SAP Treasury cash flows regeneration
I just found out this great rebuild functionality in SAP Treasury and wanted to share with you cause I am sure it will be useful to you some day if you work with SAP Treasury.
I have been searching for such a rebuild function because the derived flows we use to post automatically tax on interests earned on Money Market fixed term deposits are not correct anymore since the withholding tax conditions have changed as per law. The rebuild function delivered with SAP Treasury was a perfect fit in this particular situation but it could be useful as well in many other situations. In fact it should be used each time an SAP Treasury environment setting (understand a setting that is not directly part of the treasury deal) affecting the deal cash flows is changed (it can be a customizing setting, a market data value, …).
The functionality is offered by transaction TMFM (program RFTMFIMA) which can be found in the application menu Transaction Manager / Money Market / Tools.
Once you have run this transaction, all the relevant cash flows will be reconstructed and corrected in the deal cash flow view and in the TBB1 posting transaction among other things.
Tags: SAP Treasury
What is SAP?
In an earlier post, I have tried to explain what SAP ERP is. However, I realized that, while SAP ERP is a well known SAP product for people who already know something about SAP, SAP in itself may be totally unknown to the rest of the world.
So today let’s try to answer this simple question: What is SAP?
SAP is both a company and a products suite. And most people refer to both the company and its main product (the ERP solution) using the SAP acronym.
SAP as a company
SAP is an international company with its headquarters in Germany (in Walldorf) which develops business software that supports most of the operational processes of its customers (mainly large and midsize companies).
It has been funded in 1972 by former IBM engineers and has now around 50.000 employees.
It is today considered as the world’s largest business software company.
SAP as a product
SAP’s flagship product is the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution. An ERP is a business software that addresses most of the operational processes of a company covering enterprise functions like Finance, Purchasing, Ordering and Billing, Human Capital management, Project management, Analytics, … through the implementation of software modules. Main SAP ERP modules include:
- SAP FI (Finance)
- SAP CO (Controlling)
- SAP MM (Materials Management)
- SAP SD (Sales and Distribution)
- SAP HR (Human Resources)
- SAP PS (Project System)
- SAP PP (Production Planning)
- SAP CS (Customer Service)
and most of those modules contain sub-modules in order to address specific areas of the functional domains. For example, in SAP FI you will find sub-modules covering General Ledger, Accounts Receivables (i.e. customer accounting), Accounts Payables (i.e. vendor accounting), Asset Accounting, Banking, Treasury, …
Next to ERP, SAP is also offering:
- SAP BW (Business Warehouse) to cover Business Intelligence needs together with SAP Business Objects
- CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
- SRM (Supplier Relationship Management)
- PLM (Product Lifecycle Management>
- SCM (Supply Chain Management)
Most of these products run on a common technical platform currently known as Netweaver which provides common technologies and interfacing techniques to the functional modules ensuring a certain degree of uniformity of those modules.
SAP FI documents statuses
In SAP Finance, bookings on financial accounts are stored in financial documents comprising a header and one or several line items.
In the document header, different line item independent fields are defined among which a document status field. This field is used to indicate documents which have a special status with regard to the way they impact (or not) the account balances.
Following FI document statuses exist in ECC6:
- (SPACE) – Normal document
An empty document status value indicates that the document is a normal document affecting account balances as indicated by the document line items.
- A – Clearing Document
The FI document status value A is associated to clearing documents. Clearing documents are special documents since they serve the purpose of clearing (other documents) open items by creating a link between those items. They don’t primarily serve the purpose of updating account balances but they affect the status of account items.
- B – Reset clearing document
FI documents with status B are reset clearing documents. Reset clearing documents are FI documents that are used to reset (reverse) clearing documents. Regarding their impact on accounts balances, they have the same behaviour as the clearing documents they reverse.
- D – Recurring entry document
A recurring entry document has the status D. Recurring document entries do not affect account balances as recurring documents are only templates for the creation of normal documents. Documents created based on recurring document entries have the status of normal documents.
- L - Posting Not in Leading Ledger
Used by the new G/L Accounting framework to indicate documents whose bookings are not made to the leading ledger. As such the leading ledger balances are not affected by those documents.
- M - Sample document
Documents with status M represent sample documents and are similar to recurring document entries (status D) because they represent also templates which do not affect account balances. Account balances are only affected by normal documents that are created based on the sample document.
- S Noted items
A document with status S comprises only noted items which do not affect account balances. Noted items are associated to special G/L indicators and are used to provide information without affecting actual financial figures.
- V Parked document
FI document status V refers to FI documents that are in preparation. Such documents do not affect accounts balances because they are not necessarily complete so they represent drafts of future normal documents.
- W Parked document with change of document ID
Status W is assigned to follow-on documents of parked documents. Such follow-on documents are parked documents themselves and behave like classic parked documents (status V).
