SAP FICO Interview Questions and Answers - 13

266. What is a ‘Transfer Variant?

A ‘Transfer Variant’ is dependent on whether the Company Codes involved are legally

dependent or independent. Transfer variants specify how the transferred asset will be valued at

the receiving Company Code and the type of transaction (acquisition or transfer) used for the

transaction.

Figure 64: Transfer variant

267. Explain ‘Asset Retirement’ in FI-AA.

‘Asset Retirement’ is an integral part of asset management. You may retire an asset by sale or

by scrapping. In the case of sales, it can be with revenue or without revenue; again, the asset

sale can be with the customer or without the customer.

Figure 65: Asset Retirement

During asset sales transactions, the system removes the APC (Acquisition and Production

Costs) and also the corresponding accumulated depreciation, then the profit or loss arising

from the sale is recorded in the system. Even in the case of ‘partial retirement’ or ‘partial sales,’

the system records the proportionate gain/ loss arising from the transaction. Any tax posting

arising from the transaction is automatically created by the system.

SAP provides various ways of posting retirement in the system, which includes:

􀂃 Mass retirement

􀂃 Asset retirement with revenue

o With customer (involving integration with FI-AR)

􀁸 Debit customer, credit assets

o Without customer

􀂃 Asset retirement without revenue

o With customer

􀁸 Debit clearing account, credit asset

􀁸 Debit customer in A/R, credit the clearing account

􀂃 Asset retirement using GL document posting

T Code ABOAN ( Asset Sale Without Customer)

268. Describe Transfer of ‘Legacy Asset Data’ to SAP.

One of the challenges in the implementation of FI-AA is the transfer of ‘Legacy Asset Data’ from

your existing systems to SAP FI-AA. Though SAP provides multiple options and appropriate tools

to carry out this task, you need a carefully planned strategy for completing this task. You may

have to transfer the old asset values through any one of the following ways:

􀂃 Batch data inputs (large number of old assets)

􀂃 Directly updating the SAP Tables (very large number of old assets)

􀂃 Manual entry (few old assets)

Normally, you will not have to use the manual process as it is time consuming and laborious;

however, you may do this if you have a very limited number of assets. Otherwise, you may use

either of the other two options, though batch data input with error handling is the preferred way of

doing it. You need to reconcile the data transferred, if you resort to any of the two automatic ways

of transferring the data. You may also use BAPIs (Business Application Programming

Interface) to link and process the asset information in SAP FI-AA from non-SAP systems.

The transfer can be done at the end of the last closed fiscal year, or during the current fiscal year

following the last closed fiscal year. You will be able to transfer both master data as well as

accumulated values of the last closed fiscal year. If required, you can also transfer asset

transactions, including depreciation, during the current fiscal year. It is important to note that the

GL account balances of the old assets need to be transferred separately.

269. Outline ‘Automatic Transfer of Old Assets’

SAP provides you with the necessary interfaces for converting your ‘legacy asset data’ into

prescribed formats for upload into the SAP system. The data transfer workbench allows you to

control the entire data transfer process.

Figure 66: Legacy asset transfer to SAP FI-AA

i. These interface programs convert the data so that it is compatible with SAP data

dictionary tables such as BALTD for master data and BALTB for transactions. If you have

more than 10 depreciation areas, then you need to change the transfer structures for both

BALTD and BALTB.

ii. The converted data is stored in sequential files.

iii. Use the data transfer program RAALTD01 (for batch input) or RAALTD11 (direct table

update) for transferring the data to SAP.

􀂃 Do a test run. This will help to correct errors if any.

􀂃 Do a production run, with a few asset records, to update the relevant tables in

FI-AA.

􀂃 Reset the values in the asset Company Code.

􀂃 Continue with the production run for all the assets.

iv. All the asset records without errors will be updated immediately through background

processing in relevant tables such as ANLH, ANLA, ANLB, ANLC, etc.

v. The records with errors will be stored in a separate batch input session, which can be

processed separately.

270. What is an ‘Asset Transfer Date’?

The ‘Asset Transfer Date’ refers to the ‘cut-off’ date for the transfer of old assets data from your

existing system. Once established, you will not be able to create any old assets in SAP before

this reference date. Any transaction happening after the transfer date but before the actual date

of asset transfer needs to be created separately in SAP after you complete the old asset transfer.