What data you need mate?

[Former Member]

FICO Consultant: We’re done with successful UAT phase of the project, now we need to migrate legacy data to SAP ERP.

User:  What data? And from where can I get it?    :smile:

FICO consultants are less likely to face this question if they had prepared a Data Migration Strategy (DMS) Document and presented to the users in Business Blueprint Phase….. But preparing this document is not easy right?

Many junior consultants would try to search the web to find a DMS document or try to contact some senior folks for guidance, which is fine.  Senior folks may try to search folders of their earlier projects.  Even if we get few DMS documents, we need to understand well what data we need? And educate the users so that they may provide us good data.  In the following few paragraphs, in a simplest possible way, I would try give you the concept of data we need in each of the FICO sub modules.

Off course, we need Master Data of all important objects like GL, Customer, Vendor, Asset, Cost Center, Profit Center, Activity Types, SKF and so on……  but I would keep my focus on transactional data only, as this is what users need to understand.  I’ll also not go to the technical details of upload methods like LSMW, BDC etc. assuming we all know it.

Apart from normal GL accounts, we need one or more Data Migration GL Accounts, which must have a ZERO balance after the data migration. It’s a key check for accurate data migration in FICO.  The data migration GL Accounts must have line item display and Open Item management ON in their master data. 

General Ledger:

For simplicity we assume that we are migrating data from the start of a new fiscal year.  In this case we don’t need to migrate P&L Accounts.  Only Balance Sheet accounts should be migrated.   Even if the data migration is required during a Fiscal Year, I would not recommend migrating P&L Accounts.  In this case we should consider Financial Statements of the Last Closed Fiscal Period and post the difference of P&L accounts to Retained Earnings account defined in OB53.

Here we’ll talk about all balance sheet accounts except reconciliation accounts of Customer, Vendors, Assets and Materials.  The key decision to make here is to move all open items in each GL Account OR only the ending balance?  Obviously it’s a business decision but being FICO Consultant we should strongly recommend our customer to move only the ending balances of all GL Accounts.  An exception to this rule may be Inter-Company GL accounts.   We may need to break up the ending balance of IC GL Accounts for each Trading Partner Company code.

For each debit balance GL account e.g. Assets, data migration account will be credited. Vice versa for Liabilities and Equity accounts.

Assets:

For assets data migration we need to do some settings in SPRO for each Company Code we want to migrate.  The following settings are necessary:

The company code status must be set to 2:

We need to specify the date of Legacy Data Transfer. It determines the last closed Fiscal Period/year in Legacy System:

Rests of the settings are optional depending upon different factors, such as if the data migration takes place at Fiscal Yearend or during a Fiscal Year.

After the settings we can upload Asset Balances (APC and Accumulated Depreciation) through AS93.  We also have the option of migrating NBV (Net Book Value) if required by Business Users.  In my experience it’s better to migrate APC and Accumulated depreciation both which automatically calculates NBV.

AUCs (Asset Under Constructions) are treated differently than normal fixed assets.  We may need to migrate Open Items of AUCs.  It’s because the earlier AUC Line Items may still be open at the time of Data Migration OR more values are expected against some AUCs in future.

Accounts Payable:

All of the open vendor items (Invoices and Debit/Credit Memos) should be migrated to SAP ERP during Data Migration.  By “Open Items” I mean real open items: Means Invoices or Debit/Credit memos which are not actually paid.  Some times in many legacy systems Users may not have “Clearing” functionality i.e. they can’t knock off Invoices with Payments and Debit/Credit Memos.  In this case Users may have to do an extra effort to identify the real Open Items. If they can’t than it’s better to take only Vendor Balances, obviously with User’s acceptance/approval.

Data Migration GL Account gets debit for each Open Invoice and Credit for each Debit Memo.

Accounts Receivable:

Customer balances are very similar to Vendors.  I would recommend migrating Open Items and not merely ending balances.  We need to make sure Trading Partner Field is properly filled in all Intercompany Customer and Vendor Account Open Items.

Data Migration GL Account gets Credit for each Open Invoice and Debit for each Credit Memo.

Cost Center Accounting:

No balances are loaded to Cost Centers in case of Year End Data Migration.  We may need to upload Activity Type Quantities and Planned Rates through KP26. We may also need to upload SKF (Statistical Key Figures) for Allocation Cycles which may be used as Cost Drivers / Tracing Factors.

Periodic Cost Allocation business processes are not normally followed by many companies in Legacy Systems, so we may not need any upload for allocation cycles.  There may be few allocation cycles which may be manually created after agreeing with Users.

Product Cost Planning:

This one may be the most complicated task in data migration as we may need to create Standard Cost Estimate for all of the Materials (Specially Finished and Semi Finished Goods).  Since Standard Cost Estimate is highly integrated with BOM, Routings, Work Centers, Cost Centers, Activity Types, SKF, Material Master etc… getting an accurate or close to the legacy Standard Cost Estimate may require a lot for repetitions and adjustments in prices / quantities.

I may write a separate blog for this in future.

Profitability Analysis and:

No data migration may be required in COPA unless you agree on migrating P&L Accounts, which I would never recommend.

Profit Center Accounting:

In case New GL and Document splitting is ON, we need to assign Profit Center in all of the GL, AP, AR and Asset Balances.  No separate PCA transactional data upload may be needed.

Data Migration in SAP is a big subject, I understand it can’t be covered in one short write-up.  I write this document to share my experience with all of you and to know your experiences as FICO Consultant which you faced during the Data Migration phase.  I hope this blog may initiate some productive discussion about SAP Data Migration and we may share our knowledge.