Explore the different types of variance calculations available with SAP CO, including total variance, production variance, and planning variance. Learn when and how to use each to enhance your analysis activities.

• Walk through variance configuration settings and understand their impact on your variance reports.
• Gain insight into how variance categories can be used to examine and determine the root causes of production variances.
• Troubleshoot message analysis of the four input and four output variance categories, such as input price, resource-usage, and input quantity variance, and walk through clear definitions and examples from the field using real-world examples of period-end variance analysis.
• Learn how to identify typical problems — and their sources — that can occur with Total, Production, and Planning variance calculations, and get expert advice for corrective action.

Releases covered: R/3 | ECC 5.0 | ECC 6.0
Session presented by: John Jordan, ERP Corp

This session examines strategies for configuring and deploying SAP applications to support budget management scenarios. Review functionality available across the SAP landscape to manage budgets, and receive best practices for streamlining the budgeting processes for projects, internal orders, and cost centers.

• Get a handle on budgeting for more than one currency.
• Examine the prerequisites for budget allocation, and walk through configuration of budget management functionality for projects and internal orders.
• Learn how to compare actual postings versus budgets using cost center budget planning functionality.
• Understand the impact that purchase orders and invoices have on budget through Commitments Management.
• Get unique tips for displaying budget line items, and learn how to run budget update reports.
• Get tips for approving and releasing the budget on the Internet.

Releases covered: R/3 | ECC 5.0 | ECC 6.0
Session presented by: Michael Prakhina, Lazar Consultants

Learn the correct sequence of steps required to activate the material ledger in an SAP system that is already up and running. Find out what's required to convert your parallel currency, parallel valuation, and actual costing data to be compatible with the material ledger.

• Gain insight into how to detect (and correct) MM and FI-GL errors in order to perform a successful conversion.
• Determine how to overcome the challenges of converting a large volume of material master, production order, and purchase order data.
• Evaluate key conversion strategies that will shorten conversion windows, minimize your system downtime, and spread the conversion load across your available system resources.

Releases covered: R/3 | ECC 5.0 | ECC 6.0
Session presented by: Rohana Gunawardena, Quality Systems & Software

This session goes beyond the basics, exposing frequently overlooked SAP functionality and showing you how to leverage it to reduce the time it takes to process electronic bank statements.

• Learn advanced tips and tricks to improve automation and accuracy of postings to the general ledger and sub-ledgers.
• Take home best practices for overcoming technical challenges, such as adding required fields to the accounting document, and learn techniques to improve your hit rate for matching payments with invoices.
• Explore popular options and get undocumented configuration tips for enhancing your current SAP capabilities via user exits, BTEs, and BAdIs.

Releases covered: R/3 | ECC 5.0 | ECC 6.0
Session presented by: Mitresh Kundalia, Quality Systems & Software

Project-centric companies develop spending plans for customer products, research and development, marketing, and capital investment. The accuracy of these planned costs has high visibility and impact for project managers, accountants, company management, and customers. Examine whether using SAP Project Systems in conjunction with third-party planning tools is the right approach for you to create project spending plans.

• Identify and avoid the factors that may cause redundant, inefficient, and confusing data and processes.
• Review the fundamentals of project cost planning in SAP, and identify which methods are best integrated with non-SAP applications.
• Step through project cost planning configuration tips, including Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) planning, easy cost planning, and network planning.
• Learn the right ways to integrate SAP Project Cost Planning with non-SAP applications.
• Take home a matrix of available SAP Project Cost Planning techniques that includes their suitability for non-SAP integration scenarios.

Releases covered: R/3 | ECC 5.0 | ECC 6.0
Session presented by: Kent Bettisworth, BETTISWORTH & ASSOCIATES

Get a comprehensive introduction to SAP features and functions for profitability analysis (CO-PA). Walk through a detailed overview of CO-PA functionality and structure. Receive essential information on how data from various modules, including SD and FI, flow to CO-PA and affect your profitability analyses.

• Learn how to leverage CO-PA for integrated planning and forecasting.
• Explore ways you can use CO-PA reporting capabilities, such as drill-down reporting, for market segments based on customer, customer group, product, product group, and region.
• Know your options for transferring CO-PA data to SAP BW for more robust reports and analyses.
• Get examples of how your peers are leveraging CO-PA to track their organization's profitability and focus resources on their most profitable customers.

