How are accounting combinations and accounting combination groups validated?

The following are some basic guidelines about accounting validation:

• Use the AccountingCombination.csv file (Import Accounting Combinations task) to define valid combinations of accounting entities.
• Typically, you use accounting combinations to support existing accounting combination validation in your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Your accounting combination data must specify every allowed combination of accounting entities.
• When viewing the possible choices in an accounting field chooser on an approvable document, the chooser displays only the valid choices, given the values you selected for other accounting fields.
• If you do not set up an accounting combination for a field, your site does not use that field in accounting validation. For example, if you do not load any data in the AccountingCombination.csv file, no validation occurs.
• If your accounting combinations do not include any value for a particular accounting field, that field is not used for accounting combinations, and any value of that field is considered valid.
• You can customize accounting combination behavior by specifying the unique name of an accounting combination validation group in the optional CombinationGroup column of the AccountingCombination.csv.
• Customers do not have access to implement accounting combination groups; an Ariba representative must handle any changes to the configuration.
• An accounting combination group defines a full set of accounting combinations that is enforced. Accounting combination groups can significantly reduce the number of entries in accounting choosers through the use of multiple accounting combination validations and wild cards.

If you have a large number of accounting combinations in your configuration (more than 100,000 combinations), the following configuration is recommended:

• Use accounting combination groups in the AccountingCombinationGroup.csv file (Import Accounting Combination Groups task).
• Use a chooser order to define an order in which accounting fields are chosen and how the values are filtered.
• Define multiple accounting combination groups for sets of accounting fields that should be validated within the group but do not need to be validated among all accounting fields.

Keep in mind that accounting combinations and accounting combination groups apply to generic and PeopleSoft ERP variants; these concepts do not apply to SAP variants. One consideration for customers using a PeopleSoft ERP system is that any validation or chooser constraint configured in the AccountingCombinationGroup.csv file acts in addition to the default SETID constraints. If you do not want the SETID constraints, configure the data so those constraints are trivial (all data belongs to the same SETID).

Understanding Accounting Combination Groups

Each accounting combination group defines a full set of accounting combinations that are enforced. If there are multiple accounting combination groups defined in the AccountingCombinationGroup.csv file, these accounting combination groups are evaluated jointly against the AccountingCombination.csv file. This feature is especially useful if certain accounting fields do not depend on each other, and it can significantly reduce the number of entries in accounting choosers. For performance reasons, do not use more than five accounting combination groups.

In the AccountingCombinationGroup.csv file, each group has integer entries for all the accounting fields. Each integer represents the following behavior:

In addition to the each accounting field having its own column, the following columns also appear in the AccountingCombinationGroup.csv file:

• The UniqueName column defines the unique ID of the accounting combination group. This value is cross-referenced in the CombinationGroup column of the AccountingCombination.csv file.
• The optional ChooserOrder column specifies how accounting fields are enforced and filtered.

An Example Configuration

Assume a customer has the following configuration:

AccountingCombination.csv file

UTF-8
UniqueName,CombinationGroup,BUSINESS_UNIT_GL,SETID_DEPTID_
1,"A","US004","SHARE:Engineering"
2,"A","US006","SHARE:Marketing"

AccountingCombinationGroup.csv file

UTF-8
UniqueName,GLBusinessUnit,Department,ChooserOrder
"A",1,1,"GLBusinessUnit:Department"

The ChooserOrder column value of "GLBusinessUnit:Department" means that the values available in the Department accounting chooser on an approvable document are filtered and restricted based on the value selected for the GLBusinessUnit field. This means that users can select either "US004" or "US006" for the GLBusinessUnit field, even if the resulting accounting combination is invalid. However, when choosing a value for the Department field, users are constrained to the only choice:

• If users select "US004" as the GLBusinessUnit, they can select only "SHARE:Engineering" as the Department value.
• If users select "US006" as the GLBusinessUnit, they can select only "SHARE:Marketing" as the Department value.

Multiple Levels of Filtering

You can also employ more than two levels of filtering in a single accounting combination group. For example, you can define "GLBusinessUnit:Department:Account" in the ChooserOrder column to filter the Department field based on the GLBusinessUnit field, and filter the Account field based on the Department field.

Additionally, using a slash (/) symbol in the ChooserOrder column can greatly improve search performance within accounting fields. For example, take the following AccountingCombinationGroup.csv file configuration:

UTF-8
UniqueName,Account,BusinessUnit,ChooserOrder,Company,CostCenter,Product,Project,Region,SubAccount
Group1,1,0,Company:Product:Project:Account:SubAccount:Region/Product:Project:Account:SubAccount:Region,1,0,1,1,1,0

For the "Group1" accounting combination group, every value after the slash (Product, Project, Account, SubAccount, and Region) is counted only after you choose a value for the Company field. This lets the search index check only the Company values when selecting a Company, rather than checking for all the possible combinations of Product and Company.

The Accounting Combination Groups task is a sensitive import. Hence, it is restricted to SAP Support only. If you need to update the accounting information, please log in a Case with SAP Ariba Support with the CSV file to be used in the import.

For more information on accounting combinations, see the Ariba Common Data Import and Administration Guide that corresponds to accounting information for your specific ERP variant. Also, consult your site's data dictionary for more information on how to configure the AccountingCombination.csv file.

If you need to permanently delete all inactive accounting combinations, ask SAP Ariba Customer Support to run the Delete Inactive Accounting Combinations scheduled task.

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