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ERP College March 14, 2022 0 Comments

General SAP

Everything about FEBKO & FEBEP Table (Part 2)

This is second part of this blog series. (Read first blog here – FEBKO details)

In continuation with previous blog, we will start this one with FEBEP table.

Introduction

FEBEP table stores line item records of bank statements. FEBKO & FEBEP table can be compared with BKPF & BSEG table, earlier one stores header information and latter one stores line item information.

If you check FEBEP Table fields, you can notice it is hard to directly look into FEBEP table without referencing FEBKO table. So you should always start your search from FEBKO table, where you have various key fields to narrow down your result data as per the requirement. Once you got the relevant entries in FEBKO which you need to further dig into line item level, then you can take the common field ‘short key – KUKEY’ and search for it in FEBEP table.

Lets execute one record and start checking FEBEP table field

First field is short key, unique key for each statement and common field between FEBKO & FEBEP

Then we can see LC field i.e. line item completed. It will show if the posting of this particular line is completed or not.

So in FEBEP table there will separate line for each transaction of bank statement.

U1 & U2 field represents posting area 1 & 2 postings. If the line item is associated with posting rule, which has accounting entry in two areas, then system will check if both areas are posted or not. This can be verified by x mark in U1 & U2 field.

Document number & posting date is document posted in SAP against statement transaction.

Read Blogpost: Tips and tricks on Bank Reconciliation in SAP

Further we have fields like account currency, amount of transaction. BTC – Business transaction code is used to determine posting rule based on the mapping in OT83. So here in FEBEP, system will capture the BTC (VORGC) from bank statement and search in OT83 if there is any external transaction code available of same character, if it is available then system will put it into FEBEP external transaction field (VGEXT). Posting rule (VGINT) will be determined from external transaction code.

There are several fields for partner bank details. These will be populated in case of clearing open vendor invoice.

Then there are various BDC fields available, which are supported by search string. If you remember there are various options available in search string setup to manipulate the final posting.

Then there will be fields like interpretation algorithm, it will have interpretation algorithm number which is used to post this line.

This all field data will make sense if you know the underlying configuration and how it evolve in each process. If you want to learn search string configuration, interpretation algorithm & posting rules with multiple posting areas, then you can read this ebook.

With this we have come to an end of this two part series blogpost. Hope you enjoyed reading it and learned few things. You can subscribe below to receive email update of every new blogpost:

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ERP College February 21, 2022 0 Comments

General SAP

How to schedule background jobs in SM36 (Easiest way to schedule job using Wizard)

Background job in SAP

First thing first, lets understand what background job is and use cases of it (few can skip to next heading).

How I come to know about background jobs first time? SAP forced to use it. At the time of executing depreciation program, got an error that live depreciation run cannot be executed online, and it should be posted through background job. So I executed background job from AFAB transaction. From Menu – Program – Execute in background.

So 1^st use case – It saves end user time. Many times if we execute any transaction which take several minutes to complete, background job can save you that time. Also think about risks involved in doing online run. If you are executing complex transactions which involves critical subsequent activities and if the running server were not able finish that activity within 15-20 minutes, you will get ABAP run time error. Many times your connection might get down, due to VPN connectivity issues or internet connectivity.

On the other hand if you schedule that activity in backend, SAP will allocate one separate server for the program to run and it will not be dependent on user connectivity or activity. User can log out and log off their system. The job will do their work.

2^nd use case – Automation. Background jobs are nothing but bots that are helping to automate small to long processes. Because it gives the flexibility of schedule time. You can schedule job whenever you want at whatever frequency you need. Within job you can set different set of programs to run after another. You can trigger job based on various events.

In large organizations 70-80% processes run through background jobs. Background jobs are very crucial part of SAP, one should know in and out of background jobs.

You can read this SAP help documentation to know everything about background jobs

Schedule jobs using job wizard

There are two ways to schedule job, one is where you enter details in multiple fields in multiple places and another is through wizard, where SAP walk you through whole process. Job Wizard is very useful and handy tool and still very underrated. Whenever there will be any need to schedule job in production server, you will have to schedule it through SM36 transaction only. Lets say you have run depreciation run in production system, but most of the cases you will not have authorization to AFAB transaction, so in this case you need to schedule one job in SM36 with depreciation run program and appropriate variant.

Go to SM36

SM36 - Backgound job schedule transaction code — SM36 – Transaction code

You will find the Job wizard icon in Menu (highlighted above)

Click it to launch the wizard

You will be prompted with the below screen

It says everything about itself on first screen – “The Job Wizard quickly guides you step-by-step through the process of creating a job, allowing you to move back and forth between steps in the process and to confirm the details of the job you’ve just defined.”

