The calculations functionality is ment to work when you select 2 measure/key figures ('product cost' & 'transport cost' in the blog you linked). You are trying to do this on charactersitic values (values of Calendar Month), so it will not work. On characteristics you can use totals as you mention, but indeed you will have only 1 total total.
One solution to have the subtotal on cal year, is to drag that dimension in the columns as well (but this will only show the total on year level, you will not be able to calculate growth etc.
Sounds like a requirement you will have to solve with calculated/restricted KF's in the query designer.
(and yes, this is not the right place for your question, it should be in SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for OLAP :-))