Splitting structure is used in cost center planning to define which cost elements are considered for calculating which prices of activity types, when a cost center has more than one activity associated to it, and the price is not manually determined (most of the cases in production cost center). Splitting structure links Cost elements (and its amounts) with activities types of a given production cost center.
During the costing process, actual price calculation of the activity types is run. In other word, activity types are reevaluated with actual prices of the month. The splitting structures provide the reference (actual price) for the reevaluation of activity types. This reference has to be defined for each cost center to do so a splitting structure has to be associated to each cost center.
For example, costs posted in the cost center D232410900 are considered as Variable or fixed and then allocated to the corresponding activity with the splitting structure that is based on the hierarchy XCS-ALL
It is done at CC level.
The level of complexity is determined by the different types of activity types used in production CC.
The right design of the splitting Structure/Activity Types is a preliminary step to have the Cost Component structure as detailed or as simple as we want.
When a production CC is not included in a splitting structure… then the amount is split by the number of Activity types and it is allocated to each of them. Eg: 1000 with 3 act types >> 1000/3
In the example the cost center D232410900 is included in the splitting structure Z1
If there is a posting in a CC in a given cost element linked to a activity type; but there is no posting of that activity type: the system will generate an error in the Product Costing step (activity type revaluation) and the balance of the cost element will remain in the cost center
If there is posting of an activity type without any posting in the cost elements associated to it: actual price revaluation will bring its price to zero.