Integrating and coordinating business operations for several enterprises worldwide, Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing or SAP has been an industry game changer. With over a number of fully integrated modules, the SAP system efficiently covers virtually every aspect of business management.
Developing a successful business model, depends highly vis-à-vis the industry it wishes to compete in. Since the business environment differs for every industry, the communication and management needs to be tailor-made for every enterprise.
SAP offers solutions to aid your company run better with best practice business process and intelligent technologies. It promises intuitive industry specific priorities and solution capabilities.
Energy and Resources:
SAP provides reliable solutions for the energy and resources industry which will enable the business to tap into deeper customer insights, speed time to market, optimize the supply chain, and maximize brand and promotion investments. similarly, it aids digital logistics by improving speed, efficiency, and sustainability by aligning distribution and fulfillment processes and collaborating with logistics participants. SAP gives real-time visibility and transparency of manufacturing operations, optimize processes, and collaborate in global networks. Enterprises can plan inventory and supply through cross-functional collaboration, analysis, and optimization of demand signals, supply constraints, and financial considerations. SAP solutions can help businesses manage commodity prices and risks, plan and execute shipments, run maintenance operations, and connect to operational technology. This industry includes construction, production and manufacturing, chemicals, mining, oil and gas, and textiles.
Financial Services:
With banking and insurance shifted to a digital platform, the need for SAP is inevitable. SAP supports seamless connectivity, highly automated core processes, superior financial insight, and risk control, all supported by data-driven intelligence. Therefore Financial institutions use this ERP software to assist sales, services, marketing, and digital engagement for context-sensitive, cross-sell, and up-sell offers and profitable product and service bundles.
Therefore it is very useful to attract, cultivate, and maintain consumers by managing a multichannel environment to maximize customer engagement.
Consumer Industries:
SAP drives innovation in consumer-based industries by increasing transparency, improving collaboration and project management between R&D, and enforcing compliance and quality. It braces the supply chain by optimizing customer services and profitability by balancing supply to meet dynamic demand at optimum cost. Businesses can revolutionize decision making with analytic capabilities to discover, plan, and predict better business outcomes. SAP also provides database management solutions to gain real-time insight anywhere and anytime.
Discrete Industries:
The SAP software empowers businesses in the discrete industries (such as defense, automobiles, high tech, software providers, etc) to accelerate vehicle and service innovation, improve quality, reduce manufacturing costs and sell and service vehicles more profitably. This boosts market share growth in a highly competitive global market.
Service Industries:
SAP enables service industries (media, sports, cargo transportation, telecommunications, and travel) to monitor performance against plan and respond quickly to market change. It helps you understand the performances of all marketing activities to optimally plan resources and drive customer loyalty and growth. It ensures consistency between financial, logical, and physical views of network assets. In all consumer channels, it helps to deliver contextually relevant and personalized experiences.
Public Services:
These include defense and security, future cities, healthcare, education, postal, and public sector services. SAP helps you design, analyze, and review public processes and drive positive outcomes for society. In addition, it aids government organizations to adapt swiftly, innovate constantly, and transform the lives of citizens.
In conclusion, In today’s data-driven world, businesses in any industry are incomplete without SAP. Success may vary from industry to industry, but the key is inefficiently managing complex business processes. SAP allows companies to proactively deliver on their organization’s purpose and performance.
Working in SAP is fundamentally a technical job and while theory and strong concepts are imperative for candidates applying for the position, practical and applied knowledge are much needed as well. Like most interviews, SAP candidates will be especially questioned about their previous experience and roles.
Listed below are 30 frequently asked SAP Interview Questions and Answers Every Candidate needs to take a look at:
1. What do you mean by ERP?
Ans. ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning Software and is an integrated computer-based system used to manage a company’s resources effectively. It ensures smooth flow of information amongst various departments in an enterprise or a company and manages the workflows.
2. What do you know about SAP?
Ans. SAP is the abbreviation for Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing. It is a German company founded in 1972 by Wellenreuther, Hopp, Hector, Plattner, and Tschira. Along with the name of the company, SAP is its ERP product as well. Leading the ERP industry, SAP customers include around 92% of the Forbes Global 2000 companies. Alongside SAP is also a market share leader in analytics, supply chain management, human capital management and experience management.
3. List the Different Modules in SAP.
Ans. SAP provides several industry- specific solutions and has various modules such as Financial Accounting, Controlling, Enterprise Controlling, Investment Management, Sales and Distribution, Human Resources, Production Planning, Business Warehousing, Quality Management among many others. As the world expands, the list too is ever-growing.