- Z Parked document which was deleted
Document status Z identifies deleted parked documents. Obviously these documents do not affect financial accounts balances.
Finally, note that the document status field is only visible in the document header when its value is not blank (so when the document is not a normal document):
Document status field
Tags: SAP documents, SAP Finance
How to identify cleared items of a payment document?
It happens regularly that SAP users know a payment document and they would like to know what invoices and/or credit notes are cleared (paid) by that payment document. Or more generally there is often a need to identify what documents are cleared by a specific clearing document (which can be a payment document or any another type of document).
SAP techies often start searching for line items in the SAP database on the clearing document number field. This is a workable solution but not suitable for end users. End users should use the payment usage functionality which is directly available in the display document transaction (FB03 or other document display transaction) of clearing documents.
SAP Payment Usage menu
This function triggers the display of a list of the line items cleared by the current clearing document.
Tags: SAP Finance, SAP tips & tricks
Forums are open!
I am pleased to announce that discussion forums on SAP Core are now open. Use them actively and they will be helpful to you soon or late…
Enjoy!
SAP jobs at your finger tips
It took some time and efforts but it is eventually there! SAP Core has a brand new jobs section devoted to SAP jobs all around the world. To support this new section of the website, we implemented a user registration and authentication mechanism which is valid throughout the site. The functionalities associated to user accounts are still limited and mainly related to the new jobs section but you can expect much more personalized services throughout the website in the near future…
Next enhancements ahead: improvements in the troubleshooting section… Stay tuned.
Using ranges in ABAP selection screens
If you want to have a range in a selection screen, meaning From – To input fields in order to type in an interval of values without the advanced functionalities of a SELECT_OPTIONS, the right instruction to use is not RANGES as one could expect but SELECT-OPTIONS with the addition NO-EXTENSION.
Using RANGES instead of SELECT-OPTIONS NO-EXTENSION will have no effect on the selection-screen.
The flexibility of the input offered by SELECT-OPTIONS NO-EXTENSION lies between the one offered by PARAMTERS which allows only the input of a single value and the one offered by SELECT-OPTIONS (without the addition NO-EXTENSION) which allows for the input of tables of RANGES.
Tags: ABAP
Transporting SAP number ranges
Today, while searching the net for some specific information about restoring customizing tables from change logs, I encountered some posts from people being really in trouble because of silly mistakes they had done. Most of the time these are due to their lack of seniority in working with SAP. Anyhow, I decided to create a little sub-section in this blog dedicated to silly mistakes not to be done if you want to keep your job in SAP! I will share with you what I know about this but I would be very happy to hear about you on this and I am sure the visitors of this blog also! Just post your not-to-be-reproduced experiences at mistakes@sap-core.com.
I start with a very classic one yet very efficient one in order to kill your SAP system: transporting the number ranges. These are maintained generally with SNUM or more specific transactions like FBN1 for accounting document. Although it may be tempting to store these in a transport (you save time since you don’t need to reproduce their creation in the target systems), never do that! Even at creation time since you are never sure that a transport will not be re-imported in case something goes wrong.
However, if you are not happy anymore with your current employer and want a quick way to get out for new challenges, this is a method to be considered seriously!
Tags: silly-mistakes
Rounding decimals of floating, packed or integer values in ABAP
There is often the need in ABAP to round values with a specific number of decimals. To accomplish this task, ABAP programmers often deploy a lot of imagination to finally implement fancy solutions that are not always optimal. This is a pity since SAP ERP contains a function module ready to perform this task. Guess its name: ROUND!
This function module accepts as import parameters the value (a variable in fact) to be rounded, the number of decimals to take into account for the rounding and a sign mentioning whether a round up (sign = ‘+’), a round down (sign = ‘-’) or a commercial rounding (= to nearest figure) (sign = ‘X’) is to be performed.
It provides the rounded value as output parameter.
As simple as that!
Tags: ABAP
Reading the last characters of a string in ABAP
ABAP is no doubt a powerful programming language but while this is clearly a business oriented programming language I am often surprised to see how poor it can be in certain areas of development. And I am not referring here to advanced development topics like dynamic graphics or so but to areas as basic as string manipulations.
Today I needed my ABAP program to read the 4 last characters of a string. As I have some experience with ABAP, I didn’t expect to find some function like RIGHT accepting as parameter the number of characters to retrieve. That would be far too simple!
So I said to myself that I had 2 obvious alternatives: either counting the length of the string and start reading at the 4th digit before the end of the string which requires the use of offsets in string manipulation (or rotating the string with SHIFT instructions but beware about the technical length of the string!) or inverting the string and reading its 4 starting characters (if the order of the characters is unimportant which is my case).
I settled to implement the string reversal but, guess what, there is no ABAP instruction to reverse a string! This time however, there exists a function module called STRING_REVERSE that performs the job. Ouf!
