Upgrading from SAP S/4 HANA 1610 to 1709 will give you a weird PCA message

Here is how to solve it …..

Recently at a customer, I went through an upgrade from SAP S/4 HANA 1610 to 1709 version and right after the technical upgrade was completed by the Basis team; we started having a weird message about Profit Center Accounting (PCA) not being active.

For those of us that have been around for a while and we have worked in the past with ECC6.0 (and even ECC5.0), we know that ever since the introduction of New GL (back in 2004 for ECC5.0 and ECC6.0 in 2005), SAP has incorporated Profit Center Accounting scenario into FI and that you did not require to have activated anymore Profit Center Accounting on the CO – Controlling side.

With this you would no longer have to run reports out of Ledger 8A in PCA and the old tables GLPCA would no longer be filled. Same as GLT0. All of course in the case you would have activated in a greenfield implementation (or Migrated) New GL.

Now all of a sudden, many versions and years later, I was having a weird error message in SAP after the upgrade to 1709 telling me that PCA was not active. Because of this the system came to a halt and no Financial postings could go through. All in a perfectly healthy system that was running without any issues on 1610 without PCA being active.

As a side note, the environment was coming from an old upgraded ECC6.0 to S/4 HANA 1610 but this client never had Classic GL nor PCA activated before. They were right from the beginning in New GL

There was no mention to something like this in the 1709 Simplification Notes (at least at the time on Oct-2018), no OSS Notes on the subject either.

The error message was FINS_ACDOC_CUST415

If you look at the message, it is a little bit confusing. On one side it says that the scenario is obsolete, that needs to be transparent so you need to activate it; and on the other side it says that Activating Ledger 8A is not mandatory. But without that option activated, your system will still not work. So ?? Make up your mind SAP ??

What was the solution then ??

So the solution was to activate PCA Posting in Tcodee 0KE5 and save. But this SAVE, does not trigger a transport, this Tcode does not do it.

Then you would trigger a transport with Tcode 0KEP and move it across your landscape.

After, the posting problem was solved and the old PCA Tables where not getting posted. (Ex. GLPCA), our error gone and the system back to normal.

If your Company and/or Project needs to implement this, or any of the functionalities described in my Blog, or advise about them, do not hesitate to reach out to me and I will be happy to provide you my services.

www.dnabusinessconsulting.com

ALE Distribution of Master Data

A couple of months (posts) ago I wrote about propagating Chart of Accounts and GLs through ALE to other environments. But GLs accounts are not the only objects that can be transferred through ALE. In fact there are tons of Master Data objects that can be transferred using ALE in SAP. 

I put together a small list of some relevant Master Data objects that could be relevant for Finance (from my perspective).

As I mentioned before in my other post (ALE Chart of Accounts to other environments) , you need to Create / Update your Distribution Model before you can start defining new objects that you want to transfer through ALE.

This is a Table that gives you a list of the TOP objects that I transfer normally through ALE, with their corresponding Message Types, Tcodes to trigger them and setup for the Partner profiles.

These are the Outbound Partner Profiles

These are the Inbound Partner Profiles

Remember, as I mentioned in my other post; once you trigger your IDOCs. You should be able to monitor them in the sending system with WE02 and then in the receiving system with WE02 too. If you have errors, those are most likely from you Partner profiles setups, check them and re-process or re-trigger the IDOCs.

If your Company and/or Project needs to implement this, or any of the functionalities described in my Blog, or advise about them, do not hesitate to reach out to me and I will be happy to provide you my services.

www.dnabusinessconsulting.com

SAP Product Costing, Cost Estimates Tables

These are some important Tables within the SAP Product Costing module. This tables store all the data related to Cost Estimates (aka Standard Cost Calculation executions).

Each time you run a Cost Estimate (Tcode CK11N individual / CK40N mass), internally a Cost Estimate number / Cost Estimate number is created to store your Material execution.

Table: KEKO - Product Costing - Header Data

This table contains a header record for each Material, Costing Date, Plant. It also contains all the Dates, Lot size, unit of measure, user that has executed it, costing variant used and date that the Cost Estimate was marked and released among many other data.

Then you have other tables that give you the details of the data contained in this Header / Cost Estimate execution.

Table: KEPH - Product Costing: Cost Components for Cost of Goods Mfd

This table contains the total calculated amounts for each of the Cost Components according to your Cost Component config.

Your link between this one and KEKO is the Product Costing Number / Cost Estimate number. There is one line per Header record in KEKO. 

You have Cost Field KST001 all the way until KST040 for a Total of 40 different Cost Components.

Finally you have Table CKIS

Table: CKIS - Items Unit Costing/Itemization Product Costing

This table contains every single line item for your Cost Estimates as per your BOM (Bill of Materials) and Routing. One record per Material contained in a BOM and/or activity in a Routing, with the Cost Element derived from it Plant, Material, determined price, quantity, unit of measure and Total Valuation among many other information.

The link with KEKO is the Cost Estimate number.

With all this info, you could easily reconstruct your Cost Estimate results.

If your Company and/or Project needs to implement this, or any of the functionalities described in my Blog, or advise about them, do not hesitate to reach out to me and I will be happy to provide you my services.

www.dnabusinessconsulting.com