1704776 - Project Costs are not Allocated to the Cost Center

You create an expense posting for a project of type Research and development. In the posting you notice a debit posting on the project's cost center and a credit posting only accounted to the project but not the respective cost center.

SAP Business ByDesign

1. Go to the General Ledger work center and navigate to the Reports view. 
2. Open the G/L Accounts - Line Items report. 
3. Search for the respective project ID. 
4. Use the Cost Center attribute. You notice credit postings to the project without any associated cost center, displaying # Not Assigned. 

Project Costing is based on the process variant type. Process variants can be of three types:

• Project Processing - For Overhead Cost Project
• Project Processing - For Direct Cost Projects
• Project Processing - For Customer Projects

For Direct cost projects, expenses are credited on the involved cost center and debited on the involved cost object. Research and Development project are also of process variant type Direct Cost Projects. Therefore costs are not charged to the project's cost center automatically either.

For Overhead Cost Project, expenses are allocated to the project as well as the involved cost center.

For Customer Project type, expenses are posted as cost of sales, involving the associated project and sales order item for revenue recognition purpose.

In sum: Project costs are only accounted to a cost center when the cost center is the primary cost object (Overhead Cost).

If you need to charge direct cost project expenses to cost centers you can use the Overhead Distribution function for projects.

You can create a distribution rule for a project task and allocate all the accumulated costs to the cost center/s of your choice.

• Direct Cost Projects
• Create a Distribution Rule for Projects

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