Page 263 -

GLOSSARY

Accounting and Finance (A/F) A functional range of different applications and technologies
area of business that is responsible for recording used to extract and analyze large amounts of data to
data about transactions, including sales, raw aid in decision making.
material purchases, payroll, and receipt of cash business process A collection of activities that
from customers. takes one or more kinds of input and creates an
accounts payable Accounting information that output that is of value to a customer. Creating the
records the amount the company owes for goods it output might involve activities from different
has received from a supplier. functional areas.
accounts receivable Accounting information capacity The amount of an item that can be
that records the amount a customer owes for goods produced.
received by the customer.
cash-to-cash cycle time The time that elapses
activity-based costing An advanced form of from when suppliers are paid for raw materials to
inventory cost accounting in which overhead costs cash is collected from the customer (used in supply-
are assigned to products based on the chain management metrics).
manufacturing activities that gave rise to the costs.
client-server architecture A central computer–
Advanced Business Application local computer arrangement in which data stored in
Programming (ABAP) The SAP ERP internal a central computer (a server) are downloaded to a
programming language. local PC (a client of the server) where data are
archive Permanently stored data. processed. Historically, client-server architecture
replaced many companies’ mainframe-based
Asset Management (AM) module A module in
architecture.
SAP ERP that helps a company manage fixed-asset
purchases (plant and machinery) and related cloud computing The delivery of a software
depreciation. product to a user via the Internet.
audit trail A linked set of document numbers condition technique An SAP control mechanism
related to an order. that accommodates the various ways that
balance sheet A summary of a company’s companies offer price discounts.
account balances includes cash held, amounts Controlling (CO) module A module in SAP ERP
owed to the company by customers, the cost of that is used for internal management purposes. The
inventory on hand, fixed assets such as buildings, software assigns a company’s manufacturing costs
amounts owed to vendors, amounts owed to to products and to cost centers, facilitating cost
creditors, and amounts the owners have invested analysis.
in the company.
cost variance The difference between actual costs
best practice The best, most efficient way of and standard costs.
handling a certain business process.
currency translation Converting financial-
bill of material (BOM) The “recipe” listing the statement account balances expressed in one
materials (including quantities) needed to make currency into balances expressed in another
a product. currency.
business function A business activity within a customer master data Permanent data about
functional area of operation. each of a company’s customers; customer master
business intelligence (BI), also referred to as data is stored in central database tables in SAP ERP.
business analytics, is a term used to describe a Master data are used by many SAP ERP modules.

Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.