Click on continue to proceed

Give some meaningful name to Job (unlike given above)

Job class should be as per job priority. System will allocate appropriate space from the server based on job priority.

Job status will be grayed out with default status

In Target field, there is option to select in which server you want run the job. Usually there is dedicated server created for each modules and some additional servers for big activities. Although it is a optional field, so if kept blank it will determine server itself. It does not matter much for small jobs. But for huge activities where processing data is large and for complex activities, it needs to run on separate servers so that other processes don’t get disturb.

Press continue to move on

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On the next screen, select ABAP Program step (Never used other radio buttons)

Press continue

Here you have provide ABAP Program Name and Variant for the program.

There is one program available for every transaction in SAP to run it in background (with selection screen). There are many ways to get program name. Simplest one, just Google it.

Variant – Create one variant for program with the selection criteria you want. (In my experience there will always be a variant available which can suite your requirement)

Not going into details about how to create variant, assuming everyone aware of it.

After entering program and variant name, press continue

If you notice closely in each screen of the wizard, there is explanation given on top for every field and why it is require/ what does it do.

In below screen, it is asking if you need multi step job. Explanation is given in upper side of screen. So multi step jobs mostly used to automate multi step processes. If you select add additional step option, then you will have option to add another program and its variant details. You can add as many program as you want, as per the running sequence.

So system will execute another program once first program is over.

We don’t need this option in our scenario, so just press continue

Here you will get to select schedule time and frequency of job. There are multiple option to trigger the job and each one is equally important. We need to release job immediately, so we will select Immediately option.

Press continue

On the next screen system will tell you, what is the current occupancy of servers and how feasible is it to run job immediately. This is very useful, when you will run the job in busy timeframe / busy system. Many time heavy job release can lead to other job failures and impact system performance.

Press continue

Last screen will give you all the details overview, you so far entered and ask for final confirmation.

Click on complete to release the job

And the job is scheduled. Very easy ah? Once you use it, you will get addicted to this wizard. Since I come across it, never scheduled job without wizard in SM36.

Read eBook: SAP DME – A Simplified Guide

How to monitor background jobs?

Scheduling job is one thing and monitoring it is another skill, if you know the key point one should check.

In SM36 jobs are scheduled and in SM37 jobs are monitored.

So without further ado, lets go to SM37

SM37 Job Monitoring transaction code — SM37 Monitor Job

I will not bore you with the basic details of this screen. So we will enter the job name that we entered in wizard (ZSAMPLE).

You can also search job based on program name. In the last field of above screen you can enter the program name which is running underneath of job, in our case it is RAPOST2000.

So if you don’t know the job name and want to check what are the jobs that are running for specific program, this will be useful feature.

There are very important job selection criteria’s available in ‘extended job selection’ tab. You can visit it, everything is self-explanatory no need to mention here.

Press F8 to search job for given selection criteria.

So our job is in finished stage. You can also notice the start date and time plus duration of how long job was running.

Further in menu, we have option of Job log, where we can get the details of step job performed. Job logs are useful when job fails. Like in our example we have executed depreciation run program. So if the depreciation run got failed due to not maintenance of document number ranges or due to cost center block issue then these details will be printed in job log to analyze and take corrective actions.

In spool the result screen is printed with the information that are requested through program. If you are running reports in background, then report result will be available in spool. In our depreciation case, in spool we can see the assets with posted depreciation values.

Next we have ‘Steps’ option where we will get to know the underling programs of job. There we can also see the program variant that is executed for selected job.

This is the program running under ZSAMPLE job. If you want to check variant values then go to Menu – Goto – Variant

Here you can confirm for which company code and for which FY, period this job was scheduled/run.

Read Blog: How to use user exit in substitution and validation rules?

Come back to job overview screen

and double click on job

Here you have multiple option to know more about job.

On top right hand side, Start condition will tell you what triggered this job.

‘Job details’ will help you understand, job priority and execution server details.

‘Predecessor job’ option will tell you what are the job that run before this job and after completion that job will trigger this job.

‘Successor Job’ will tell you which job will be triggered after this job is completed. These two options are very useful to know more about dependent jobs.

Our ZSAMPLE was standalone job. It neither get triggered by any job nor it triggers another job.

This is all about job monitoring and job schedule. You can bookmark this post for future reference.

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ERP College February 4, 2022 0 Comments

General SAP

The Art of Google Search [Must read guide for every SAP consultant]

Hi all, Hope everyone is doing good. Here I am back with another blogpost.

