Defining a Flexible Upload 

Use

You define flexible upload in customizing to import data from a file into the consolidation system.

This specifies which data format the file has.

Procedure

A. Define the Task

Define a task for data collection so you can execute the flexible upload in the consolidation monitor.

B. Define the Upload Method

1.       Create an upload method and give it a name.

2.       Select the upload category (for example, reported financial data).

3.       If more than one characteristic is available for the selected upload category, select the characteristic to be uploaded.

Settings

1.       Specify whether the field lengths of the uploaded fields are fixed or variable.

2.       Specify which column separator is used to separate the columns (for example, the Tab character).

3.       Define the row types.  You can select one of the following:

-         Header row with data rows

-         Row type indicators

If you select the header row with data rows option, define a character to represent comment rows.

If you select the row type indicators option, the system interprets all data rows without an indicator as comment rows.

4.       Specify how digits are separated (for example, by periods or commas).

5.       Choose the update mode to determine how existing data is treated during uploads. For example, existing data can be overwritten.

6.       For uploads of transaction data, determine whether the debit/credit sign attributes of financial statement items and subassignments are to be taken into account.

7.       Specify one of the input types, cumulative or periodic.

Field catalog

Specify which data columns the upload file has, and what sequence they are in. To do this, drag the desired fields from list of available fields to the field catalog.

You can also use multiple free fields.

C. Assign a Method

If transaction data is to be uploaded, do the following:

Assign the upload method to a data collection method.

Assign the data collection method to the respective consolidation unit in the data collection task.

See also the section Data Collection Method.

D. Prepare the Upload File

Make sure that the upload file possesses the attributes you specified in method customizing.

The upload must have the file type text.

As an alternative, you can first create the file in Microsoft Excel™. Then you can save the spreadsheet as a text file by saving the workbook with the file extension .TXT or .CSV.

Before you upload the data, check the Excel file as well as the text file.