Configuring SAP ERP Financials and Controlling E-Book

Peter Jones

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1122

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

SAP is the world leader in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software; of the software?s modules, the FI (Finance) and CO (Controlling) are by far the most popular and are widely implemented. This book has no competition?it is the only book on the market on how to configure and implement SAP?s FI and CO modules to maximize functionality and features hands-on, step-by-step instructions and real-world examples that provide immediate and practical solutions. Updated for SAP?s ECC 6.0, the book covers FI enterprise structure, general ledger, substitutions and validations, automatic account assignments, accounts payable and receivable, asset accounting, accrual engine, closing entries, credit management, lockbox, CO enterprise structure, profitability analysis (CO-PA), and more.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Credits

Copyright

Publisher's Note

Dedication

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Introduction

Is This Book for You?

How This Book Is Organized

Conventions Used in This Book

Case Company Background

Chapter 1: Configuration Tools

Introduction to SAP

A New Approach to System Customization

The Implementation Guide (IMG)

The Service Market Place

Summary

Chapter 2: Financial Accounting Enterprise Structure

Chart of Accounts

Fiscal Year Variant

Posting Period Variant

Company Code Configuration

Business Areas

Functional Areas

Advanced Validation and Substitution Configuration

Sales and Use Tax

Summary

Chapter 3: General Ledger

Continuing with the Chart of Accounts

Copying and Transporting G/L Accounts

Field Status Groups

Posting Key Configuration

Automatic Account Determination

Intercompany Posting Automatic Account Assignment

Financial Statement Versions

G/L Display Configuration

Posting Amount Defaults and Tolerance Groups

Number Ranges and Document Types

Summary

Chapter 4: Accounts Payable

House Banks and Accounts

Payment Program Configuration

Company Code Data

Paying Company Code Data

Vendor Master Data

Summary

Chapter 5: Accounts Receivable

Terms of Payment and Interest Calculation

Reason Codes

Default Account Assignments

Overall A/R and Employee Tolerances

Credit Management

Customer Master Records

Summary

Chapter 6: Financial Supply Chain Management

Biller Direct

Cash and Liquidity Management

Liquidity Planner

Collections Management

Credit Management

Summary

Chapter 7: New GL Accounting

Overview of the New GL

Initial Configuration Requirements of the New GL

Master Data of the New GL

Summary

Chapter 8: Controlling Enterprise Structure

The Controlling Area

The Operating Concern

Summary

Chapter 9: Cost Element Accounting

Cost Element Types

Creating Cost Elements Automatically

Creating Cost Elements Manually

Imputed Costs

Reconciliation Ledger

Explanation of CO Updates

Summary

Chapter 10: Cost Center Accounting

Introduction to Cost Center Accounting Configuration

Cost Center Accounting Standard Hierarchy

Controlling Area/Profit Center Accounting Maintenance

Cost Center Basics

Activity Types and Statistical Key Figures

Assessments, Distributions, and Periodic Repostings

Cost Center Accounting: Planning

Assigning Accounts Automatically in CO

Summary

Chapter 11: Internal Order Accounting

Configuring Internal Order Accounting

Controlling Area Maintenance for Internal Order Accounting

Order Settlement Configuration

Order Planning and Budgeting

Internal Order Status Management

Order Type Development

Summary

Chapter 12: Profitability Analysis

Costing-Based vs. Account-Based CO-PA

Operating Concern Development

Characteristic Derivation

Assigning Values to Value Fields

CO-PA Planning

Activating CO-PA

CO-PA Reporting

CO-PA Transports

Summary

Chapter 13: Profit Center Accounting

PCA Configuration Overview

Basic Settings and Master Data Review

Analyze and Update PCA Settings

Assignments in Profit Center Accounting

Actual Posting Maintenance

Profit Center Accounting: Planning

Summary

Chapter 14: Investment Management

Investment Management Configuration

Program Types, Investment Measures, and the Investment Profile

Investment Management Planning and Budgeting Profiles

Summary

Chapter 15: FI Closing Cockpit

Overview of the FI Closing Cockpit

Development of Organizational Hierarchies

Creating Closing Cockpit Templates

Creating Tasks

Creating the Task List

Summary

Appendix A: Useful Transaction Codes, Tables, and Programs

Index

Acquisitions Editor: Agatha Kim

Development Editor: Kim Wimpsett

Technical Editor: Charles Soper

Production Editor: Elizabeth Campbell

Copy Editors: Judy Flynn, Candace English, Liz Welch

Production Manager: Tim Tate

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher: Richard Swadley

Vice President and Publisher: Neil Edde

Book Designer and Compositor: Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Proofreader: Amy Morales

