Central Finance Tips and Tricks #3 – Understand the Utility Programs
Understanding what utility programs are available, when and how to use them are important for Central Finance implementations. The purpose of this post is to give a brief overview of utility programs that I have found useful.
Central Finance: Check Mapping
Program: RFINS_CFIN_MDG_MAPPING_TEST
This program allows you to test value and key mappings configured on your Central Finance system. The program is quite useful during the configuration of value mappings because it quickly allows you to validate whether the configuration is correct.
Using the program is straightforward, enter your source system the mapping object and the source value(s). If the mapping object has context associated like controlling area or chart of accounts enter these as well.
Apply note 2542156 to get a better user experience with this utility.
Reopen Technically Cleared Items referenced by an AIF clearing
Program: RFINS_CFIN_REOPN_TECH_CLRD_DOC
Use this program to reopen technically cleared items that were loaded as part of the initial load (Clearing document is set as “ALE-extern”) that have a subsequent error in AIF due to a clearing being transferred from source systems.
The related error message in AIF is FINS_CFIN_AC_DOC 056 “Ref. open item already cleared (comp.code $1, f.year $2, doc $3, item $4)”
Typically technically cleared items come about from:
- The time between FI initial load, re-opening of technical clearings and the start of replication. In other words, the longer the period between initial load extract and the start of replication the more likely you will have to use this utility
- Reversals and reset of clearings of documents that were part of the document transfer period to central finance
One issue with this utility program is that it does not automatically restart the messages in error in AIF. You have to manually restart these and it may result in you running multiple iterations of RFINS_CFIN_REOPN_TECH_CLRD_DOC then FINS_CFIN_AIF_ERR.
For related information refer to SAP note 2491347.
Repost missing cleared items to Central Finance
Program: RFINS_CFIN_CORR_MISSING_CLRITM
The use of this program comes about from 2 different scenarios:
- During processing of a follow-on document the referenced document was not found. This is usually a temporary problem caused by the sequence in which documents are processed. Either the processing of the follow-on transaction was started before the referenced document was posted or reprocessing of the referenced document using the function “Central Reversal with reposting” was incomplete
- This error message might also be generated in AIF for a reset clearing transaction if the open items which are referenced by the reset clearing have not been replicated into the Central Finance system, for example, because they were not included in the initial load.
The related error message in AIF is FINS_CFIN_AC_DOC 051 “Referenced document not yet posted (Comp.Code $1, F.Year $2, Document $3)”.
The program will post new documents on central finance and the offsetting line will be booked to the data migration take-on account configured in the CFINIMG step Define Clearing and Substitution Accounts (table FINS_CFIN_SACC).
Once the missing items are posted then restart the messages manually in AIF, the program does not do this automatically. Again it may result in you running multiple iterations to load missing items and restart the AIF messages manually to clear all the errors.
After the AIF messages are processed the take-on account will balance to zero.
Central Finance: Deletion of FI Documents
Program: RFINS_CFIN_DELETE_DOCUMENTS and FINS_DELETE_DOCUMENTS
Especially useful in test phases to delete and reset loaded data from the FI interface. This program is available with SAP note 2503301. Also consider corrections in notes below.
| 2600989 | Central Finance EC-PCA Initial Load (CFIN) |
| 2635041 | CFIN: deletion of RF048 |
| 2601925 | Deletion report: WITH_ITEM is not deleted |
| 2548002 | CFIN Deletion report |
| 2457869 | How to delete FI / CO documents replicated to Central Finance |
To delete individual documents use program FINS_DELETE_DOCUMENTS.
Central Finance: Deletion of CO Documents
Program: FINS_CFIN_CO_DOC_DEL and FINS_CFIN_CO_DOCS_IL_RESET.
This deletes data loaded from the CO interface on a document basis. If you are looking for a mass delete then use program FINS_CFIN_CO_DOCS_IL_RESET.
