We have a requirement that Operating expenses and material consumption (direct, indirect, tools and machinery spares) should be controlled so that they do not exceed the amounts specified in the annual budget. The commitments should also be tracked through the purchase requisitions and purchase orders. The expenses and indirect, tools machinery spares consumption is accounted to cost centers at present. The budgets are also provided at cost center level. Direct material consumption is accounted mainly to RS Headers for repetitive manufacturing. In some divisions, costs for small projects are collected through Internal Orders. The budgets have to be controlled at Cost center, GL account level. The company is an automotive company.
We have two options to satisfy the requirement - one to use WBS elements at Cost center, GL account level and other to use Finds Management functionality of SAP. In using WBS elements, we find mainly two drawbacks - 1. huge master data since WBS elements are created for each GL account, Cost Center combination. Each GL account is one project. (There are 200 GL accounts and 3000 cost centers). 2. WBS element has limitations since it is part of CO module and the same needs to be reserved for future use as CO objects, for cost collection, if needed.
The other option is to use Funds management (Budget Control System BCS) due to the advantage that the master data is limited to Funds Center (Cost Centers) and Commitment Items (GL accounts). These objects are independent of CO module objects and hence more flexible. It can be used for Purchase Requisitions and Purchase Orders, as per the requirement.
I would like to know if anybody has implemented Funds management in manufacturing company and what are the experiences? Have you found any limitations or any other points that needs to be taken into account while implementing?
Please provide your inputs.
Thanks and Regards,
Sanjay