Indexer: Nancy Guenther

Project Coordinator, Cover: Lynsey Stanford

Cover Designer: Ryan Sneed

Cover Image: iStockPhoto

Copyright © 2009 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-0-470-42328-8

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jones, Peter, 1953 October 9– Configuring SAP ERP financials and controlling / Peter Jones, John Burger.—1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-470-42328-8 (cloth) 1. SAP ERP. 2. Accounting—Computer programs. 3. Accounting—Data processing. 4. Investments. I. Burger, John, 1970- II. Title. HF5679.J635 2009 657.0285'53--dc22

TRADEMARKS: Wiley, the Wiley logo, and the Sybex logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. SAP is a registered trademark of SAP AG in Germany and several other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dear Reader,

Thank you for choosing Configuring SAP ERP Financials and Controlling. This book is part of a family of premium-quality Sybex books, all of which are written by outstanding authors who combine practical experience with a gift for teaching.

Sybex was founded in 1976. More than thirty years later, we’re still committed to producing consistently exceptional books. With each of our titles we’re working hard to set a new standard for the industry. From the paper we print on, to the authors we work with, our goal is to bring you the best books available.

I hope you see all that reflected in these pages. I’d be very interested to hear your comments and get your feedback on how we’re doing. Feel free to let me know what you think about this or any other Sybex book by sending me an email at [email protected], or if you think you’ve found a technical error in this book, please visit http://sybex.custhelp.com. Customer feedback is critical to our efforts at Sybex.

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Sybex, an Imprint of Wiley

I would like to dedicate this effort to my wife, Lisa, for her unwavering support and help. Without her sacrifice of the time it took to complete this process, I would not have been able to focus on rewriting this book and getting the best possible result. —Peter Jones

To my wife, Christine, who has supported me and has never questioned why I felt it necessary to write at the strange hours that I do. Thank you. —John Burger

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the help and support of SAP during the writing of the second edition of this book. Without the ability to use my experience and knowledge in the FI and CO areas that I developed over the time that I’ve been with SAP, I would not have been able to complete this book. Nor would I have been able to offer appropriate views of the current system for FI and CO. I would also like to acknowledge Frank Weiss, who was instrumental in my introduction to SAP and the areas of FI and CO.

—Peter Jones

I would like to acknowledge a few of the mentors who I have been fortunate enough to have over the years, without whom I would not have had the experiences that would have permitted me to write this book. They are Richard Groenewald at SafMarine in Cape Town, Robert Schmidt and Michael Spandau at Deloitte Consulting in Southern California, and Alix Zirbel at McKesson in San Francisco.

Lastly, I would like to thank Agatha Kim, the acquisitions editor, who supported me through this interesting and challenging process.

—John Burger

About the Authors

Peter Jones is a principal/platinum business applications consultant with SAP Professional Services Consulting specializing in Controlling (CO), Enterprise Controlling (EC), Auditing, Business Intelligence (BI), Strategic Enterprise Management (SEM) and Corporate Performance Management (CPM), Enterprise Information Architecture, and Enterprise Data Warehouses. He has more than 10 years of consulting and educational experience in a variety of strategic and leadership roles, focused on Controlling, Profitability Analysis, Strategic Enterprise Management, Corporate Governance, Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, and Business Analytics. Peter’s diverse professional background includes not only consulting experience but also participation in the academic areas of Finance, Controlling, Data Warehousing, Enterprise Management, and Corporate Governance. He is serving as an SAP principal/platinum business consultant for areas including CO/BW/SEM. He has been involved with numerous implementations for BI and ECC, from the Blueprint phase to the Go-Live Process. His responsibilities include being a subject-matter expert in all the areas listed earlier; an active presenter at conferences including ASUG, BI conferences, and Shappire; and editor/writer for FICO Expert and BI Expert. Along with consulting, he has been involved with the academic world in developing and presenting numerous topics for the University Alliance, which included topics in the areas of CO, BI, Auditing, and SEM. He has a master’s degree from Drexel University in finance and is SAP certified in the areas of FI, CO, BW, and SEM. Prior to SAP, he owned his own business for 15 years working in the area of accounting and finance.

John Burger has a dual finance and law degree from Rhodes University. He has more than 20 years experience in finance and SAP consulting. John’s career has spanned the ship fleet and cargo freight management, high-tech, management consulting, and pharmaceutical industries. John has 10 years of experience as a SAP consultant.

As a consultant, John has serviced several Fortune 100 companies and led successful initiatives encompassing major SAP implementations, business process reengineering, and mergers and acquisitions of multibillion dollar companies. The projects resulted in him working in seven countries, across four continents, implementing solutions in all of the modules within FI/CO, including ABC and COPA.