Central Reversal with Reposting FI Documents
Program: RFINS_CFIN_REVERSAL_REPOST
This program is available as a pilot with note 2393791. To access this note you have to raise an incident on component FI-CF-AC. Please be aware that this program has many limitations documented in the note.
What this program allows you to do is reverse and repost documents into central finance provided they have only been transferred as part of replication (documents posted from initial load are not supported!).
This is particularly useful when it is not possible to reverse and repost a finance transaction on the source system. Some reasons for using this tool are to correct:
- Incorrect business mapping (key or value mapping, cost object mapping)
- Incorrect customer-specific logic in BAdI methods
- Incorrect application logic (e.g. fixes applied to Central Finance system)
- During test phases for example to test variations of document splitting configuration
Central Reversal with Reposting CO Documents
Program: FINS_CFIN_CO_DOC_CRCT
Similar to the utility mentioned above but this tool covers CO documents.The limitations of this tool are much less because all CO documents are loaded into Central Finance by replication using SLT and clearing processes are not supported or necessary in CO.
Execute single step in the mass data framework
Program: FINS_MASS_DATA_TEST
The mass data framework is the tool set used by the Central Finance initial load. It is used also in a number of conversion processed in the finance area for system conversions to S/4 HANA. Using this tool probably warrants its own post so I wont go into any details.
Broadly speaking you can use this tool to extract, simulate posting, simulate mapping and post initial load data using specific package keys. You can nominate the package keys yourself that gives you the ability to test with 1 or many documents.
Hi Marc - Liked your blow a lot on Central Finance. Its detailed but also explained in very simple language.
We too are going live with CFIN in couple of weeks time and encountered a scenario, wanted to share it with and see if you too have encountered it. We encountered a dump in class CL_FINS_CFIN_AC_DOC_AGENT (specifically within method
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map_partner_bank_type) due to inconsistent data coming from source. An assert condition was violated. My problem is this message then doesn't appear in my AIF error framework.
The run status in completed whereas the package status in STARTED. Effectively my message is stuck and in IN PROCESS status. My concern is if this happens in live system, how do we know if it doesn't appear in AIF error logs.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Cheers,
Arun
Hi Arun,
You need to put a process in place at month end to check on messages that are "stuck in process" that do not show in AIF.
You can find these from table CFIN_AIF_IDX_TBL Central Finance: AIF Message Key Fields and create a query or custom report. For the messages stuck in process the fields below will all equal 0.
Once the error cause e.g. mapping, SAP note etc is resolved then you can restart the messages using XML restart /AIF/XML_RESTART.
Good luck with the go live.
Cheers
Marc
Thanks Marc for the quick response, we will try and set up a process around this. However this does seem like a gap in standard SAP processing. Thanks for the query details.
One more thing we noticed is - if we set up of run time config group as synchronous and the dump occurs, system tries to proces the same message every minute. I left my runtime config group synchronous overnight in my test system to come back to thousands of in-process messages and dumps. Is this expected behaviour, ofcourse we wouldnt do that with a live system - just being curious.
I wanted to ask you one more thing, which user id does SAP pick to run the SLT jobs like -
/1LT/IUC_LOAD_MT_***
/1LT/IUC_REP_MSTR
For us it just seems like whoever did the first configuration, all subsequent configurations are run under the id of the first person.
Cheers, Arun
Hi Arun,
Can you post questions please instead of on this blog? I can then respond there and others can more easily find the answers.
Thanks
Hi Marc,
Your blog is very helpful
Question of the program: RFINS_CFIN_CORR_MISSING_CLRITM
We are faced with a 051 error scenario where "transaction type" is 'I' (Inverse Posting of Accounting)
The program hasn't contemplated the case, will you know an alternative to correct this error?
Regards
Hi Luis,
I suggest you raise an incident on component FI-CF-AC. An inverse posting suggests that the original document should already be in CFIN to reverse, so perhaps there is a different problem in an preceding process.
Thanks
Hi Luis,
Also check if note 2735087 - Reopen Technically Cleared Items Referenced by a Clearing AIF Message is relevant for you
Thanks