4. Explain Metadata, Master data and Transaction data.
Ans. According to the commonly agreed categories of data in the data management field:
I. MetaData is data about Data i.e it tells you about the structure of data or MetaObjects.
II. Master Data is the key business information about customers, employees and other business elements that supports transactions.
III. Transactional Data describes business events and is the largest volume of data in the enterprise, for example buying from suppliers or selling to customers.
5. Which are the three stages of data mining?
Ans. Data mining is the process of discovering hidden, valuable knowledge by analyzing a large amount of data. It is a very important process, advantageous for various industries, such as manufacturing, marketing, etc. Three stages of data mining include
Initial Exploration
Model building
Deployment
6. Mention what is the difference between SAP BASIS and SAP ABAP?
Ans. SAP ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming) is a high level programming language used within SAP to customize, generate forms, generate reports, etc. While SAP BASIS is the administration module of SAP used to control code changes, upgrades, database admin, network setup, etc. It is the technical foundation for SAP and consists of middleware programs and tools that support the interoperability and portability of SAP applications across systems and databases.
7. Explain what is meant by “Business Content” in SAP?
Ans. Business Content in SAP is a pre-configured set of role and task-related information models that are based on consistent metadata stored in the SAP warehouse, which can be used directly or with desired modification in varying industries. It provides selected roles within a company with the information that the roles need to perform their tasks.
8. Mention what are the standard stages of the SAP Payment Run?
Ans. SAP provides Automatic Payment Run which manages payments and carries out tasks like posting accounts payable (payment to a vendor) automatically. It also helps you find out due/overdue invoices, process consumer lists and vendor invoices to make payments seamlessly.
In the SAP Payment Run, the standard stages of SAP includes
Entering parameters includes entering company codes, vendor accounts, payment methods, etc.
Proposal Scheduling includes the system proposes a list of invoices to be paid.
Payment booking is the booking of the actual payments into the ledger.
Printing of Payment forms.
9. What is Bex?
Ans. Bex means Business Explorer. It enables the end-user to locate reports, analyze information, view reports and can execute queries. The queries in the workbook can be saved to their respective roles in the Bex browser. It has components like Bex analyzer, Bex Map, & Bex web.
10. What is NetWeaver?
Ans. NetWeaver is an integrated technology platform for all products in the my SAP suite to run on a single instance of NetWeaver, known as SAP Web Application Server (SAP WEBAs). NetWeaver is beneficial as you can access SAP data using the web (http protocol) or even mobile. All in all, it helps you save on costs involved in training users on SAP Client-side GUI.
11. Mention what is the process to create a table in the data dictionary?
Ans. Data dictionary is viewed as metadata in the SAP database with the metadata stored by the database and is used to create and manage data definitions, create tables, data elements, domains, views and types.
To create a table in the data dictionary, you have to follow these steps:
Creating domains (data type, field length, range)
Creating data elements (properties and type for a table field)
Creating tables (SE 11)
12. Mention what is the importance of ODS in BIW?
Ans. An ODS (Operational Data Store) object serves to store debugged and consolidated transaction data on a document level. It defines a consolidated dataset from one or more sources of information. This dataset can be evaluated with a Bex query or an Infoset query. The data of an ODS object can be updated with a delta update into InfoCubes or other ODS objects in the same system or across systems. Contrary to multi-dimensional data storage with InfoCubes, the data in the ODS object is stored in transparent, flat database tables.
13. Other than SAP, are there any ERP softwares in the market?
Ans: Yes, there are others available in the market such as Microsoft Dynamics, PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards, Baan, etc. Each of these ERPs has different specialities. Apart from these, there are various other lesser known ERPs and many small enterprises tend to use them because of the cost factor.
14. What drove you to choose a career in SAP?
Ans. Enterprise Resource Planning is the backbone of any large organisation. Without using an ERP, the functioning of these organisations is bound to slow down and be vulnerable to errors. I had always dreamt of working in an MNC and since SAP is at the top of the ERP market, it was the obvious choice. SAP is said to have 140,000+ installations and 25+ specific business solutions. I think working in such an accomplished company with so many intellectuals will push me to the best of my capabilities.
15. In SAP, how many simultaneous sessions can you have?
Ans: In SAP, a user can have 6 simultaneous sessions at one time for one client.
16. What are the different layers in the R/3 system?
Ans: There are three main layers in the SAP R/3 system;
Presentation Layer
Database Layer
Application Layer
17. What are the most common transport errors that you can come across?
Ans: The most common transport errors in occurrence are:
Return Code 4
Return Code 8
Return Code 12
Return Code 18
18.Mention what is the difference between Domain & Data Element?
