Validation and Substitution 

Use

You can define your own validation and substitution rules to assist you during asset master data maintenance, You define these rules in Customizing for Asset Accounting. Choose Define Validation or Define Substitution.

Features

Validation

You create your own validation conditions, which serve as check rules when you create an asset master record. These customized check rules supplement the standard check rules. A validation condition consists of the following:

·        Company code

·        Specification of the point in time for the check

·        Validation rule

A validation rule consists essentially of the following elements:

·        Condition, under which the rule should be checked (such as, if the asset class is LVA)

·        Check rule, that cannot be broken (such as depreciation key is GWG1 or GWG2)

·        Number of the error message that the system should produce if the check rule is violated

You must define check rules and conditions which conform to Boolean logic.

The system checks the validation conditions when you change to a new screen while creating an asset master record. If a check rule is violated, the system displays an error message. You specify the number of this error message in the validation rule. You have to create this error message yourself (transaction SE61).

The figure below shows the Customizing settings for a validation rule, and the actions of the user. The validation rule defined is "In asset class 1000 in depreciation area 01, only depreciation keys for buildings are allowed."

Definition of a Validation

Substitution

You can use substitution functions within asset master data maintenance for the following activities:

·        Creating assets

·        Mass changes to asset master data (refer to Mass Changes to Master Data).

·        Changes to business area or cost center, with a resulting transfer document (refer to Changes to Master Data ).

Substitution for Creating Assets

Substitution conditions enable you to create default values, in addition to the defaults from the asset class. Substitution conditions are based on freely definable rules, and are dependent on different master data fields in the asset master record.

You can use this method to complete the Business area field dependent on the contents of the Plant field. The substitution rule could then be expressed in the form of a statement: “If the Plant field has the value XXXX, then replace the value 0000 (initial) in the Business area field with the value YYYY.”

Substitution conditions have the same structure as validation conditions. The most important part of the substitution is the substitution rule. A substitution rule consists primarily of the following:

·        The conditions under which the rule should be checked

·        Substitution if the requirements are met (setting of a constant value in a particular master record field). Or you can use a substitution exit with program code that determines the value to be entered in the master record field.

You define the substitution rules in FI‑AA Customizing. They are based on Boolean logic, as the validation rules are.

You can still change values that have been proposed on the basis of substitution rules. You can change these values manually in the master data transaction. Values that you change manually are not changed again by the substitution rule.

For information on the procedure to follow when creating validation or substitution rules, see the explanations in the FI-AA Implementation Guide. For more information, see the documentation of the FI‑SL component (SAP Library: Financial Accounting - Special Purpose Ledger).