What is SAP ?

SAP

Stands for

Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing

(German: Systeme, Anwendungen, Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung)

It started in 1972 by five former IBM employees by Wellenreuther, Hopp, Hector, Plattner and Tschira in Mannheim, Germany, states that it is the world's third-largest independent software vendor.

The goal of the company was to provide large enterprise customers with the ability to interact with a corporate database in real-time.

Today, the company states that its goal is "to offer the industry's most comprehensive portfolio of business performance and optimization solutions for companies of all sizes."

SAP's first software application was a Financial Accounting Software suite that ran on a mainframe and was known for its stability. It eventually became known as the R/1 system. The "R" stands for real-time. During the 1980s, the company went international, and the second iteration of the R system (R/2) accommodated different languages and currencies. In the 1990s, the third iteration (R/3) moved from the mainframe to a client/server three-tier architecture composed of a database, software applications and a common Graphical User Interface (GUI). SAP used the name R/3 until the 5.0 release. At that time the name was changed from R/version to ERP Central Component (ECC). The most current version as of November 2009 is ECC 6.0.

When the Internet became pervasive, SAP responded by providing companies with the software they needed to sell goods and services online. Their product portfolio got a Web interface and was rebranded MySAP.com.

MySAP was designed to be a corporate Web portal with role-based permissions for employees . The company promoted how SAP "solutions" could link commerce conducted over the Internet (e-commerce) with traditional bricks and mortar commerce to provide one seamless view of the business. Next came SAP NetWeaver, the company’s development and integration platform and middleware component, and Business Suite, a bundling of SAP’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) applications. In 2008, SAP purchased Business Objects, a French enterprise software company that specializes in Business Intelligence (BI), which marked a major change in the company’s BI strategy, which was previously focused around SAP's Business Explorer tools.

Current products include:

• SAP NetWeaver - Service-Oriented Technology Platform (SOA) for integrating information and business processes across diverse technologies and organizational structures. NetWeaver provides the foundation for other SAP software bundles.

• SAP Business Suite - software applications for large organizations and international corporations. The applications support core business operations such as supply chain managment, warehouse management, sales, customer relationship management and administrative functions. SAP offers software for 25 vertical industries, including banking, insurance, chemicals, healthcare, retail and consumer products.

• SAP Business All-in-One solutions, SAP Business ByDesign and SAP Business One - software products that address the needs of small and mid-market companies.

AUDIT TRAIL ANALYSIS FOR FRAUD CONTROL WITH SAP R/3

Objectives of Audit Trail

•Deductive fraud auditing –vendor fraud
•Introduction to audit trail analysis
•Role-based access control in SAP R/3
•Audit trails in SAP R/3
•Fraud detection methodology

Deductive Fraud Auditing

•Overview:
–Understanding the business or operations.
–Performing a risk analysis to identify the types of frauds that can occur.
–Deducing the symptoms that the most likely frauds would generate.
–Using computer software to search for these symptoms.
–Investigating suspect transactions.

Audit Trail Analysis

•Audit trails are daily records of significant events.
•These may be retained on-line for a period, before being archived.
•They incur significant overheads.
•Some reporting facilities may be provided.
•Audit trail analysis is ex-post analysis of user activity.

Purposes of audit trail analysis:

–Review of patterns of access.
Examine history of access by individual users or groups of users, showing actions performed or attempted. Audit trails also can report which users have performed specific functions, such as changes to vendor master records or the entry of vendor invoices. Analysis of audit trails may also reveal limitations in the organization’s security model and its implementation.

–Review of changes in security.
Changes made to the security of the system can be reviewed periodically by an independent person for authorisation and integrity.

–Review of attempts to by-pass security.
Audit trails may be reviewed for attempts and repeated attempts by users and intruders to perform unauthorised functions.

–Deterrent against attempts to bypass security.
Users should be aware of the existence of audit trail analysis and its use to detect attempts to bypass security.

–Fraud detection.
Audit trails can be used to detect potential fraud by searching for red flags. The actions of users who are potential suspects can be reported and analysed to facilitate investigation for actual fraud.

Audit records have these fields:
–Date
–Time
–Client.
–User-id.
–Transaction code.
–Terminal name.
–Message ID.
–Message text.

Summary

• The T-Code for Audit Trail is AUT10
•Audit trails provide a rich source of data for proactive fraud detection.
•Must deduce likely symptoms in target system, and proactively search for them.
•Feasible to extend methodology to anomaly detection, highlighting changes in user behaviour which may also signal potential fraud.

Configuration of Partner Function and Partner Determination Procudure

Step by step procedure for configuration of Partner Function and Partner Determination Procedure.

