‘Primary Cost Elements’ represent the consumption of production factors such as raw materials, human resources, utilities, etc. Primary cost elements have their corresponding GL accounts in FI. All the expense/revenue accounts in FI correspond to the primary cost elements in CO. Before you can create the primary cost elements in CO, you first need to create them in FI as GL accounts.
Note that SAP treats revenue elements also as primary cost elements in CO processing. The only difference is that all the revenue elements are identified with a negative sign while posting in CO. The revenue elements correspond to the revenue accounts in FI and they fall under the cost element category, category 01/11.