Let’s continue from the title of this post, I think to be able to use Google search engine to it’s max potential is an important skill that everyone should learn. I don’t know if it is true for all SAP consultant with different experience level, and my opinion may change over the period. But still let’s try to see why it is important:

SAP was invented in 1972, that is approx 49 years ago and since then hundreds and thousands of people have worked on this software to make it more efficient and flexible across industries. At least I cannot argue with the fact that, each passing day I learn something new and even if I keep doing this for next 10 years, it’s not going to change. So its become important to use the engine in a right way where hundreds and thousands of consultants share their knowledge.

What we will see in this blogpost:

How to outsource memory to Google
Searching same question in different way to get more accurate result
What are the useful resources/sites to gain deep knowledge of specific topic
Conclusion

How to outsource memory to Google

Let’s kickstart with very exciting title ‘How to outsource memory to Google’

In our day to day work, we come across hundreds of things which don’t make much sense. Let me give you an example, have you used VLOOKUP formula in excel? Most of you might have used this. When I used this formula for the first time, I find hard to memorize it. But on the same time my mind was saying you have to remember this because you will need this in future. So I write down ‘how to use VLOOKUP formula’ in word file for future reference. At start I didn’t even use this formula too often, so I don’t even able to recall the name of formula. So I used to search like below on Google:

And there you go. Got the formula plus How to use guide in first result itself. So why don’t do this every time instead of wasting our memory remembering these stupid formulas. By the way, do you know how many excel functions out there to build different formulas? 475, so good luck remembering these.

Then why not follow same approach for below things?

Transaction codes
FM
User Exits
BTE
Programs

I always follow one rule – Never memorize anything that can be found on Google within 30 seconds.

It is a skill that you must learn by continuously implementing it. At my initial days I used to write down every transaction code and FM/BTE in excel sheet, even though I knew I am gonna get same information from google within seconds. But as I said it is a skill that you need to develop so that you feel comfortable to depend on Google.

Let’s talk about transaction codes. T codes don’t make any sense to me. Let me ask you this question, Do you know how many ERPs have such thing called transaction code? None other than SAP. And it makes sense, like if I have to book sales order, then let me enter ‘SALES ORDER’ why do I have to enter ‘VF01’.

SAP also realize this and that’s why in FIORI (New Interface of SAP) there is no such thing called transaction codes. So now you tell me why one should waste their memory remembering these transaction codes, which is not going to be relevant in future. Plus, when you can get these within 30 seconds from google.

For e.g. I never been able to remember transaction code for assigning tax procedure to country. But I never care, because I know I will get this in first search result:

And there you go. Got this result in less than 5 seconds.

So the point is outsource as much memory as you can to Google.

Whatever information is on google let it be there, don’t try to store it in your brain or in your PC, as long as you know you can get back to it within seconds.

But there are some transaction codes/FM/BTE/Program names for which I have to browse for more than 2-3 mins to get it, so I write down those details somewhere. Until google get smart enough to show those details in first result.

Searching same question in different way to get more accurate result

When you are searching for error in google, always search with error message number. It improves the search result. Let me explain you the logic behind it.

Most of the time when you search for common errors, which is searched on google so often, in those cases there are more chances that you will get more accurate results. But when you are searching for the rare errors on google. You will not get the desired result without error message number. Because google search engine works based on keywords not on sentence, for e.g. in transaction code CAT2 at the time of submitting time sheet user face one error ‘Specify a controlling area’ (This is not as simple error as it sounds here). Now if you search on google with this error, search result will be for controlling area, if you mention transaction code then it will be based on CAT2 tcode.

It will be hard for google to give you desired result because these keywords are so common and rarely searched on google as compared to others, so google don’t have enough data to know what are the result page you are expecting.

But when you search this with error message number it make all the difference, because that error message number is used only in that context.

Let’s check out results on Google:

Search result with: Specify a controlling area

Search result with: Specify a controlling area Message no. LR068

I know this is simple example, but we forgot to use this simple trick, so we should make habit of searching with error message number no matter how simple or rare the error is.

Tip 2: In some cases even after browsing many pages, If you are not getting desired result then try to keep the search area wide open and let Google amaze you with the information

e.g. just type, what is use of AFABN tcode in SAP?

Or error in MB1B transaction code

When you read more information about the topic, different ideas start popping up in your head to solve the issue or to find workaround. It is just like those times when you work on something hours, days and still didn’t get anything and suddenly one day solution pops in your head. This is actually a result of information you continuously process through your brain.

Tip 3: The lesser the keywords, better the result. Try to search your questions with more accurate keywords instead of long sentences. You can try searching with different different words multiple times, instead of adding everything in one single search.

