Understanding Accounting

• Accounting fields specify the organizational and financial entities that are affected by a transaction.
• Called "accounting strings" or "chartfields" in ERP systems.
• Accounting fields are used for many business purposes. They are usually used by the general ledger in your ERP system.
• Examples of Accounting Fields:
  • Companies
  • Business Units
  • Cost Centers
  • Departments
  • GL Accounts
  • Project Codes
  • Product Codes
  • Regions

• Accounting is assigned at the line-item level
  • Accounting in the SAP Ariba Buying System is extremely flexible. You can use accounting fields to record departments, cost centers, accounts, projects, or any category supported by your general ledger or ERP systems.
  • Each requisition line can have a different set of accounting.
• The accounting assigned on a requisition remains on that transaction as it flows through system
  • Requisition → Purchase Order → Invoice → Payment Request.
  • Accounting can be changed as needed during the transaction flow.

You can split accounting for a line item. You might split accounting if an item will be used by multiple departments. Or, you might split if an item must be charged against multiple ledger accounts.

For example, if you are purchasing equipment that will be used by your Marketing, Human Resources, and Finance departments, you would split the accounting three ways and specify the cost centers of those three departments.

You can split a line-item’s accounting for allocation across multiple entities.

• Split it across multiple Cost Centers, Accounts, Projects, or Departments
• Impacts the budget of each specified entity

Specify a percentage of the line-item amount for each accounting field.

• For example: 60% Marketing and 40% Legal
• Must total to 100%

• SAP Ariba offers default accounting structures that correspond to the most commonly integrated ERP systems.
• These accounting structures are called "variants" and they define the "flavor" of SAP Ariba.
• Variants determine the structure of the accounting fields and other data formats, which makes them "ERP friendly"
  • SAP variant for integration with SAP
  • PeopleSoft variant for integration with PeopleSoft
  • Generic variant for integration with Oracle and other ERP systems
• The SAP Ariba system variant is determined during the sales cycle based on the ERP systems that your organization uses. The SAP Ariba deployment team tailors the deployment based on the variant being delivered to your organization.
• Variants make SAP Ariba "ERP friendly" from an integration perspective, with import/export files that use field names and data structures that are recognized by your ERP system; for example:
  • Accounting fields and structures
  • Accounting field relationships and validations
  • Supplier files

• Purchase Org
• Plant
• Purchase Group
• Item Category
• Company Code
• Account Category
• Account Type
• Asset
• General Ledger
• Cost Center
• Internal Order
• WBS Element

• SETID
• Account Type
• Business Unit
• GL Business Unit
• Account
• Department
• Statistics
• Product
• Project

• Your ERP is the source of truth regarding accounting field names and allowed values. SAP Ariba loads these names and values and then allows users to select them when specifying accounting in requisitions.
• Your organization does not need to use all available accounting fields
  • Use the ones that are used by your ERP systems
• Data values for accounting fields are loaded from the ERP, which is the "source of truth"
• To fill out accounting fields, users select from lists of these preloaded values

• Users do not have to fill out all accounting fields
  • Some or all of the field values can be defaulted
  • Users can change field values from these defaults
• Defaulting can be based on the commodity:
  • Example: Office supplies are always charged to Account 101325
• Defaulting can be based on the user
  • Example: Alice belongs to Cost Center 16004
• User Default
  • Show online user profile
  • Defaults loaded with user master data in User.csv
• Commodity Default
  • Show Partitioned Commodity Code Map online
  • Default accounting loaded in ERPCommodityCodeMap.csv

• Accounting data is loaded from the ERP, which ensures that values are valid in that system.
• The accounting values on a transaction are also checked against one another to ensure they are valid in combination.
  • PeopleSoft and Generic variants use an Accounting Combination file that specifies valid combinations of values
  • SAP variant uses a collection of combination files that validate pairs of fields
• Accounting Combinations tend to be one of the most complex, voluminous, and difficult files to prepare. It does not exist as a simple extract from the ERP system. Instead, it must be logically constructed using data for individual accounting fields and logic that determines which values for one field are valid in combination with which values for another field.

• Accounting can:
  • Determine approval workflows
    • Signing-level authority based on Cost Center and Amount
  • Define budgets
    • Budgets defined by Project Codes and Accounts
  • Drive journal/ledger entries in the ERP
    • Accounting is passed to the ERP on transactions approved for payment