How to Find Cost Center in SAP

Learning how to find a cost center in SAP will be useful at some point, provided you continue to use SAP in your daily business operations. The cost center information will be required whenever you need to generate reports of different natures. 

When you are learning how to find a cost center in SAP, you need to remember the type of information you want. Searching for cost centers can be done on multiple levels, so you must be specific in some circumstances.

How to Find Cost Center in SAP

Searching For Cost Centers: What Are Your Options? 1. KS13 

When learning to find the cost center in SAP, you must be familiar with the transaction code KS13. It will be very useful. The code KS13 will enable you to select the cost center you need in terms of all cost centers that interest you, cost center range, or cost center group. 

This code allows you to specify what you want displayed. Once you use the code to access the cost center options, you can Select the Layout you wish, Change the Layout if you prefer, and then Save the Layout based on your preferences. There are visible buttons for those three major options that you can use for that purpose. The layout options you go for will enable you to select the fields that you want displayed. 

Once you have made and saved your options, you can run a report of the relevant cost centers. You can then export the reports or download them to an Excel sheet. 

2. Other options 

Apart from the KS13 T-code, you can utilize other options to search for cost centers in SAP. Some of them are outlined below.

You can manually find a particular cost center to which a profit center is assigned. This can be done using the code OBK9. However, this option is one that you should utilize if you have not managed to find directly a cost center for a known profit center.

Another manual option for finding a cost center, when you know only the profit center, would be to use the SE16 CSKS table. Using this option, you will use the available tables to find the profit center you are interested in and then obtain the cost center to which it has been assigned. The option can take a while, especially if you have many profit centers of interest.

If you want to find a cost center to which a particular employee is assigned, then the SAP table PA001 is where you should be. You will then be able to use the details of the employee you are interested in to find the cost center where that employee belongs.

On the other hand, if you want to find cost centers under a particular employee’s jurisdiction, you will need to do things differently. Instead of using the PA001 table in SAP, you must use the CSKS table. 

Once you access that table, you must find the VERAK field. This field shows you the persons responsible for different cost centers. You can then use the transaction code SE16N and input the personnel number of the employee you are interested in. 

When you execute the code, you can access the list of all the cost centers that the employee of interest is in charge of. This option works if you have filtered the CSKS table based on the personnel number.

If you want to find the employee in charge of a certain cost center based on his name, you must filter the CSKS table by the personnel names instead of their ID numbers. You can then input the name of the employee on the CSKS-VERAK field. 

You will then get a list of the cost centers that operate under the management of the employee of interest. If you were looking for the employee using a personnel ID corresponding to the name, the lists in both situations should be similar.

Searching For Cost Centers: What You Should Know 

When learning how to find a cost center in SAP, there are issues that you should take note of. Some of them are discussed below.

Sometimes, a user may need to access cost centers and a particular element for all the cost centers. If you are the SAP administrator, you must permit that user to access all the required cost elements within one or more cost centers of interest. Otherwise, that user cannot access what he wants.

The data integrity must be maintained between CSKS-VERAK tables and the names within the HR department. Without doing so, then there is a possibility that you will not be able to access the right list of cost centers for which a particular employee is responsible. You may also find it difficult to determine whether a specific employee is assigned to a cost center of interest. The names and personnel ID numbers must correspond across your SAP and other business systems if you are to obtain accurate information.

You need to be very specific when executing instructions to obtain information about cost centers. This will help you reduce the time required to access the information you need, especially when you are in a hurry. 

For easy accessibility, when you obtain a list of cost centers of interest as output, you can arrange them alphabetically to allow easy access to information. On the other hand, filtering the commands on the CSKS table based on the information you have makes work easier. 

If you have personnel numbers, then use them. It also helps to have all the useful transaction codes in SAP listed nearby.

Bottom Line: Learning to find a cost center in SAP is incredibly beneficial for streamlining your business processes.