Why Actual Activity Cost ZERO for Production Order

[Former Member]

Purpose of writing this document is sometimes Actual Activity Cost does not get updated in KKBC_ORD against a production order. There are number reasons why activity cost not getting updated for production order as per SAP Note 380282 and the possible reason can be as below -

• The order must have a costing variant for actual costs (field CAUFVD-KLVARI).
• The confirmed operation must be relevant to costing (T430-KALKZ = "X"). This indicator is set in the operation control key.
• The order itself must have the "fully relevant to costing" attribute set (AFVGD-SELKZ = "X"). This indicator is copied from the routing and cannot be changed in the production order. For this, refer to SAP Note 378052, if necessary.
• The confirmed operation must have a work centre.
• The work centre must be assigned to a valid cost centre.
• In the work centre, a valid activity type as well as a formula must be defined for every activity whose costs you want to determine.
• These activity types also have to be specified accordingly in the order operation.
• For the activity types used in the work centre, the prices must be maintained for the cost centers of the work centre (transaction KP26).
• The confirmed operation must not be an external processing operation.
• During the confirmation, you must enter activities.

But I faced updating of Activity Cost in for production order despite maintaining all the parameters above checked and marked.

Everybody can have different cases and solution may vary from case to case as per above points but the problem I faced had solution in below piece of configuration.

Let us see -

Now every time confirmations posted has specific settings maintained in combination with “Order Type and Plant”. This settings is performed here at

Path	SPRO --> SAP Reference IMG --> Production --> Shop Floor Control --> Operations --> Confirmations --> Define Confirmations Parameters
Transaction Code	OPK4

  Select relevant order type and plant and click on details button.

Now if you see “SAP1” process control key is maintained for plant and order type.

Process Control Key – Process Control Key determines the execution of confirmations.

Whether confirmation should be updated for operation and order at “Online” OR via “Later in Job”. If you select “Later in Job” you have to run the program subsequently to update the activity cost value via “CORUPROC” and this will update cost and you can see the values in KKBC_ORD report in Actual column.

To see the details of control key you can click on “Overview” button next to process control key description. Also we will see the configuration for control key in next step - 

Define time for Confirmation Process –

Path	SPRO --> SAP Reference IMG --> Production --> Shop Floor Control --> Operations --> Confirmations --> Define time for Confirmation Process
Transaction Code	OPKC

If SAP1 is already present please check the field “Type” which signifies the type of order it considers for processing of confirmations. Press F4 in “Type” field and you can see below values –

Select relevant order type, in most of the cases it can be “10 – PP Production Order” as it was my case too.

Now next most important part how the “Auto GR”, “Backflush” and “Actual Cost” should update in system.

If you look at the screen shot above 3 options are available –

• 1 Immediately in Update Program
• 2 Later in Background Job
• Immediately Online

When selected “Later in Background Job” system saves the confirmation at saving point and stores the values of GR, Backflush and Actual Cost to process in below Tables –

• AFRP1 (Table of planned changes to confirm Auto GR)
• AFRP2 (Table of planned changes to confirm Backflushing)
• AFRP3 (Table of planned changes to confirm Actual costs)

This doesn't update the database as “Actuals”, now to get the actuals; user has to run the report “CORUPROC” which is post processing activity.

Now this setting used where large number confirmation postings are expected during a working hours and this eventually hampers the system performances so all the confirmation postings are processed after business hours via program “CORUPROC”. See below image for program “CORUPROC”

“Immediately Online” is used to update the database and all the relevant tables right after hitting “SAVE” button. As soon as confirmations are saved values can be seen and updated for production order in KKBC_ORD.

In my case “Later In Background Job” was selected and hence value was not updated in order reports and “Actual” always shows ZERO as soon as the option “Immediately Online” selected and saved the setting all the confirmation started showing correct values. 

I hope this will help to understand the functionality and solve the issue if anybody facing similar kind of problem.

Thank you for reading the content. Expert’s guiding comments / suggestions are welcome on this.