Hello Peter
The Functional Area Determination setup was changed with the new posting logic for sales.The objective was to increase flexibility and detailing options in structuring a company's income statement. At the same time this change allows customers issuing an income statement by nature of expense more easily.
The major change refers to the G/L account determined for any kind of cost. Till then any cost of sales document was recorded as a cost of goods sold on the respective account. With new posting logic, the G/L account used for the expenses will be the operational expense account previously recorded as G/L account (origin) only. Thus costs now are treated identically irrespective of the cost object to which they are charged and will be posted to the same G/L Account.
Here, the 'Restricted to' column has been introduced allowing for assigning costs of sales documents to a functional area distinct from the costs of other cost objects even if having the same G/L account.
For e.g. If you have an expense G/L Account which can be used in both sales and other cost objects, then you can determine the Cost of Goods Sold Functional area for the sales process and some other functional area for other cost objects to distinguish between the types of expense in the Income Statement.
In general, the Sales Object would refer to Sales Order/Customer Projects and the Non-sales object would be assignment to internal project/cost center or free cost object.
I hope this answers your queries related to functional area determination setup.
Thanks
Parveen Kumar