Budget Availability Control for Cost Centers in SAP S/4HANA 1909

Budget Availability Control for Cost Centers Overview –

Budget availability control allows you to control budget consumption in cost centers, which you’re responsible for. It supports business processes, from budgeting to cost postings

When actual costs are posted to cost center, the budget availability control calculates the available budget and reacts with a system response. The system response is based on the thresholds for budget consumption that you’ve specified. Therefore, you first maintain the budget for each cost item in the object before you use the object for operative business processes.

Configuration Steps:

Maintain Account Groups

Account groups are used to define groups of accounts. Account Groups for Budget Availability Control should consist of cost / expense accounts. There’s no Budget Availability Control for balance sheet accounts.

Example: 147 Account Group

Define Budget Planning Profile for Cost center

To control a cost center budget, you first create a budget availability control profile in the Maintain Budget Availability Control Profile for Cost Centers step

Controlling -> cost center accounting -> Budget Management -> Define Budget Planning Profile

Maintain Budget Availability Control for Cost Centers

Controlling -> cost center accounting -> Budget Management ->Maintain Budget Availability Control for Cost Centers

The Budget Currency Type can be used either Company Code Currency or Global Currency

The Account Groups represent the groups of accounts/cost items, which are considered for the budget availability control.

The Tolerance Limits for the budget usage rates are maintained for each activity group. When you define a budget tolerance limit, you also assign a message type to it. If the tolerance limit has been reached, either a warning or an error message appears. Tolerance limit can be maintained for all activity types or individual activity type (PR, PO,HR Pay roll, Concur Exp etc.,)

 You can create multiple budget availability control profiles and assign these profiles to cost centers that are budget relevant. Then, you specify the budget currency type, account groups, tolerance limits for budget usage, and the appropriate system response.

When you assign a warning to a budget tolerance limit, the budget can still be used even after the tolerance limit has been exceeded. However, you might want to prevent the creation of purchase orders or requisitions when a budget tolerance limit has been exceeded. In this case, assign an error message to the budget tolerance limit. If this tolerance limit is exceeded, an error message appears and commitments, such as purchase orders or purchase requisitions, can’t be posted.

Maintain Category Planning and Define Budget Checks for Categories

Controlling -> General Controlling -> Planning -> Maintain Category for Planning

In this step, you create categories for planning. You can add as many categories as you need.

In this step, you specify for each category, whether availability control or budget consistency checks are performed for budgets stored in that category.

Assignment of Budget Availability Control to Cost Centers (Master Data)

To control budgets in your cost centers, you need to assign this profile to cost centers. Then, you can activate Budget Availability Control for these cost centers in the Manage Cost Centers Fiori app. The Budget availability control starts with the budget maintenance process, runs with each actual cost postings and ends with the analysis of cost and budget.

Enable Active Budget Availability Control.

Enter the Budget Availability Control Profile.

Disable Lock Commitment Update for all cost centers that are budget-carrying cost centers or   that are assigned to budget-carrying cost centers.

Cost Center Budget Report:

The Cost Center Budget Report App provides information about budget, commitments, actual costs, and available budget. In the Cost Center Budget Report app, here you can monitor costs and budget, and compare the budget with actual costs and commitments in the budget-carrying cost centers.

To conclude, Budget Availability Control for Cost Centers is a new functionality which is introduced with S/4HANA 1909 (On Premise). I hope this blog post will help you to set up Budget profile which includes G/L Account groups, Tolerance limits and Activation of Budget Availability Control to the Cost Centers.

Useful References –

SAP Help Portal

https://blogs.sap.com/2019/11/06/s4hana-1909-cost-centres-budget-availability-control/

Please comment If you have any suggestions or questions.

Thank you.