The following topics will be covered in detail in this blog. A few topics have already been discussed in other blogs, so I’ll link to those instead.

  • Overview of the Initial Load
  • Initial Load Required
  • Initial Load Financial Accounting Document’s Purpose (Primary postings)
  • In charge of Documents (Secondary postings) 

 

  • Balances for financial accounting loading just
    only loading active items
  • Adding Open Items & Balances
  • Issue with SAP’s Empty Initial Load Summary of Summarization
  • Initial load is crucial in SAP Central Finance, but it is also extremely complicated. Please read this article for a general understanding of initial load and its necessity.

We’ll now discuss the initial load execution alternatives available to an organisation. In addition to understanding how the Implementation programme is managed in terms of deadlines and what the organization’s and its subsidiaries’ financial year is, it is always advised to make the Initial load period as brief as feasible.

Keeping this in mind, every company can choose from the following choices.

How this can be done? All this lies in one setting:

SM30 >> VCFIN_SOURCE_SET

I will explain the approach by referring to the fields as marked in numbers.

Only loading Balances: -1

The system always takes the balances from the start of the fiscal year’s beginning, so please fill out field 1 with the fiscal year from which the balance transfer is required.

Only Documents Loaded: – 2+3

Fill out Fiscal Year 2 and the first period of that year 3 to start transferring line items into the system (from which you want the system to start transferring documents). In the aforementioned illustration, the system begins transferring documents in the first quarter of 2019.

Both – Balances & Documents – are loaded.

Put the year you want the system to start transferring balances from in the 1 field.
Put the year you wish to start transferring documents in the 2 field.
Enter the year’s first period in the field marked 3
Check field 5 for the SAP S/4HANA CFIN system to replicate GL reconciliation postings that are triggered in CO (in the source ECC).

Once the first load is complete and real-time replication is desired, check Field 6 and press OK.

Please read here for an explanation of Field 5 because it’s important to comprehend the entire process.

Now let’s talk about the empty Initial Load: The used instances for Empty Initial Load are listed below.

The organisation will always have the option of loading data at the beginning of CFIN go live. Hey might or might not bring in any balances, unresolved issues, or records from the previous fiscal year. However, it is always a technical requirement to finish the initial load before starting the replication. Therefore, the idea of an empty starting load is relevant in this situation. Initial load is carried out without the transmission of any data, however this execution satisfies the technical need of initial load completion marking in staging tables.
When a company does a CFIN POC and wants to demonstrate that the CFIN actually works, an empty initial load is done to save time (again to meet technical requirements)
Setting for Initial Load when empty:

  1. Company Code
  2. Empty
  3. Put future year
  4. Put anything between 1-12
  5. Put 12
  6. No input
  7. No input

What is the necessary technological setup?

FI papers – The entry for each company code in table CFIN MIG LOG is marked with a date and time stamp, ensuring that the first load is finished from the perspective of the system.

CO Documents – Additionally, the record for each business code and Controlling Area in table CFIN MIG LOG CO is marked with a date and time stamp, ensuring that the initial load is finished from the perspective of the system.

Commitments – The entry for each company code in table CFIN MIG LOG CMT is stamped with a date and time, ensuring that the initial load is finished from the perspective of the system.

Typical SAP Initial Load problems

SAP Initial Load still has to be enhanced functionally and technically in a number of areas.

specialised elements:

  • As long as the documents and objects in the first load travel through AIF, it is still quite fair for CO documents and Cost Objects. Similar to a long novel, financial paperwork are like that. Packages are groups of documents that are executed when posting is executed. The execution of the package is halted if a document in the package contains an error. For instance, if documents 1 through 100 are packaged and document 67 contains an error, the system will stop processing the other documents, and the user will need to fix the issue with document 67 before the package can be processed again On account of this, every time you fix an error and publish it, a new error may appear along with different documents and may be a different error. As in this instance, document number 78 has a new error, which will prevent the package from uploading once more. So it’s like a week-long procedure from both a system performance and an execution perspective (s) 
  • a lot of system resources on both the source and target sides, necessitating significant infrastructure investment.

Functional considerations

  • A number of technical and functional modifications may be anticipated in source systems as a result of a design or technical issue.
    Data flow to CFIN side is not complete if summarization is enabled in the source system. For instance, if the cost centre summarization is turned on, the error message in the documents will state that a cost object is missing (KI-235 or KI-248). Therefore, before running initial load, it is crucial to understand how source system is controlled. There are different types of summarization that can be used depending on the quantity of source systems
  • This will stop all management reporting data from being in CFIN, so even if you technically make it work, the data in CFIN won’t be of that value.
    Ensure that summarization is on and for which reference procedure in ECC.
    It’s also crucial to remember the following FAQ, which is referenced in SAP note 2185467.

How can I configure the settings for document summarization?

The source and Central Finance systems both require the same parameters for document summarising. This is currently crucial because, if the document summarization does not sum up some items in the target system which had been summed up in the source system, a later clearing document will only hold clearing data for cleared document items known in the source system and not for additional items which may exist.

You can still use activity “Enhanced Document Summarization in FI” (transaction OBCYX) in the target Central Finance System if you utilised activity “FI Summarization Dependent on the Object Type” (transaction OBCY) in the source system. You can set up the summarization here according to Company Code as well, which should let you match your configuration to different source systems. (However, if you have many logical systems with various summarizations replicating into the same Company Code, this would not work.)

You should be aware that adding customer-specific fields to BSEG, for example through the coding-block (CI COBL), may prevent the system from summarising BSEG the same way it does in the target. Because of this, you should only add fields to ACDOCA and not BSEG that you need for reporting and that are added at the line item level.

Looking for additional information on summarization? SEE HERE

Additionally, Initial Load and Real Time replication posting programmes operate in entirely different ways, thus any improvements, BADIs, and other changes must be tested from both the Real Time and the Initial Load perspectives.

What are the possibilities:

  • The most recommended course of action is to shorten the initial load period to as little as feasible (let’s say one month), however this necessitates coordination with programme planning, reporting, and other built-in add-ons for consolidations and analytics, etc.
    manually schedule the completion of the initial load using middleware or conventional ETL techniques. Once more, attempt to keep the period brief, but in this case, you must perform an empty first load.
  • Normal Initial Load – then, in addition to having excellent infrastructure, be prepared to have timely test cycles, numerous system refreshes, and a lot of back-and-forth communication to fix difficulties.

I also encourage you to read this blog, which is a compilation of previous postings on SAP Central Finance Initial Load, before I sign out. SEE HERE

Additional video sources

  • List of initial preload checks
  • Groups of initial loads
  • System settings for Initial Load CFIN Source are deleted
  • Enjoy your reading and initial loading.