Paul Ovigele, Ovigele Consulting
In my previous blog, I spoke about the possible causes of the “Not Distributed” and “Not Included” lines in the material ledger. A great tool that can be used to analyze and (possibly) eliminate these lines is the ‘Value Flow Monitor’. You can access this tool by going to transaction CKMVFM. You can then enter the necessary fields such as company code, materials (or leave blank for all) and plants (or leave blank for all). In the ‘Selection by’ section, enter the relevant period and year. This should coincide with the period/year of the costing run (which should have been run using transaction CKMLCP or CKMLCPAVR) whose data you are trying to analyze. To minimize the system’s runtime when executing the Value Flow monitor report in the future, you can create an extract by selecting “Write Extract” and entering an extract name in the ‘DB Extract’ section.
When you execute the report you will see the columns for “Not distributed” and “Not allocated” and which materials they relate to. To analyze how the system calculated the “Not distributed” amount, click on the relevant amount on the material line (you may need to open up the valuation class and plant folders to get to the material line) and click on the button called ‘Not distributed’ and you will see a ‘Calculation’ section at the top part of the screen. The explanation of the columns in this section is as follows:
- This is the cumulative quantity (beginning inventory plus the goods receipts in the period);
- Qty Sub Adj: This is the subsequent adjustment quantity and result from transactions such as invoice receipts, order settlements and debit/credits of materials. This is also known as the ‘price limiter’ quantity;
- & Distrib: This is the cumulative quantity (****. Quant) divided by the subsequent adjustment quantity (Qty Sub Adj) and shown as a percentage;
- PrD SubAdj: These are the price differences that result from subsequent adjustments (invoice receipts, order settlements, etc);
- ERD SubAdj: These are the exchange rate differences that result from subsequent adjustments;
- Not distr: This is calculated as (‘& Distrib’/ 100 X (‘PrD SubAdj’+‘ERD SubAdj’). The calculation takes the cumulative quantity as a percentage of the subsequent adjustment quantities and multiplies this by the variances (price and exchange rate) that result from these subsequent adjustments.
The section of the screen called ‘Relevant Documents’ breaks the subsequent adjustments down into their individual transactions. You will therefore be able to see the individual transactions that make up the price limiter quantity and the variances that were created from those transactions.
If you want to eliminate the “Not Distributed” lines you need to set the ‘Price Limiter’ quantity to zero. You can do this is the value flow monitor by clicking on the button ‘Delete Price Limiter Quantity’. Reme mber that the reason for a price limiter quantity is that the system is trying to avoid calculating an actual cost where there is insufficient stock to cover the variance amount. You should therefore be careful that the actual cost is not distorted from distributing the full variance to the cumulative inventory. Note 744090 further explains how you can use the value flow monitor.
For more infrormation on how to optimize your SAP Financials landscape, I've put together my top tips in the book 100 Things You Should Know About Financial Accounting with SAP which is published by SAP Press.