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Audit tests <-> SAP Fields
The complete list of all SAP fields required for every Must-Have internal audit test
A few years back …
… we had the idea that it would be super useful to have a list of all the essential or useful fields from SAP. That was when we got the idea for writing Data Analytics Secrets -although since the first version of the book ended up being over 1000 pages, we had to take out the detail showing the mapping of SAP fields to the 300Framework Must Have Data Audit Tests.
The reason why we thought it would be super useful to have a list of all the essential or useful fields from SAP was because we often spend hours and hours looking for THE field that is going to help us to complete our audit analysis.
I remember about twelve years ago, …
… with one of our first clients, we decided that it would be better to have all the descriptions for code fields in our results tables (we were still in Excel).
At first, we were getting screenshots from F1 in SAP and hard-coding those in (I can’t believe we actually did that) and then we realized that for pretty much all code fields (such as document type, posting key, transaction code), there is actually a text description table that is going to give you the description, that has been entered either as part of the standard SAP configuration or during the configuration of your SAP system.
It took us about two weeks to dig around blogs on the internet to find all of these SAP tables (I can’t believe we did that either – because nowadays we would look up the ABAP code in SAP sandbox and find it quicker!).
Some SAP codes, such as journal entry status do not have a text description table, but even those can be found by looking them up in the relevant SAP configuration table.
Other types of fields that we spent a long time looking for are those to do with currency conversion, the automated calculation of due dates, flags concerning one-time customers or one-time vendors, tables that list out changes and approvals, changes to payment runs and even payment run tables themselves.
Then recently, we got into SAP configuration in more detail, …
… in order to work out the best way to automatically categorize the entries in the auxiliary ledgers. We used to make a pivot table in Excel of document type, posting key, transaction code, etc. and then decide whether we thought those transactions should be categorized as invoices or payments (can’t believe we did that!).
Nowadays, we use all of the wonderful flags that we can find in all of the SAP Chart Of Accounts tables, that let you know what the account is about, if it is for P&L, Balance Sheet, bank, accruals, provisions, special ledger or automated clearing account. All of these flags, put together with the listing of debited and credit accounts per journal entry, help us to automatically determine, with 99% accuracy, if an auxiliary ledger line item is an invoice, a payment, an invoice cancellation a payment cancellation, or something completely different – even fishy.
So, if you are at the stage where you are still digging around the internet, trying to decide which SAP field is THE SAP field that you are looking for, then this Excel spreadsheet could be useful for you.
Just send us your email and we will send you the spreadsheet that lists out all of the SAP tables and fields that we consider to be the most essential for doing the 300 Must Have Data Analytics that we mention in Data Analytics Secrets.
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