Funds Management (PSM-FM)

A control parameter in the commitment item master record.

It is used in Funds Management to differentiate between actual and commitment values, as well
as between budget values for revenue and expenditure commitment items.

SAP transaction FMCIA (Edit Commitment Item) is classified in the Financial Accounting
module under application component Funds Management and runs Funds Management: Master
Data Core Objects program SAPMFMCI upon execution.

Commitment item
Definition: Commitment items represent the functional grouping of an organization within a
financial management area (FM area).

Use: Commitment items classify budget transactions and business transactions affecting liquidity
into revenue, expenditure, and cash balance items. You can assign budget for particular
responsibility areas (funds centers) to the commitment items. Budget is used up as postings
commitment items and funds centers with commitment and actual values. Funds reservations and
business transactions entered in the feeder systems also affect the budget.

Structure
Commitment item hierarchy
Commitment items in Funds Management are arranged in hierarchies. You can create more than
one hierarchy for an FM area. Example: one hierarchy for revenues and another for expenditures.
However, you can also set up different hierarchies for expenditures. Example: one hierarchy for
personnel costs and one for equipment purchases. You will find an example under Example:
Commitment Item Hierarchies.
There are two types of commitment items:
 Account assignment items (= lowest level in the hierarchy)
You can post to and budget these items.
 Summarization items (= hierarchy nodes)

You can budget these items, but cannot post to them. Summarization items are needed for
setting up a commitment item hierarchy. You define a commitment item hierarchy by combining
accounting assignment items at any summarization level you want. Within the hierarchy, a
summarization item can be succeeded by a summarization item or an account assignment item.
This means that budget assignment is not tied to the lowest level in the hierarchy. The system
totals up the posting data from the account assignment items and displays it in the appropriate
summarization items.

Commitment item master record

The commitment item master record contains important information, including:
 Name and description of the commitment item
 Superior commitment item
 Important control parameters

- Financial transaction
The financial transaction represents commercial business transactions from the Funds
Management feeder systems; it has a central role in passing on data from those systems to
Funds Management.

- Item category
The item category determines whether this commitment item is a revenue, expenditure, or cash
balance item.
The financial transaction and item category in a commitment item hierarchy are identical.
 Funds center

Integration
For posting data from the feeder systems to be updated in Funds Management, you must always
specify a complete Funds Management account assignment (funds center, commitment item,
and, if required, fund) in the posting transaction. You can keep manual input work to a minimum
using the link to the basic data. The system derives the FM account assignment from the link.

Link between Basic Data Elements in Funds Management

 Define a funds center in a commitment item
In the posting transaction, the system derives the funds center from the commitment item
and proposes it as a default value.

Link between Basis Data Elements in Other Components

 Define a commitment item in the G/L account
 In the posting transaction, the system derives the commitment item from the G/L account.

 Assignment of a commitment item to a CO account assignment

In the posting transaction, the system derives the commitment item from the CO account
assignment.

Combination of financial transaction and category has very important meaning in FM process.
Some commitment items are supposed to be defined in certain way if you want to secure correct
update of FM flows. So, you have to see your case in particular why you would need no update
in FM tables. What is functional requirement behind this request?

Setting CI transaction to 50 will stop updating FMIFIIT/FMIOI tables, but it this aciton has it
consequences. So, before giving you a right advice, you first need to elaborate on
your functional requirement.

FM document is always created for combinations 30/2 and 30/3. Whether it consumes the budget
or not, that's already another issue and will depend on the settings of update profile, tolerance
profile, 'statistical' CI, etc. If by 'balance' you mean totals, then the answer is yes: it will be
updated both in AVC ledger and in FM totals (FMIT). There are ways to skip updating AVC
ledger, though. But, totals (FMIT) should be always in line with the documents
(FMIOI/FMIFIIT).

I'm still puzzled that some of your interfaces could be impacted from creation of FM document,
unless these interfaces are somehow linked to incremental monitoring of FM tables, which would
be a bit strange. In any case, all these 'undesired' effects could be filtered out both from reports
and from interfaces with simple variants.

Bottom line: certain FM process, like payment transfer or others, require creation of FM
documents. So, you have to manoeuvre between this fact and a wish to skip FM documents
creation.

1) I had some doubt regarding the commitment item category to be used for the profit & loss
account gl. As in our case we need budget check only at the time of procurment.

Hence for other profit &loss account what should be item category, if I put 30 it will ask for
budget and fund center

A) There are different ways to avoid budget check on certain FM objects. For commitment
items, the easiest would be to define thel as statistical lines; you will have FM entry, but no
budget will be checked.