Index Life in Financial Accounting (FI) (SAP Library

Index Life in Financial Accounting (FI)

In addition to document type lives and account type lives, you can also define index lives.

The system distinguishes between secondary, account-based and document-based indexes:

Secondary indexes contain information on G/L, customer and vendor accounts that is used when displaying line items.
Account type archive indexes contain similar data as found in secondary indexes, though less comprehensive. They contain the information you need to be able to access documents by account.
Document type archive indexes are a direct link between a given document and its data stored in the archive. They enable you to access the archive directly, for example to display the document. This function also applies to displaying G/L, customer and vendor account line items.

The secondary index life and the archive index life determine whether and for how long an index for a document (based on the posting date and index removal program key date) should remain in the system following archiving. If the index life is longer than the account or document life, a document can be archived and deleted from the database while the information stored in the secondary index remains in the system.

Example

Assume the archiving key date is 4/1/1996 and the secondary index life is 60 days. The posting date is 3/15/1996 for document A and 1/15/1996 for document B. This means that the secondary index for document A will not be deleted at the time of archiving whereas that for document B will.

You define secondary index lives and account type archive index lives in Customizing by following the menu path Financial Accounting Global Settings ® Document ® Accounting Document Archiving ® Archiving, Account Type Life. In addition to defining the account type life, you can also define the account type archive index life and secondary index life. Note that the index life must always be greater than or equal to the account life.

You define the archive index lives for document types in Customizing under Financial Accounting Global Settings ® Document ® Accounting Document Archiving ® Archiving, Document Type Life. As above, this index life must always be greater than or equal to the document type life.

This also guarantees that a document can be displayed from the archive in the line items list. You can display these from the display line items function in the General Ledger, Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable menus.

You can only display line items from an account if the secondary index still exists. From the line item display, it is then possible to access the documents stored in the archive file. Note that the system can only locate those documents for which the document type archive index still exists.

Document-based and account-based archive indexes are constructed when the archive is written. You make this setting when customizing the archiving object by selecting the indicator Fill index under the technical settings for the archiving object FI_DOCUMNT.

If you accidentally delete a secondary, document-based or account-based index or need to reconstruct one for any reason, see Starting the Index Construction Program for Documents (FI) for more information.

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

In the local currency changeover year do not remove secondary indexes for documents that are to be reconciled in the current fiscal year. These are needed for the local currency changeover. To protect the secondary indexes to be reconciled in the current fiscal year, set the secondary index life to at least 366 days. Ensure that the index life is at least as long as the difference in days between the beginning of the fiscal year and the time of conversion. Note that you must know when conversion is to take place and also be aware of company codes with non-calendar shortened fiscal years. After the local currency changeover you can reset the index lives customizing to the original values.

Further information on the archive index is contained in the Archive Documentation Kit under Extended Function Library Applications. You find this documentation in the SAP Library under Basis Components ® ABAP Workbench.

To learn about the settings that need to be in place to be able to use the function Display individual documents from the archive, see Displaying Documents from the Archive (FI).