SAP-Centric Projects

There are several important touchpoints between SAP projects and the SAP Controlling module (CO). All SAP cost planning and budgeting (in SAP terminology: budget = approved cost plan) functions are handled using standard CO functionality. Objects relevant to project management in SAP are cost objects. This means that planned, committed and actual costs can be charged to them like to a cost center or an internal order in CO. Among these cost objects are WBS elements, networks, activities, activity elements, maintenance orders, operations and suboperations.  

Costs may be planned on many levels and in many ways, starting as investment management (IM) level or WBS structure level cost planning, through primary cost element planning, and going on to purchase requisitions, planned allocations, planned hourly use of resources with associated standard cost rates, and many more.  

Actual costs may be charged to SAP project objects in many ways, typically through goods or service receipts, accounts payable invoices, general ledger (GL) postings, cost allocations or settlements. The SAP system will automatically perform the relevant controlling postings in the background so that CO plan-actual or plan-commitment-actual reports can be run in PS or PM.  

Standard costing using standard cost rates associated with work centers (resources) are defined in SAP CO, either internally calculated or manually assigned. This then means that cost center-based controlling transactions have a direct impact on project costing.  

The moment you say "costs" in SAP, you say "CO" automatically, even when dealing with projects in PS or PM.