He now works at McKesson, a Fortune 18 company.

Introduction

The purpose of this book is to serve as an introduction to configuring (a form of customizing functionality) the Financials and Controlling modules within SAP. The FI (Financials) and CO (Controlling) modules are the backbone of most, if not all, SAP implementations. The reason is that most business events culminate in a financial impact. One of SAP’s biggest selling points is its integration capabilities. Integration, in this context, means that for any business event SAP automatically updates the related metrics, be they financial or management accounting metrics. Not only will you learn the foundational configuration elements involved in implementing the core of FI/CO functionality, but you will also learn configuration principals that can be utilized throughout SAP.

Another of SAP’s strengths is its incredible breadth of functionality that it offers, both in terms of functions covered (business processes) and in terms of industries catered to. It is for these reasons that it is practically impossible to cover all the functionality or all the configuration options within the FI/CO modules. Instead, we illustrate the configuration theories and steps through the use of a hypothetical business scenario. We use Extreme Sports Inc. to define the business requirements that are configured and presented throughout the book. The “Case Company Background” section later in this introduction explains Extreme Sports’s business and organizational structure.

As the configuration takes place, keep in mind that the screen shots and menu paths that are presented are based on version 6.0. It is important to note that the functionality covered in this book is generally transferable across SAP versions. The reason is that a lot of the functionality covered is typical to most companies and has been offered through many releases of SAP (a.k.a. the core functionality). In addition, this book focuses on the configuration principals that enable you to understand the logic behind them, regardless of SAP version.

Is This Book for You?

This book is for anyone who wants to understand how to implement FI/CO, a central module to SAP’s Enterprise Central Component (ECC), formerly known as SAP R/3. The primary audience to benefit from this book are project implementation team members, developers, and SAP support organizations. We also encourage people who have expertise in other SAP modules to read this book, because it will help tremendously in terms of the understanding integration points. In addition, this book makes an excellent textbook companion for those colleges and universities whose curricula covers SAP design and development. It will take you from the basic concepts all the way through to advanced configuration topics and techniques.

How This Book Is Organized

This book begins with an explanation of the FI module and its configuration. The similar but different CO module is covered in the same fashion. Each chapter is about a specific submodule within FI/CO.

The chapters have been logically ordered so that prerequisite configuration has occurred before you begin configuring a new submodule. If you are new to configuration, it is a good idea to begin with Chapter 1 and proceed through the rest of the chapters in order. If you already have configuration experience, you can use the table of contents and chapter headings to skip to the appropriate subject matter.

Conventions Used in This Book

Throughout this book, we have used some basic conventions to help you understand our instructions. The menu path for configuration steps is included in the text of each chapter. In the appendix, you’ll find all the configuration transaction codes relevant to the topics discussed in book. We have based our project on one business model, Extreme Sports, for ease and continuity.

Reference is made to standard SAP commands and button bars (green arrow, Save, Create, and so on). In each case, when we refer to a button, we’ll provide a screen shot that shows the button in question. The SAP course material is an excellent source for more information on the standard SAP nomenclature.

Case Company Background

One of SAP’s biggest selling points is the software’s flexibility in handling multiple industries and organizations regardless of the complexity of the business solutions.

To accommodate this flexibility, it must allow for numerous solutions using the standard platform of tables and structures. And by introducing unique configuration settings for each implementing company, it addresses the need for complex solutions.

It would be an impossible task to document the necessary configuration settings for every industry and every business solution. However, it is not inconceivable to provide insight into how to interpret the options available to you when configuring the various modules in FI and CO.

To assist in this endeavor, we will describe the configuration for a fictitious company, Extreme Sports, as you progress through the book. Although the company’s configuration will be documented, the discussion will not be limited to that specific solution. We’ll discuss many options and field settings. When configuration must occur in a specific order, we’ll provide the proper sequence.

We will now give you some background information about Extreme Sports and an example of its hierarchy solution. Extreme Sports is a U.S.-based manufacturer of sporting equipment and apparel. Founded in 1999, the company has seen its business grow 60 percent a year over the past three years. The revenues for 2008 were $1 billion.

Extreme Sports’s sales organization consists of six regionally based offices located in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Seattle, and Kansas City. The sales organization employs approximately 250 sales representatives who sell six distinct product lines: ski equipment, ski apparel, mountaineering/hiking equipment, surfing equipment, surfing apparel, and custom boats.

To compensate for the extraordinary growth it has enjoyed, Extreme Sports has expanded its manufacturing base from four to six plants. The last two plants have both been constructed in Mexico, and the company is considering building a third next year.