There are 2 steps:

Step 1:

From IMG -> Sales and Distribution -> Basic Funcitons -> Partner Determination -> Setup Partner Determination Procedure and Select "Set up Partner Determination for Customer Master" :

a) Create the Partner Functions

b) Create Partner Determination Procedure

c) Define Partner Function in Procedure

d) Define Account Groups - Funtion Assignment

e) Define Partner Determination Procedure Assignment
( It is to make relationship of Account Group and Partner Determination Procedure)

Step 2 :

From IMG -> Sales and Distribution -> Basic Funcitons -> Partner Determination -> Setup Partner Determination Procedure and Select "Set up Partner Determination for Sales Document Header" :

a) Create Partner Determinatin Procedure

b) Define Partner functions in Procedure

c) Define Partner Determination Procedure Assignement

Note :
There are 4 types of Partner Type:
1. Customer (KU) = Sold-to-Party
= Ship-to-Party
= Payer
2. Vendor (LI) = Vendor
= Forwarding Agent
3. Contact Person (AP) = Contact Person
= Buyer
4. Employee (PE) = Sales Person
= Representative

There are 4 default Partner Functions in the Standard Order Customer Master :
1. Sold-to-Party
2. Ship-to-Party
3. Bill-to-Party
4. Payer

How to restrict the number of SD Line Item in Billing Document (Maximum Number of items in FI reached)

SD configuration allows you to setup document splitting rules.

This sets a maximum number of SD line items on a billing document.

When SD billing is executed, it creates more than one billing document (and therefore FI document) whenever the threshold is breached by maximum 999, the system gives the error message "Maximum number of FI reached, No Accounting Document Generated"

Simply work out how many FI line items you generate per SD line item.

e.g If you create 3 FI line items per SD line item, then the maximum number of SD line item would be 333 in a billing document.

Therefore, you need to define maximum number of Line item in Billing Document.

To customize it you need to go to:

Go to IMG path -- SD --> Billing -> Billing Docs -> Country specific features.

There select your sales organization and maintain the maximum number of line items you want in billing.

Also in copy control VTFL, for your item category, you can see a field "data VBRK/VBRP" where you maintain routine 006.

SAP CEO: India is getting expensive (Latest News)

Escalating personnel costs in India -- one of the world's largest markets for off-shore software development services -- have prompted business software vendor SAP to begin looking elsewhere for lower-cost, skilled programmers.

"India is slowly getting expensive," SAP Chief Executive Officer Henning Kagermann said in an interview published Monday in the German edition of the Financial Times. "We have decided to hire a certain number there, and then start looking at other locations."

For detailed news please visit:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/sap-ceo-india-getting-expensive-416

Blocks in SAP (Tips n Tricks)

In Sales Order , you can block the following transaction:

1. For Shipping
2. For Billing

There are four types of Blocks in SAP:

1. Billing Block
2. Delivery Block
3. Reason for Rejection
4. Order Reason

At Header Level of Sales Document Type, you can put the following Blocks:

1. Billing Block
2. Deivery Block
3. Order Reason

At Line Item Level of Sales Document Type, you can put the following Blocks:

1. Billing Block
2. Reason for Rejection

At Schedule Line Level of Sales Document Type, you can put the following Blocks:

1. Delivery Block

Note : Billing Block prevents the Invoicing. Delivery Block prevents the creation of Delivery in general. It allows the delivery and Picking but blocks the PGI (Posting Goods Issue). Reason for Rejection can be entered in one or more line items. In copy control, these items can be stopped from being copied into subsequent documents.

How to make Incompletion Log as Mandatory in any Sales Order (Tips n Tricks)

We can make Incompletion Log mandatory in any Sales Order
thru

T-Code VUA2

Click the Check box of IC Dialog. This will not allow to save the Sales Order unless the document is complete.

The IMG path for the same is:

IMG-> Sales and Distribution -> Basic Function -> Log of incomplete Items -> Assign Incompleteness Procedure -> Assign Procedure to Sales Document Type -> Click at IC Dialog Check Box

16 Control Data of Pricing Procedure

These are 16 Control Data of Pricing Procedure:

- Pricing Type
- Step
- Condition Counter
- Condition Type
- From
- To
- Mannual
- Mandatory
- Statistics
- Print ID
- Subtotal
- Requirement
- Condition Formulae for Alternative Calculation Type
- Alternative Formulae for Condition Base Value
- Account Key
- Accruals

Note: If the Calculation Type is defined at Pricing Procedure as well as Condition Record, then the preference will be given from Condition Record.

Changing Tax in SAP

How to change Tax in SAP:

In IMG go to:
->Finacial A/C New -> Tax on Sales/Purchase -> Basic Setting -> Check Calculation Procedure

Now define
Condition Type -> go to Record for Access

Change the Tax.