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SAP Library

Working notes on SAP, written as pages rather than as chat history.

The rule this library is built on: an answer that only exists in a Teams thread gets asked again next quarter. So when a question is worth answering properly — the mechanism, not just the verdict — it gets a page here, with the fields, tables and transactions that let the next person verify it themselves instead of taking anyone's word for it.

Published as a searchable site: https://masiarek.github.io/sap-library/

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Area What's in it
01_FI — Financial Accounting Payments and clearing · document types and number ranges

Payments, clearing and intercompany

A three-page sequence, in reading order:

  1. How F110 knows a payment is debit or credit — the sign is stamped on the line item, not derived by the program; a payment line is always the mirror of the item it clears; and a net debit vendor group is never paid, whatever payment methods exist.
  2. Intercompany settlement, worked end to end — two company codes, four subledger accounts, one month of trade; gross vs netted vs central settlement; and the stranded balance that neither payment run can act on.
  3. Why intercompany reconciliation is hard — no common key, no single owner, currency, cash in transit, and the ten controls that actually reduce the pile.

Document types and number ranges

  • Numbering design for an inbound interface — when an external system posts accounting documents into SAP: dedicated document type or reuse, one type or two, internal or external assignment. Includes the two reframings that usually settle the argument — the sending system transmits its number under either mode, and database-rejected duplicates are the feature, not the drawback.
  • Worked decision: numbering for an inbound AR interface — the framework argued through to a recommendation on a real question: a legacy system posting customer documents into S/4, in a landscape already burnt once by an uncoordinated range reuse. Anonymized.
  • Document types and number ranges — what a document type governs versus what its number range does; how intervals resolve per company code and per fiscal year; the SD-FI interface and the RV document; and why a year-dependent FI range and an SD=FI number identity cannot both exist. Includes the distinction that saves the most wasted effort: European numbering statutes almost always name the invoice number, which is SD's, not the FI accounting document number.

How these pages are written

Four conventions, in priority order — the reasoning is in CONTRIBUTING.md:

  1. Mechanism over verdict. "It won't do that" is worth little; "it can't, because the selection set never contains those items" is worth keeping.
  2. Every claim gets a verification path — the table, field, or transaction where the reader confirms it in their own system.
  3. Provenance is stated. A page written from experience says so; a page confirmed against a named system names the system and the date. The two are not the same evidence and are never presented as if they were.
  4. No message numbers from memory. Release-dependent text is read from the system, not quoted from a page.

Glossary

Field names, abbreviations and the terms that mean something specific in FI: GLOSSARY.md.