

You assign the purchasing cost center as the default for PPV with Transaction OKB9 or by following IMG menu path:

Controlling • Cost Center Accounting • Actual Postings • Manual Actual Postings • Edit Automatic Account Assignment

The screen shown in Figure 1 displayed.

Figure 1: Default Account Assignment Configuration

You see a list of existing cost center assignments to cost elements, which in this case equate to general ledger accounts. To assign a default cost center to the PPV cost element, click the New Entries button and enter the company code, cost element and cost center, and Save. To enter a different default cost center per plant select the cost element in Figure 1 and double-click the Detail per business area/valuation area text on the left.

You vew the standard actual/plan cost center report with Transaction S_ALR_87013611 or by following menu path:

Accounting • Controlling • Cost Center Accounting • Information System • Reports for Cost Center Accounting • Plan/Actual Comparisons • Cost Centers: Actual/Plan/Variance

Enter the selection screen information and click the execute icon to display the screen shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Cost Center Report Results Screen

You can assign PPV postings to separate Favorable and Unfavorable accounts with Transaction OBYC to gain more transparency of PPV postings. Double-click a PPV cost element in Figure 2 and press [Enter] to display a line item report of individual postings to this account as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Cost Center Actual Line Items Report

You can sort the Val.in RC (value in reporting currency) column to highlight the largest PPV postings. By double-clicking any line shown in Figure 3, you can drill down and analyze the transaction that caused the PPV posting.

Responsibility based reporting is one of your most important standard tools available with SAP. Assigning PPV to the purchasing cost center is just one of many examples of assigning responsibility and providing reporting and analysis through the use of standard reports.