IDoc Interface Between External Billing and Accounting with Update in CO-PA 

Use

The IDoc ACLREC01 makes it possible to transfer data from an external billing system to the accounting applications in the SAP System via the "FI/CO interface". This IDoc corresponds to the communication structure defined by OAG (the Open Application Group) for BODs (business object documents) for importing a billing document from an external system (Load Receivable).

If desired, you can update the data in Profitability Analysis (CO-PA) at the same time.

Prerequisites

External billing data is transferred to Profitability Analysis with the record type "F". You do not need to maintain the SD interface in this case, since the data is sent via the segments of the IDoc.

The system valuates the data during the transfer, provided that you have maintained a valuation strategy for the record type "F" in Customizing.

You can choose to summarize the data for each document upon transfer. This makes it possible to reduce the volume of data in the CO-PA line item table and may improve runtimes during the update.

To do this, enter the following in Customizing under Actual postings ® Summarize upon data update:

See also Summarization During Data Transfer to CO-PA

Features

Filling the IDoc Fields

When it generates an operating concern, the system automatically assigns the fields of the IDoc segments to the characteristics and value fields in the operating concern. You can see these assignments under Tools ® Data Transfers Between CO-PA and Other Systems ® Data Transfer via FI/CO Document ® Field Assignment in Customizing.

Because these assignments are only valid in one operating concern, the segment fields of the IDoc can have different semantic meanings in different operating concerns. For example, a segment field might contain the characteristic "Form of manufacture" in operating concern S001 and the characteristic "Strategic business unit" in operating concern ZK23.

Validity Check for Characteristics

Characteristics are transferred using six CO-PA-specific segments (E1KEVA1 through E1KEVA6). These contain all the characteristics and unit of measure fields defined in the operating concern.

When determining the profitability segment from the characteristics, the system checks the validity of the characteristic values. If a value does not exist in the corresponding check table, the system displays an error message.

Validity Check for Value Fields

All the value fields are transferred via six segments especially for CO-PA (E1KEVA1 through E1KEVA6). This means that different segment fields in the IDoc need to be supplied with identical values (for example, for FI and CO-PA).

The system does not check whether the values transferred to CO-PA are identical to those transferred to Financial Accounting (FI) in other segments of the IDoc. This is due primarily to the fact that it has to be possible in CO-PA to update Product Cost Planning (CO-PC) with imputed values and the costs of goods manufactured even though they do not result in an FI posting at the time of billing.

For this reason, the external system must ensure that the values are correctly sent to the IDoc.

 

The segments for value fields cannot contain a different currency from that of the other segments of the IDoc.

Note that CO-PA has a special way of handling +/- signs during the update. Revenues, sales deductions and costs are all transferred with a "+" sign. Returns and credit memos are transferred with a "-". The system calculates net revenues and contribution margins in the information system using the calculation rules stored in a report line structure. Due to this handling, you need to supply identical values with different signs in the different segment fields of the IDoc.

The external system needs to ensure that the +/- signs are correct.

See also:

For technical information, see Interfaces to Accounting.