What is a Statistical Key Figure (SKF) in SAP?

The ‘Statistical Key Figure (SKF)’ is used as the basis (tracing factor) for making allocations (assessments/distributions). They are the statistical data such as number of employees, area in square meters, etc. You will make use of a SKF when you are faced with a situation where it is not possible to use any other conventional method or measure to arrive at the share of costs to be allocated to cost centers.

Suppose that you are incurring a monthly expense of USD 5,000 in the cost center cafeteria, the cost of which needs to be allocated to other cost centers. You can achieve this by the SKF. Imagine that you want this to be allocated based on the ‘number of employees’ working in each of the other cost centers such as administrative office (50 employees) and the factory (200 employees). You will now use the number of employees as the SKF for allocating the costs.

In SKF allocation, you have the flexibility of using two different SKF Categories; namely, Total value or Fixed value. You will use fixed values in situations where the SKF does not change very often, as in the case of the number of employees, area, etc. You will use total values in situations where the value is expected to change every now and then, as in the case of power use or water consumption and the like.