Extreme Sports has made the decision to convert to SAP because of the fragmented nature of its current financial, profitability, and manufacturing systems. The corporation consists of four legal entities: ES Ski & Surf, Inc.; ES Mountaineering, Inc.; ES Custom Boats, Inc.; and ES Mexico, S.A. In addition, Extreme Sports has decided to create a shared services organization to support the accounting, human resources, purchasing, accounts payable, and IS functions. The vehicle for this organization will be a fifth company called ES Services, Inc.

The corporation has moved all its legal entities to a calendar fiscal year, removing the 4-5-4 calendar previously held by ES Custom Boats, Inc. Here’s an illustration of the corporation as it was developed in SAP.

Throughout the book, we will be providing you with the configuration settings to support Extreme Sports’s organization.

Chapter 1

Configuration Tools

Featuring:

Introduction to SAPA New Approach to System CustomizationThe Implementation Guide (IMG)The Service Market Place

Before you undertake your first SAP configuration project, it is important to understand the concepts behind table-driven customization as well as some of the tools, tips, and tricks that can be used. The purpose of this chapter is to provide the foundation for successfully carrying out SAP Finance and Controlling (FI/CO) configuration. We’ll give you an overview of SAP, talk about the new approach to system configuration, discuss how to use the implementation guide, and introduce you to the Service Market Place.

Although this chapter is a must-read for people new to configuration, configuration “old-timers” can also pick up a trick or two from reading it.

NOTE The terms customization and configuration are used interchangeably throughout this book.

Introduction to SAP

SAP stands for Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing. Founded by five German engineers in 1972, SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software, offering applications and services to companies of all sizes across more than 25 industries. SAP offers an integrated system, which means that all SAP modules are designed to share information and automatically create transactions based on various business processes.

SAP Products

SAP has slowly evolved in terms of its product offerings. You will still come across SAP consultants who refer to the SAP system as SAP R/3, but as SAP’s product offerings have broadened, the reference to R/3 has been dropped. R/3 initially referred to SAP’s only product, the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, but today SAP offers a host of products of which SAP ERP Central Component is the heart (often referred to as SAP ECC). The SAP ERP Central Component is where the original ERP (R/3) functionality is housed, and it is where all the data processing/business process transacting takes place. This book is focused on the Financial (FI) and Controlling (CO) modules found in SAP ECC version 6.0.

The goal of this book is not to teach you how to implement one specific solution but to teach you how to configure the SAP system. Attempting to cover every possible configuration scenario you might encounter would be an impossible task, but after reading the book, you will be able to apply what you have learned and configure your system based on your business requirements.

SAP has now introduced many areas of functionality from its data warehouse—often referred to as its business warehouse (BW) or, now more correctly, business intelligence (BI)—which includes a host of reporting tools and functionality, not limited to business objects.

SAP also offers the following software suites:

Supplier Relationship Management (SRM)Strategic Enterprise Management (SEM)Catalog Content ManagementCompliance Management for SOASupply Chain Management (SCM)Product Lifecycle ManagementCustomer Relationship Management (CRM)

SAP Terms

Now that you understand how the different SAP products break down, you’ll need to become familiar with some common terms that explain different parts of the SAP system; you will see the following terms used throughout the book:

ABAP (ABAP/4) ABAP/4 stands for Advanced Business Application Programming/4th Generation Language. SAP is coded in ABAP. ABAP is also used for extensions and extra programs that are written for SAP. ABAP is similar to other fourth-generation languages and is a first cousin of COBOL, without the JCL.

Basis Generally, SAP projects, and the folks who work on them, are lumped into two groups—technical and functional. The technical system includes ABAP, database administration, transport management, security, authorizations, and so on. Basis is a subset of the technical group and consists of the folks who take care of all technical components of the system except for ABAP. The Basis group, in more common terms, consists of your project database administrators (DBAs) plus more.

Variant A variant is a specific setting that is saved when a program is executed. Some data input screens allow you to save and execute variants. Variants can also be created in the program maintenance screen of the program. Using variants is a good way to save time because they allow you to execute a routine transaction without having to enter all of the parameters needed by the program every time.

Menu pathSAP, like most client/server applications, utilizes menus to allow a user to navigate through the system. When we refer to or list menu paths in the book, we are starting from the root menu and progressing down through each menu hierarchy to reach the needed transaction. When we refer to only the menu path, we are talking about the Implementation Guide (IMG) menu path. SAP application menu paths are explicitly noted.

Transaction code A transaction code (tcode) is generally a four-character code (later versions of SAP have introduced longer tcodes) that is entered in the command field on the toolbar. Transaction codes are not case sensitive. SAP provides two ways of executing a transaction, via a menu path and a transaction code.