Overview

In SAP COPA, you can use summarisation level as one of the key measure to improve processing time of reporting, planning and assessments. This will also lead to better system performance.
Transaction processing within COPA, initially, reads data from summarisation tables and then from segment tables and then from line item tables. By building summarisation levels (in COPA) tailored for specific transactional processes that involve large volumes of data or large processing times, you can significantly reduce those processing times and improve the performance of the system.
In this blog, I explain how data is built or populated into summarisation levels. In my previous blogs, I provided an overview of summarisation, its importance to SAP COPA, and a step-by-step approach to defining a summarisation level.

Blogs on summarisation

To identify this series of blog, I have categorised the blogs under SAP > COPA Summarisation. If you have questions/ comments/ suggestions, please send me your comments in the form below. Sharing your questions and experience using comment box below will help other readers to gain additional knowledge involved in this functionality.

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#1 Summarisation levels in SAP COPA – an overview (2012/05/09)

#2 Summarisation levels in SAP COPA – define your summarisation level (2012/05/16)

#3 Summarisation levels in SAP COPA – build your summarisation level (2012/05/23)

#4 Summarisation levels in SAP COPA – Tips to optimise your summarisation level (2012/05/30)

Assumptions for this blog

I will assume you are aware of SAP Profitability Analysis module and its functionality and semantics. My previous blogs provides an overview of the functionality of summarisation and steps to define a summarisation level. It is useful to read those blogs before you proceed with this. Operating concern ID used in these blogs is V000.

Build summarisation levels

Data is not automatically populated into summarisation levels. Once a summarisation level has status “Active, no data”, you should execute the program to build summarisation level. This program reads data from segment level and segment table and populates data into summarisation key table and totals table respectively.

You use program RKETRERU to populate your SAP COPA summarization levels with data. From SAP user menu path,

Accounting > Controlling > Profitability Analysis > Tools > Summarisation levels > Refresh (Transaction code KEDU)

This program offers three options to build summarisation levels:

• Build new levels: This is used when you have defined a new summarisation level and want to populate it with data.
• Refresh: If you already have summarisation levels with data, you can refresh it with latest set of data since the level was last built. It is recommended that you refresh summarisation levels regularly; this will ensure users will consume the latest data available in COPA.
• Rebuild: If you want to delete the existing data in summarisation levels, you should select the rebuild option. This will delete the existing data and rebuild summarisation level. You have to be careful with this option since it could take some time to rebuild.

How SAP builds summarisation levels

Initially the program will read existing summarisation levels. If it can find an existing summarisation level that has all characteristics it is trying to build, it will use this existing summarisation level. Below is an example where summarisation level 2 reads summarisation level 1 to build data into its tables.

If SAP cannot find an appropriate summarisation level, it will read data from Segment Level and Segment Table and build its key table and totals table.

Build the largest summarisation level first

From performance perspective, it is recommended that the larger summarisation levels are built or refreshed first. The “larger” summarisation level is the one that has most characteristics and hence larger table size.

Then the rest of the summarisation levels can be built; that way, the smaller summarisation levels read from the larger summarisation level and do not have to re-read Segment Table/ Level.

Safety delta

SAP recommends you perform summarisation of data 30 minutes after mass posting of documents. The 30 minute delta is for the mass posting to update COPA line item and segment tables.

Background processing

It is recommended to execute this program in background at all times.

Abnormal termination of build

According to SAP “If the program terminates abnormally (i.e. due to a power failure), start it again. Updates start again exactly where they left off.”

Conclusion

Summarisation provides immediate benefit of improved performance because reports and certain transactions in SAP COPA will read data from summarisation tables instead of segment table or line item table.

Build of SAP COPA summarisation levels should be scheduled to run regularly, round the clock (every 4 hours or every 2 hours). That will ensure that the tables are up to date.

However, SAP COPA will read summarisation level only if the summarisation table is optimised for that transaction. If it is not so optimised, it will read the segment table or even the line item table. It is very critical that summarisation levels are defined with precision and care. You need to run transactions in pilot or test mode and optimise the summarisation level till you are sure that the system reads only the summarisation level. In the next blog, I will offer tips and recommendations, based on my experience and SAP recommendations, on how to optimise the use of summarisation levels.

Please Share

I hope this blog has helped you understand the design of summarisation levels in SAP COPA. Please do leave your comments below whether this article was helpful; and whether you have any suggestions/ comments; or if you would like to share your experience with Summarisation levels.

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Blogged: Summarisation levels in SAP COPA #3 – build your summarisation level bit.ly/JHfnYy #in

— Rajesh Shanbhag (@rshanbhag) May 23, 2012

View my presentation on Slideshare

Index of my blogs on SAP COPA Summarisation

#1 Summarisation levels in SAP COPA – an overview (2012/05/09)

#2 Summarisation levels in SAP COPA – define your summarisation level (2012/05/16)

#3 Summarisation levels in SAP COPA – build your summarisation level (2012/05/23)

#4 Summarisation levels in SAP COPA – Tips to optimise your summarisation level (2012/05/30)

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Rajesh has optimised SAP Finance solutions for several customers. Rajesh has 12 years experience implementing SAP / IT / BPM Finance solutions for several customers globally; with a strong focus on Management Accounting and Reporting primarily Product Costing, Profitability Reporting and Material ledger (Transfer Pricing, Actual Costing). He also has 7 years experience working in the business in Finance and Accounting functions. His business process knowledge combined with his IT expertise enables him to provide his customers with best-of-breed advice on business process / IT implementations.