For e.g. Try out below two sentences

Is there anyway to add output type in multiple purchase order at a time in SAP?
Mass output type update in PO

You will see more accurate results for latter one.

In one of the blogs of Moazzam Ali, he highlighted some good points on same topic. You can read that blog by clicking here.

Best Websites for SAP Consultants

https://blogs.sap.com/

It is a one of the finest site to get fair knowledge of any topic briefly. I personally have bookmarked this site and in my free time I like to read random blogs on various topics. It help you to gain broader perspective of SAP as ERP and keep you updated with the latest developments.

https://education.hana.ondemand.com/education/ng/#/home

S4 HANA Tutorials are available on this site, which helps to navigate easy access transactions in S4. More of a end user manual.

http://help.sap.com/

This platform is a one stop reference to all official SAP materials out on internet, you can check for SAP Best practice guides, Blogs, Recordings, SAP Documentation library, Open SAP etc.

http://scn.sap.com/

This is a QnA platform, where over 2.6M questions raised and answered, this makes itself a huge data source. It is useful to find answers for standard SAP errors.

https://news.sap.com/

Here you will find the latest news and information happening in SAP, like latest deals and acquisitions of SAP and future plans. All the news is available in blogpost format, overall it is much more that just a news platform.

Conclusion

At the end the only thing matters is how efficiently you can use available resources. I have seen and worked with many consultants who just rather be stuck in the issue for weeks but don’t spend an hour on Google to get other people view.

When you go on Google, you not only search solution, you explore other sides of the issue, you come to know what other people think about it, you broaden your knowledge of the area, you consume more information about the topic, you get yourself into thinking with more available options…

Let’s stop here. Hope you enjoyed reading it. You can connect with me on LinkedIn.

This blogpost was written by Shubham Chavan. Stay connected with SAP Collge on below platforms and also subscribe to get update of every new blogpost:

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Shubham Chavan December 18, 2021 0 Comments

General SAP

What is MT101 file format and it’s application in SAP

MT101 message is a request to transfer fund from payer’s account to receiver’s. To make the transactions like this, MT101 message format is used to do the communication.

Below is the sample MT101 file format:

Why and where MT101 message type is used?

Well it can be understood if you look at the body of MT101 format. The body of SWIFT MT101 Message contains header, sender/ordering party details and customer/receiving party details. It means there will be blocks of each transaction in MT101 file and each transaction block will contain sender and receiver details.

Now let’s look at the other file formats, which body contains header, transaction details and footer. So these formats are specifically for sending payment from one bank to other receiver’s banks. But MT101 file is made for paying through multiple banks to many banks.

In easy words as mentioned above each transaction will have one sending bank and one receiving bank in MT101 format. So in single file there might be multiple sending banks and multiple receiving banks.

Also Read: Note to Payee Functionality

Hopefully now we understand use of MT101 message but now question arises is how a company/organization use this and how it can be helpful than other file formats?

To understand the answer of this question, We would like give you a scenario. Imagine a multinational company based in USA, who is spread across America having hundreds of company code and thousand bank accounts.

Now when in SAP you do the payment run from each bank account there should be a payment file configured for each bank. Imagine the efforts of having this much DME structures and payment files. It’s a huge activity of maintaining these file formats and matching the all requirements. This is where MT101 helps. With this you can use MT101 format for every bank. All the payment files from all banks will be created in MT101 format.And we know the structure of MT101 (header, sender details, receiver details). Now the trick here is, we don’t send MT101 directly to bank unlike in other file formats. Because we don’t know whether bank will understand MT101 or not.

Read eBook: Controlling – Profitability analysis (CO-PA): Comprehensive coverage of the SAP CO-PA module

So we send all the files to a middle man i.e. SWIFT which act as a middle-ware here and then SWIFT reads the MT101 and take call to which bank this file should go for payment. This is the reason in each transaction MT101 haves details of sending bank/company. This process is helpful to the organisations who use IHC (in house cash management). Who have worked on the IHC might be easily relate to this or find how useful is this.

You can also read this blogpost to know more about MT101 file format.

Thanks for reading, if you want to learn more about bank payment files and DME in SAP then you can checkout this eBook.

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ERP College August 24, 2021 0 Comments

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Category: General SAP

SAP College weekly Newsletter

Everything about FEBKO & FEBEP Table (Part 2)

Introduction

How to schedule background jobs in SM36 (Easiest way to schedule job using Wizard)

Background job in SAP

Schedule jobs using job wizard

How to monitor background jobs?

The Art of Google Search [Must read guide for every SAP consultant]

What is MT101 file format and it’s application in SAP

Contacts