Integration: Filling Customer Fields 

Use

To be able to use customer fields to run reports based on your own criteria, the necessary information must be made available - either during document entry or during the transfer from other ERP applications or external interfaces. Only when the fields are filled correctly and completely can the reports produce meaningful results. For this, particular attention needs to be given to integration aspects – such as integration with Materials Management(MM), with Sales and Distribution (SD), with industry solutions, and with external interfaces.

Features

During posting, you can fill your customer fields in the following ways:

●      With manual posting

●      With automatic derivation

Manual Posting

For documents that you post manually in Financial Accounting, you can also enter values manually in the customer field.

To ensure that the customer fields are filled whenever required, you have to make the necessary settings either in the field status control or – in Financial Accounting – in validation. For more information, see Customizing Customer Fields.

Data entry in Materials Management constitutes a special case. Here, you can make an entry for a customer field as early on as in the purchase requisition or, at the latest, in the purchase order. However, this is not possible with sales orders in Sales and Distribution, for example. Here, you have to use automatic derivation.

Automatic Derivation

You can use the following functions to automatically derive values and fill customer fields with them.

Substitution in Financial Accounting

In the SAP standard system, customer fields are also immediately released for substitution at event 2 (line item). Event 1 (document header) is not relevant for substituting a field at the item level. In general, all fields of the structure CI_COBL, and therefore all customer fields, can be substituted.

For more information about tables and structures, see Data Structure for Customer Fields.

As of ERP 2004, new General Ledger Accounting does not allow you to use the modification described in SAP Note 386896 for activating substitution at event 3, since otherwise inconsistencies could arise between the entry view and general ledger view.

Business Transaction Event (BTE)

You can also use an enhancement in the context of Business Transaction Events (BTEs) – either instead of substitution in Financial Accounting or coupled with it. In this way, you can add additional components and link them to the SAP system. Within BTEs, you can use process interface 1120 (Post Document: Field Substitution Header/Row).

The BTE method is suitable for documents from other applications, such as Materials Management (MM) and Sales and Distribution (SD).

BAdI AC_DOCUMENT

For all documents that are posted to Financial Accounting using the AC interface, customer fields can be enriched within the Business Add-In (BAdI) Change the Accounting Document (AC_DOCUMENT).

For more information, see the system documentation for this BAdI.

Substitution in Controlling (CO)

For cost elements, you can also use substitution in Controlling (event 1) to enrich customer fields. However, the functions of this substitution are comparable to those of substitution in Financial Accounting (event 2). For more information, see SAP Note 392273.

User Exits from Sales and Distribution (SD)

Program SAPLV60B provides user exits especially for billing document transfer in SD. You can also use these user exits to enrich customer fields on G/L account items. For more information, see SAP Note 301077.

ALE Interfaces

If you have a distributed SAP system landscape and you distribute accounting documents, then you can consider using user exits from ALE. In SAP enhancement F050S001, you have the option of enriching customer fields for the incoming and outgoing sides. For more information, see SAP Note 47410.

External Interfaces

The SAP system offers a number of ways for creating postings that arrive in the SAP system by means of an external interface. In addition to the conventional method of posting documents using batch input, you can also generate postings directly using direct input, or using BAPI or ALE/IDoc. For each of these methods, you need to examine when and how customer fields can best be filled; it is not possible to make any statements here that are generally applicable. For example, fields may already be filled by an interface program that generates a batch input session, or you might use a substitution here as well.

Regardless of how you fill customer fields in the entry view, the customer field is either projected to the other document items during document splitting or inherited by means of document chains during clearing, thereby producing the general ledger view. Note that making the document splitting criterion a required entry field means that there must always be a corresponding account assignment.