Ans. The basic difference is that data element is an intermediate object between domain and table type, whereas domain defines attributes such as length, type and possible value range.
19. What does an update type with reference to a match-code ID mean?
Ans: Whenever the data in base tables of a match-code ID changes, it needs updating. In this instance, the update type tells us about the time when the match-code needs updating and also clarifies how to do it. Another significant function of the match-code is that it defines the method which is to be used for building match-codes.
20. What are SET parameters & GET parameters?
Ans. To use parameter IDs, you need to SET values in the global memory area and then GET values from this parameter ID memory area. In the case of the online program, you have to SET values from screen fields, and you will GET these values for screen fields.
21. What do you mean by one-time vendors?
Ans. In certain industries, it is not feasible to create new master records for every vendor trading partner. One-time vendors enable a dummy vendor code to be used for an invoice entry, and the information that is normally stored in the vendor master is keyed on the invoice itself.
22. What is an extended star schema?
Ans: The star schema is an amalgamation of fact tables and dimension tables. Separate tables are used to store master data and these tables have reference to characteristics in dimension tables. These separate tables are called extended star schema.
23. Why do organizations generally choose to implement SAP?
Ans. Organisations choose to implement SAP as it is highly configurable and assures secure data handling. Along with that there is minimum data redundancy and maximum data consistency. Organizations can also take advantage of economies of sales like purchasing apart from tight integration-cross function. SAP makes coordination of resources across the organisation swift and effective.
24. Does SAP have its own database management tool?
Ans. SAP is not a database itself but an application that uses databases provided by other servers like Oracle, or SQL Server.
25. What does ‘transaction’ mean in SAP terminology?
Ans. According to SAP terminology, a transaction is a series of logically connected dialog steps.
26. Explain the application, presentation, & database servers in SAP R/3?
Ans. The application layer of a R/3 system is made up of the application server and the message server. Application programs in an R/3 system run on application servers. Using the message server, the application servers interact with presentation components, the database, and also with each other. All the data are stored in a centralized server, which is the database server.
27. Explain what is a company in SAP?
Ans. In SAP, ‘company’ is the highest organizational unit for which financial statements like profit and loss statements, balance sheets can be drawn according to the requirement of organizations. A single company contains one or many company codes. All the company codes in SAP must use the same COA (chart of accounts) and fiscal year.
28. Mention the two types of services that are used to deal with communication?
Ans. To deal with communication, you can use two types of services:
Message Service is used to exchange short internal messages by the application servers.
Gateway Service allows communication between R/3 and external applications using CPI-C protocol.
29. Name the different types of variables there are?
Ans. The different types of variables are characteristics variable, hierarchies, hierarchy nodes, text, formulae, processing types, replacement path and default type.
30. Mention some shortcomings of SAP
Ans. Despite being a game-changer in the data management field, SAP has a few setbacks. These include the high cost and lengthy implementation time. It demands a highly trained staff as the interface can be a bit complicated. SAP also does not determine where master data resides.
E-Invoicing Under GST India: Where Efficiency Meets Transparency
Over the years, companies all over the world have been replacing paper invoices with electronic versions to improve efficiency of business. Tax authorities and governmental organisations have begun enforcing the use of ‘e-invoicing’ for economical and security reasons.
Commencing from 1st January 2020, the GST council of India has approved the introduction of electronic invoicing for reporting of business to business (B2B) invoices to the Invoice Registration Portal (IRP) System.
SAP proposes to introduce an e-Invoice solution to enable customers to comply with the new e-Invoice mandate.
Presently, businesses use different software’s to generate invoices and manually upload them in the GSTR-1. Further it goes to GSTR-2A. When any transporter needs to generate the e-way bill, they have to import the invoices in Excel.
A common misconception is that the e-invoice will be generated from the government’s tax portal. Rest assured, the invoices will continue to be generated using the business’ existing ERP software keeping in view the varied needs of item master, buyer master, UQC etc. along with sub-second responses from IR Portal (IRP).
So the customer needs to keep their ERP to generate the invoice with additional data as the GSTN portal will not generate the e-Invoices for them. It has just been uploaded with JSON data formats.
Benefits of E-invoicing
The e-invoicing is an initiation from the Goods and Services Tax Network to simplify the GST return process and avoid discrepancies. It has parallel benefits for the business or organization as well.
