With this process, you can collect the costs and revenues according to different information and use these to analyze the contribution margin. Depending on the level at which you want to map the value flow for service orders, the following contribution margin analyses are possible:

• For each service order (level 1)
• In accordance with compatible selection criteria from the internal order, such as vehicle or customer (level 1)
• For each bill-to party (level 2)
• In accordance with any criteria and their values known in the service order (level 3)

You can also use collective internal orders to represent a short-term break even analysis and use and create Profitability Analysis reports.

Process

The following graphic shows the posting transactions for costs and revenues, from the service order through the profitability analysis:

1. As soon as you create a service order, the system generates a header internal order for the service order in Controlling. This enables you to examine the contribution margin on the basis of individual orders and on the basis of summarizing selection criteria (such as vehicle) within Overhead Cost Controlling.
   At the same time, the system generates the settlement rules that you require for the profitability analysis automatically on the basis of order control.
2. During billing, the system splits the costs and revenues among the individual bill-to parties for the service order. If only one bill-to party exists, the system only reposts one bill-to party internal order.
   Depending on the customizing settings, you have the following options within this step:

• You use only the header internal order. In this case, contribution margin calculations per bill-to party and transferring the values is not possible.
• You use collective internal orders to collect all costs and revenues of the same type, such as the same defect code, same vehicle, or same vehicle category. This enables you to display a short-term breakeven analysis for specific warranty cases (Level 1), for example.
• For each bill-to party, the system automatically generates a bill-to party internal order (Level 2) for the service order from the order control.
• This enables you to consider the bill-to party, such as customer, vehicle, or warranty, during the contribution margin analysis.
• There are two options for service orders during settlement of bill-to party internal orders:
• The system accounts bill-to party internal orders in the profitability analysis. This requires the creation of an internal billing document during the posting of the header internal order in Step 1.
• If no internal billing document was created, the system only collects the costs in the bill-to party internal orders, and then bills these to the cost object. The system does not bill to the profitability analysis.
  The system establishes the relationship between cost object and bill-to party internal order in the following way:
  1. The system checks whether it should create an internal billing document, and whether it should bill revenues from the cost object to the bill-to party internal order. If this is the case, the system creates an internal billing document and posts the revenue from the cost object to the header internal order. If no internal billing document is required, the system posts no revenue.
  2. The system creates one bill-to party internal order each for all bill-to party internal orders entered in the service order.
  3. The system creates the settlement rule for the bill-to party internal orders. If the system did not create an internal billing document during Step 1, it bills the revenues and costs of the bill-to party internal orders directly to the cost object. If an internal billing document exists, the system configures the settlement rule in such a way that the costs and revenues of the bill-to party internal orders are billed to the profitability analysis.
  4. The system reposts all revenues and costs of the header internal order to the bill-to party internal orders.
     The system created the settlement rules for the bill-to party internal orders and distributed the values to the bill-to parties.

• If you want to use a profitability analysis, you can transfer the values to the profitability analysis by creating internal billing documents during the posting of the header internal order. The system provides the characteristics of the profitability analysis via the settlement rule or the standard derivation based on it. This enables you to examine the contribution margin in accordance with any information in the service order, that is, characteristics and their values. You can use the profitability analysis reports and create your own reports based on drilldown reports.
  You can transfer all customer, vehicle, and workshop-specific information known in the service order, or that can be derived from the service order, to the characteristics defined in the profitability analysis, and, to a limited extent, different material groups. To distinguish different material groups, you have to use different cost elements for different material groups.