With the Tools function, you can create sets, as well as check the posting structures in your system and display the contents of your FI-SL direct posting tables.

FI-SL contains the following tools to help you improve your system performance and setup:

• Sets

• Diagnosis Tool

• Control Report Tool

• Ledger Statistics Tool

Sets are used throughout the FI-SL System as the building blocks for many of the FI-SL modules. In FI-SL, you use sets to group together data and to define data hierarchies. Under a set name, you can store specific values or ranges of values. These values exist within one dimension.

You can create specific sets for:

• Projects managed by a specific manager

• Products sold to a specific distributor

• Cost centers belonging to FI

• Assets, liabilities, sales, and expenses accounts

You can also create sets that use more than one dimension.

You use sets and set values in several components of the FI-SL System, such as:

• Report Writer

• Validations/substitutions

• Allocations

• Planning

• Rollups

• Currency translation

• Ledger selection

Sets are maintained centrally by the Set Manager.

Because sets are centrally maintained, you can use the same set in more than one FI-SL function.

You define sets using the Set maintenance function. Sets are easy to create and maintain, and give you more flexibility when maintaining your system. Also, with sets you are not faced with the difficulties of maintaining extensive master files and tables.

In the FI-SL system there are four different types of sets: Basic sets, data sets, single-dimension sets, and Multi-dimension sets. You can use:

• Basic sets to store specific set values for one dimension

• Data sets to store record types and currency/quantity types

• Single-dimension sets to create a hierarchy of basic sets and other single-dimension sets that use the same dimension

• Multi-dimension sets to combine sets with different dimensions

When you create basic, single-dimension, data, and multi-dimension sets, you create the building blocks for a set hierarchy. With single-dimension sets, you can create a set hierarchy that links together sets with the same dimensions. Using multi-dimension sets, you link together sets with different dimensions. User-defined set hierarchies provide you with added flexibility, since these hierarchies are not defined as database structures.

By rearranging hierarchies or by moving the order of a dimension in a multi-dimension set, you can produce reports with the same information, but in different formats; you can also change the order of information in the report.

There is no limit to the number of levels you can define in a set hierarchy. Before you begin building a set hierarchy, you should plan the structure of your hierarchy and know how you will use the hierarchy. You should also know which dimensions, sets, and values you want to use in the hierarchy.

You use the diagnosis tool when you want to test your system setup and determine how and where a document will post or has posted to the FI-SL System. You can then determine why a specific document is not posting to a ledger.

You use the control report tool when you want to display and/or print the contents of the FI-SL direct posting tables (ATAB tables). The FI-SL direct posting tables are defined in Customizing for Special Purpose Ledger and determine how documents are posted into the FI-SL System.

You use this tool to display the number of records that have posted for a ledger, as well as the database tables to which records have been posted.