Releases covered: R/3 | ECC 5.0 | ECC 6.0
Session presented by: Mitresh Kundalia, Quality Systems & Software

Learn how AE®, a key supplier of thin film manufacturing technology, leverages costing variants in SAP CO for accurate cost planning. Step through configuration tips for costing variant components, including valuation variants, date control, quantity structure control, and transfer control.

• Find out how AE assigns costing variants to specific cost objects.
• Hear how the company uses different variants, such as product cost by order and product cost by sales order, to achieve strategic reporting goals.
• Get tips for getting more value from standard SAP reports for product cost planning, such as by using cost component groups.
• Get best practices for understanding what components and time period each costing variant provides.
• Take home a glossary of important costing variant terms.

Releases covered: R/3 | ECC 5.0 | ECC 6.0
Session presented by: Sydnie McConnell, Advanced Energy® Industries

This session presents a real world example of how to build a successful CO-PA and SAP BW architecture that can be used for integral margin analysis. Develop a solid understanding of when to use CO-PA versus SAP BW for reports and analyses. <br><ul><li>Identify key configuration steps and tasks you must perform in CO-PA in order to use SAP BW for reporting and analyses.

• Obtain best practices for how to deploy these solutions internationally to support multi-currency scenarios.
• Be aware of the risks of combining CO-PA and SAP BW; for example, if you add logic or formulas to both SAP BW and in SAP R/3®, configuration can become unwieldy.
• Gain the knowledge you need to successfully design an integrated CO-PA SAP BW solution for integral margin analysis.

Releases covered: R/3 | ECC 5.0 | ECC 6.0
Session presented by: Stef Cornelissen, Sperry Associates

Examine Advanced Energy® Industries' technique for using costing sheets to accurately determine overhead costs in product cost planning and product cost by order. Watch step by step AE®'s method for creating costing sheets, including configuring calculation base, percentage overhead rate, overhead keys, and groups.

• See how AE dramatically simplified its costing sheets by reducing over 120 overhead keys and percentage overhead rates to just 2.
• Gain insight into the time the company saved and efficiencies gained in managing and maintaining master data.
• Compare and contrast AE's old standard costing sheet to its new costing sheet and see how it achieved greater flexibility and made the overhead rate maintenance process simpler and quicker. 
• Gain an understanding of why AE created additional costing sheets to simplify the creation of production orders and determine overhead costs.
• Take home a glossary of key costing sheet terms you can use in your own business.

Releases covered: R/3 | ECC 5.0 | ECC 6.0
Session presented by: Sydnie McConnell, Advanced Energy® Industries

Gain expert instruction on how to correctly set up cost estimates in SAP CO. See how the techniques shown in this session could increase the accuracy of cost-of-sales estimates and improve planning processes. Navigate your master data options, and learn how cost estimates employ logistics master data to determine the standard price of assemblies and finished goods.

• Get tips for allocating overhead to product costs.
• Examine how to use cost components to assign a cost estimate to a group of similar components such as materials, labor, or overhead.
• Clarify how a costing variant enables your SAP system to use the right prices, bills of material, and routings.
• Step through a list of costing variant configuration settings.
• Find out how to create standard and preliminary cost estimates, and understand how they assemble and display price information.
• Determine how to quickly evaluate and resolve cost estimate warnings and error messages, and why these notifications should never be ignored.

Releases covered: R/3 | ECC 5.0 | ECC 6.0
Session presented by: John Jordan, ERP Corp

This session offers a strategy for condensing your company's planning cycles and increasing planning accuracy with an integrated planning approach in SAP CO. Drill down into the roles played by different pieces of CO planning functionality, such as Cost Center Accounting (CCA), internal orders, Profitability Analysis (CO-PA), and Cost Object Controlling.

• Learn how to differentiate between planning, budgeting, and forecasting activities in CO.
• Receive best practices for integrating SAP Supply Chain Management (SAP SCM) and CO planning to achieve greater accuracy and transparency in the development of your planned financial statements and to reduce your planning cycle time.
• Learn how to improve your P&amp;L and departmental reporting and analysis capabilities by adding key CO planning functionality, such as activity-based and resource planning.
• Step through a guide for a planning layout and profile maintenance.

Releases covered: R/3 | ECC 5.0 | ECC 6.0
Session presented by: David Nowak, Virtuoso