Advantages to the Goods and Services Tax Network:
It will aid in building a healthy GSTN eco-system where the interoperability and interpretation of invoices are easy. This simply means that an invoice generated by one software could be read by other software easily.
Standardization of invoices would avoid the re-entry of data into the portal and reduce resource usage in the long run.
Inculcate better tax-paying practices by supporting organizations in one-time reporting on B2B invoice data, generating purchase/sale registers, and sort out input credit verification issues.
It will help in the reduction of tax evasion by maintaining a complete trail of B2B invoices and facilitating a system-level matching of input credit and output tax.
The biggest benefits that e-invoicing delivers are transparency and proof as with e-invoicing, the moment an invoice is made, it will be uploaded on the GSTN portal where pre-validation will be done and a unique number called IRN (Invoice Reference Number) will be issued.
All in all, it will improve the efficiency of Tax Administration by the elimination of fake invoices.
Advantages to the Business:
Since e-invoicing is not mandatory as of now, businesses can conveniently decide when and how to deploy the practice.
E-invoicing would save the business of last-minute runs as invoices will already be uploaded and the records are reconciled.
This will also avoid the need to generate e-way bills.
Real-time tracking of invoices will be possible as the supplier generated invoice copy would be sent to the customer by the GSTN portal.
How does SAP assist in E-invoicing?
The new mandate brought in the need to standardize the format in which electronic data of an invoice will be shared with others to ensure the interoperability of the data. E-invoice under GST India covers documents such as invoice by supplier, credit note by suppliers, debit note by supplier and any other document required by law to be reported by the creator of the invoice.
SAP proposes to introduce e-Invoice solutions to assist customers to comply with the new e-Invoice mandate:
Automated Solution: It involves the direct integration to the e-invoicing (IRN) system via GSP. This will enable taxpayers to upload the payload from the backend SAP system to the portal, generate the Invoice Reference Number and link it with the billing document in the backend system. In the automated process, the preparation of standardized format is done by SAP.
Manual Solution: It involves reading the response file and storing the information of the IRN, QR code and digital signature in the standard table and linking the original invoice with IRM along with its current status. The preparation of the standardised format (JSON request file) needs to be generated offline by the customer.
Conclusion
SAP generated solutions will help businesses seamlessly generate e-invoices and meet functionality as per the government mandate. Through automatic real-time online integration by secured communication with the GST portal, businesses can use their existing ERP software to operate e-invoices.
E-invoicing will prove to be a great aid in improving the efficiency of business whilst maintaining transparency with the government.
A typical business enterprise has numerous departments and units which are constantly communicating with each other to carry out the various operations. The success of any enterprise highly depends on effective communication and the exchange of data. But how to navigate through so much chaos and get work done efficiently? That’s where SAP comes into the picture.
SAP stands for Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing. This is an ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning software developed in 1972 in Walldorf, Germany by Wellenreuther, Hopp, Hector, Plattner, and Tschira. The software aids in managing business operations and customer relationships. The SAP system consists of a number of fully integrated modules, which cover virtually every aspect of business management.
Leading the ERP industry, SAP customers include around 92% of the Forbes Global 2000 companies. Alongside SAP is also a market share leader in analytics, supply chain management, human capital management, and experience management.
Why does every business need ERP?
Running a business is tough. Especially following a complicated channel of communication to getting tasks done can slow down the process and productivity. This calls for a centralized system of enterprise resource planning. The benefits of ERP are many, only waiting to be tapped:
Real-Time Information: Having a centralized database conveys all the relevant information to all the internal departments in real-time. For example, the production and sales department can be updated with the current inventory situation as and when they require it. This facilitates fast decision-making and effective execution.
Quality data: ERP software eliminates duplication, discontinuity, and redundancy in data.
Control: ERP supports and integrates almost every functional area of a business process such as procurement of goods and services, sale and distribution, finance, human resource, manufacturing, and logistics under one complex database. This makes it easier to control and regulate the flow of actions taking place.
Strategizing: A centralized ERP improves capital planning and helps in executing organizational plans and strategies.
Expand reach: An ERP is a network for all the networks. It has the potential to extend the business network to wider domains. It promises long term profit by expanding the products and services to reach more customers, suppliers, and partners.
Adaptability: The business environment is a dynamic space and having a centralized ERP makes the organization adaptable to the rapid changes in the business process according to the needs.
Future of ERP
With new businesses being set up every other day, incorporating more employees, and navigating various technical spaces, ERP is bound to become popular among organizations. There are immense opportunities for ERPs to evolve and integrate futuristic technologies such as 5G and AI. There is a scope for innovation to make ERPs mobile, flexible, and more user-friendly.
