Archiving and Deleting a Customer Master Record (SAP Library - FI Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable)

Archiving and Deleting a Customer Master Record

Purpose

You can archive customer master records that you no longer need. When data is archived, it is extracted from the SAP database, deleted, and placed in a file. You can then transfer this file to an archive system.

For more information on archiving customer master data, see the CA - Application Data Archiving and Reorganization documentation.

The following section explains how to mark master records and their customer accounts for deletion. The deletion process is described in the FI - Closing and Reporting documentation.

Prerequisites

The master record of a customer account cannot be archived immediately. The system first has to check whether the following requirements have been met:

The account must not contain any transaction figures in the system. Transaction figures from previous years that have not been archived will also prevent the system from deleting the account master record.
The account must be marked for deletion in its master record.

Note

You should block an account for posting before you mark it for deletion. The only effect this deletion flag has is to cause a warning to be issued every time you subsequently try to post to this account.

You can delete the test data before going live with your system. For more information, see the Delete Customer Master Data activity in the Implementation Guide (IMG) for Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable.

Process Flow

The organization of master data in your system is also an important part of marking master records for deletion. When you mark a customer master record for deletion, you can set the deletion flag for all company codes or just for one specific company code. Using the central function, you can set a deletion flag for both the Financial Accounting (FI) and the Sales and Distribution (SD) application components.

You can cancel a deletion flag at any time as long as the master record has not yet been physically deleted from the system.

Note

If all open items in the customer account you are deleting have been cleared, you should block the account for posting so that no further postings can be made to it. For more information on this, see Blocking a Customer Account.

Result

To carry out the following maintenance function...	Choose...
Marking a Customer Master Record for Deletion Centrally	Master records -> Maintain centrally -> Mark for deletion
Marking a Customer Master Record for Deletion for Accounting	From the Accounts receivable main menu, choose Master records -> Mark for deletion