Managing Document Parking Basics and Document Holding

An employee in financial accounting is currently entering documents in the SAP S/4HANA application. One of the documents that the employee is dealing with consists of ten line items. The cost center for item nine cannot be determined exclusively from the documents. The employee cannot save or post the document because it is incomplete, so the employee must assign the general ledger (G/L) account to a cost center. If the posting procedure is interrupted, then the employee will need to re-enter the data.​

Holding or Parking Documents as Possible Solutions

Document entry can be interrupted for a variety of reasons. The user department is looking for a way to temporarily save the data entered up until the point of interruption so users can resume data entry from the same point.

Holding documents and parking document allows users to retain entries without performing complete FI posting.

The Hold Document function allows you to temporarily save the entered data so that you can continue data entry later. Documents that the SAP S/4HANA application holds do not have to be complete.

The account balances are not updated in the held documents, and the data of the held document is not available for evaluation. The SAP S/4HANA application does not assign any document number to the held documents.

The user making the data entries is prompted to name the document after selecting the Hold Document function. The user can find the document under this name at a later time.

A user can complete, post, or delete the held document at a later point in time. However, there is a risk of forgetting held documents and not posting them completely.

Document parking enables you to enter incomplete documents in the SAP S/4HANA application. With document parking, you do not have to run extensive input checks on incomplete documents. When parking documents, the SAP S/4HANA application assigns a document number using the document type in the same way as with normal FI postings. You must pass on the document number if it has been assigned externally.

Parked documents can be supplemented, checked, and posted later on. No data, such as transaction figures, can be updated when parking documents. Data from parked documents is available to the system for real-time evaluations. As a result, for example, amounts from parked documents can be used for the advance return for tax on sales/purchases.

The Park Document function is available for conventional postings and the new posting screen.

Additional Park Document Functions

Parked documents can be completed, changed, posted, and deleted at a later point in time.

Parked documents must be complete in order to turn them into correct FI postings. You need to delete parked documents that are no longer required.

The document parking feature does not support substitutions. If you need to use substitutions with parked documents, you must first turn them into accounting documents.

The Park Document functions are more effective than the Hold Document functions. Many companies use document parking to implement the dual-control principle. Authorizations allow you to model areas of responsibility. ​

• Document parking and holding retain entries without complete posting.
• Hold documents temporarily save data for later completion.
• Park documents assign document numbers and allow for later posting.
• Use parking for accounts receivable, accounts payable, and general ledger.