One thing can be said for sure, Enterprise Resource Planning is the reality and need of every business out there.
Now in this blog we will see one of the features of EBRS i.e.Search String.
Search String is a very useful functionality in EBRS process. with this you can directly change or default the some parameters in combination of Company Code,House Bank & Account ID.
Search strings can also be used to substitute fields based on Profit Center, Cost Center, Offsetting Account, etc.
Here we will see one example of search string use.
E.g. if in the Bank Statement as below you find every time that Bank is mentioning “Consolidated Charges for A/c” while debiting Bank Charges & in this case you want system should pass the entry automatically by debiting GL Account of Bank charges.
For simulation enter the text in entry text filed & click on the Test button.
Search String Definition
2.Search String Definition
Now click on Search String use to assign this rule for particular House Bank/Account ID.
Give Co Code/House Bk/Acct ID
Select external transaction as NCHG (which is defined for bank charges)
Select Posting value as negative.
Select Search string name as Consolidated Charges.
Target field will be Posting Rule.
Now save the assignment.
Search String Use
So now when you upload the Bank Statement which have above text for Bank charges e.g. Consolidated Charges for A/c. then system will automatically pass the entry by debiting bank charges account & credit to main bank account.
So Conclusion is by this search string you can easily change the posting rule & other Parameters & assign it for a particular Bank Account or Company Code.
SAP have the features of Electronic Bank Reconciliation Statement (EBRS) process where you can directly upload the Bank Statement in a format called MT940.
In this process SAP will upload statement automatically & at the same time will do sub-ledger posting & clearing.
So here in this blog we can see the basic steps to configure the EBRS for MT940 Format.
Path for configuration EBRS is go to SPRO-IMG
Financial Accounting–Bank Accounting–Business Transactions–Payment Transactions–Electronic Bank Statement–Make Global Settings for Electronic Bank Statement (T Code – OT83)
here specify the nature of Transactions happened in the Bank
Generally you need to create new entries for 4 Common Transactions in the Bank & 1 entry for Main Bank as below,
Create Account Symbol
2) Assign GL Accounts to the Accounts Symbol
Create new entry’s for GL Account assignment to Accounts symbol
For Bank Charges (EBCG) & Interest Account (EBIN) give GL Account Code as mostly it may account in respective GL only.
For Cheque Deposited (EBCD) & Cheque Issued (EBCI) give +++++++++1 for IN Bank Account & +++++++++2 for OUT Bank Account in case of multiple bank accounts.(If you have IN Bank Account GL Code last digit is 1 & OUT Bank Account GL Code last digit is 2)
Assign GL Accounts to the Account Symbol
3) Create Key for Posting Rule
This is required for automatic Posting of entry’s while reconciliation as per the nature of transaction Deposited, Cheque Issued, Bank Charges, Bank Interest.
Create Key for Posting Rule
4) Define Posting Rule for Posting key
Define Posting Rule
Please understand this as per below illustration of accounting entries.
Illustration
5) Create Transaction type
Required to create Transaction types for EBRS
e.g. here we have created EB1 for the organisation
There are also some Standard Transaction types are available.
Create Transaction Type
6) Assign External Transaction Type to posting Rule
External Transactions Types are those which is mentioned in the bank statement for each & every transaction.
i.e. NCHK, NTRF, NSTO, NCHG, etc. as bank mentioned their MT940 bank statement format as below
E.g. MT940 Format
This Transaction types require to assign to the posting rule which we have created in point No.3 as below with Debit/Credit indicator & Algorithm
Assignment of External transaction type to posting rule
If you are maintaining cheque Number in Assignment than use Algorithm 15 against transaction type of cheque. with this system will clear the entry’s by matching the cheque number from the statement.
Other cases you can give simple logic as No Interpretation.i.e.system will clear based on the amount.
Sign + means incoming entry’s & Sign – means outgoing entry’s
7) Assign Bank Accounts to Transaction Types
Here you require to give Bank Key, Bank Account Number of all the banks where you want to activate this process & give Transaction Type against all the bank (i.e. EB01) which created as per point no.5
Assign Bank Accounts to Transaction Types
So in conclusion basically once you complete the above 7 Steps in SPRO than you can start using the functionality of electronic bank reconciliation in MT940 Format as it saves a lot of time & is error free compare to uploading manual bank statement which is time consuming & prone to clerical errors.
In my next blog i will cover some other features & the transactions related steps.
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