Tags: ABAP
Pick the right icon
Hi there. I have not posted on this blog for some time now. Shame on me! While it is mainly due to the fact that I am investing most of my free time in developing a new section for this website (stay tuned if you want to know what it will be about), this is no excuse and with the year 2011 just starting, I have taken as good resolution to write here more often. So let’s see end of the year if this commitment is kept or not.
For now, I would like to make a quick post to mention the existence of transaction ICON. This is a neat transaction that lets you visualize the available icons in your system along with their text IDs. This is very handy if you want to pick an icon to use in your statuses or toolbars. In this case, please note that you might need to include in your programs the type group ICON which defines the icon text IDs and links them to their corresponding technical IDs.
One of the icons that has always puzzled me and that is at the same time one of the most used icons in SAP is the clock icon (ICON_EXECUTE_OBJECT). It suggests that the execution of a program will be a lengthy operation which is (at least) marketing wise the opposite of what this icon should suggest. Why hasn’t SAP opted for an image that is less prone to interpretation like gears for example?
New troubleshooting section
Yesterday a new troubleshooting section is born on sap core!
It is still in its early days but expect it to grow quickly in terms of functionalities and, hopefully, content. I say ‘hopefully’ because its success regarding content proposed depends on the active participation of sap core visitors.
The idea behind this troubleshooting section is that all sap core visitors own a piece of SAP knowledge and they should be encouraged to share this information with others proactively without waiting for other SAP users to ask for that knowledge. The main advantage being that information searched would then be readily available in many situations and waiting times would be reduced to a minimum.
Of course, this works only if people share proactively the information they think might be useful to others (or even to themselves in the future… do you never forget anything?). The goal of this troubleshooting section is to provide an handy tool to easily store and retrieve to-the-point information applicable in specific contexts. For this purpose, the troubleshooting information is organized by SAP ERP application component and is linked to specific SAP objects. Currently only the object ‘SAP Message’ is supported which means that searching for an error message should lead the visitor to the corresponding troubleshooting information. Other SAP objects are likely to be added like SAP transactions or SAP programs.
As I said in the beginning of this post, many enhancements are possible and foreseen. So stay tuned and please share your knowledge!
SAP jobs – apply for the right job!
If you intend to start a career in SAP, make sure that you apply for the right job for you.
Not all SAP jobs are the same and it is usually admitted that following major categories of SAP jobs exist :
- SAP end user
- SAP Business Analyst
- SAP Technical Analyst
SAP Technical Analysts are responsible for challending and implementing the business requirements translated into technical terms by Business Analysts. While the added value of Business Analysts comes essentially from their business knowledge, the added value of Technical Analysts comes from their knowledge of the SAP system.
- SAP ABAP Developer
- SAP BC, basis or system administrator
SAP end users use the SAP system as a tool to achieve their business objectives. Jobs falling in this category are not properly speaking SAP jobs since they usually consider the SAP system only as a tool that applicants need to be able to use to achieve their objectives which don’t focus on the SAP system itself but rather on the execution of business processes that are implemented in the SAP system.
The SAP Business Analyst is responsible for the analysis of the business requirements and their translation into SAP requirements. This function is at the same time highly functional as the Business Analyst must understand the business of end users but also technical as these requirements need to be translated into a system oriented language that is understandable by SAP Technical Analysts.
SAP ABAP Developers functions include all technical development roles. This covers ABAP but also Workflow, Web developments, …
This category of SAP jobs designates the SAP system administrators. This function covers the installation and maintenance of the SAP system and the servers on which SAP is installed. It may also cover some very technical tasks like the management of the authorization profiles in the system.
Not all companies apply formally this categorization of the SAP functions but all the needs covered by these functions exist in all companies that run SAP systems and it is important to understand what profile a company is looking for when they publish a job offer.
Identifying the employer’s needs at an early stage of the recruitment process may help you avoid later disappointments as functional jobs may be very different from technical jobs in SAP and applying for the wrong job may have dramatic consequences.
Tags: SAP Jobs
Debugging the Enterprise Consolidation data monitor
A quick post to remember where to set a breakpoint when required to debug the Enterprise Consolidation data monitor (transaction CXCD).
A good place to create a breakpoint so that the debugger is launched when a button of the data monitor screen is pushed is in program FICMON00 / include FICMON00_CL_APPL and more specifically in METHOD USER_COMMAND.
From that point it is possible to start a debug of the different functions offered by the data monitor.
Tags: SAP tips & tricks
Locate your transactions with SEARCH_SAP_MENU
Transaction SEARCH_SAP_MENU (precede it with a /n code) allows you to find your transactions in the hierarchical tree of transactions that represents the SAP application menu.
Searched strings may contain the transaction code itself or (a part of) the description text of the transaction.
Although powerful, SEARCH_SAP_MENU does not search the customizing tree but only the application menu. It is thus a tool intended primarily for end users.