Financial integrations - concepts and components

In the context of financial integration transaction processing, a business object is a logistic entity or event such as an item, a purchase order, a business partner, or a warehouse issue.

The integration document types supplied by LN each have the corresponding business object attached to them. For example, the integration document types for the various Sales Order transactions have the Sales Order business object linked to them.

An integration document type represents an integration transaction type in Financials for the mapping and posting of the integration transactions and for the reconciliation process.

The non-financial LN packages are collectively referred to as Operations Management. In Operations Management, each integration transaction is represented by its combination of operational transaction origin and financial transaction (in technical terms, the tror/fitr combination). For example, Sales Order/Issue.

In the Finance/Logistics module of Common, the transaction origin/financial transaction combinations are translated to integration document types. For example, the Sales Order/Issue transaction is translated to the 10002052 integration document type with the description Sales Order/Issue. LN provides predefined integration document types for all the integration transactions that can occur.

A number of predefined integration document types are only used to log the reconciliation data, for example, the Currency Difference integration document types. You cannot map these integration document types and the Use in Mapping Scheme check box is cleared in the Integration Document Types (tfgld4557m000) session.

For a list of the integration document types, refer to Integration document types. For each Integration document type, the mapping is given as defined in the demo companies that are delivered with the LN application.

A mapping element is a characteristic of a logistic transaction that you can map to a ledger account or dimension. Some examples of the mapping elements of a warehouse receipt transaction are: Item, Item Group, Warehouse, and Manufacturer. You can map specific values, ranges, or the full range of a mapping element to specific ledger accounts and dimensions.

A mapping element consists of the combination of a business object and a business object attribute. For example, the mapping element item group/item represents the business object attribute item group of the business object item.

LN supplies a complete list (about 1800) of the mapping elements that correspond to the business object attributes. For each integration document type, you can select the mapping elements from the attributes of its related business objects. You cannot add, change, or delete mapping elements.

A mapping element consists of the combination of a business object and a business object attribute. Business object attributes can themselves be business objects. The business objects of attributes appear as child business objects, with a higher level number. The attributes of child business objects are also available as mapping elements for the integration document types.

For example, a Sales Order business object has the Item attribute. Item is also a business object which has the Item Group and the Manufacturer attributes, among others. As a result, you can select the manufacturer of the item of the sales order as a mapping element for Sales Order integration document types.

If a mapping element has parent attributes, LN displays the parent attributes and their levels in the various mapping scheme related sessions.

The sort element is a mapping element on which the integration transactions can be sorted. You can use the sort element to group the integration transactions that belong to different integration document types.

For example, the integration transactions for a project or for a service order belong to various integration document types. If you assign Project (PCS) or Service Type as the sort element to those integration document types, you can group the integration transactions by project, or by service order.

To every integration document type, you can assign one of the available mapping elements as the sort element in the Integration Document Types (tfgld4557m000) session. The sort element can be an element that you do not actually use for the mapping. In the Integration Transactions (tfgld4582m000) session, you can display the integration transactions in the order of the values of the sort element.

An element group is a selection of mapping element and in this way represents a mapping. To map the integration transactions, or integration document types, you must link one or more element groups to the integration document types. An element group must contain at least one mapping element and can contain up to 15 mapping elements.

Before you select the elements of an element group, it is recommended that you link the element group to an integration document type. For the selection, LN only displays the mapping elements that apply to the integration document type.

You can link an element group to multiple integration document types, provided that the mapping elements of the group are available for all the integration document types. If you do this, the ledger account mapping or the dimension mapping of those integration document types will be exactly the same.

You can use the Print Where Used Element Groups (tfgld4466m000) session to generate a report of a range of element groups and the integration document types to which they are linked. You can use this report to see which integration document types are affected if you change the mapping for an element group.

You can define the ledger mapping and dimension mapping of the element groups on decreasing priority levels, where level one represents the highest priority. If LN cannot map the transaction based on the mapping with priority one, LN uses the mapping with priority two, and so on. If the transaction cannot be mapped, LN reports an error.

If you want to ensure that each integration transaction can be mapped and posted, it is recommended that for the lowest priority, you map the full range of each mapping element to a default ledger account or dimension as applicable.

Within every mapping priority every mapping has a mapping sequence. The mapping sequence is the order in which LN searches the values of the mapping elements to find the mapping of an integration transaction. As you define the mapping for various combinations of the elements of an element group, LN generates a sequence number for every mapping. For performance reasons it is recommended that the most specific mapping has mapping sequence number one.

If you do not wish to define a detailed mapping to various ledger accounts for specific integration transactions, you can map the corresponding integration document type to a default account. All the transactions of the integration document type for which LN cannot determine an account based on the mapping scheme details, are posted to the default account.

The mapping of an integration document type to a default account is direct, without the need for element groups and mapping elements. No distinction is made on any of the transaction details.

You cannot set up the dimension mapping for the default ledger accounts in this way. If dimension mapping is required for an integration document type, you must define the dimension mapping in the regular way by means of an element group and mapping elements.

A GL code represents a ledger account and the corresponding dimensions. GL codes are used to represent ledger accounts to users who are not familiar with the structure of the chart of accounts. For some logistic transactions, you can use a GL code to indicate the ledger account and the dimensions to which the transaction must be posted.

You can define GL codes in the GL Codes (tfgld4575m000) session. Every GL code refers to one ledger account. The ledger account must be an integration account. If mandatory or optional dimensions are linked to the ledger account, these are included in the GL code definition.

Before you can use the GL code, in the GL Codes (tfgld4575m000) session you must select the Active check box. To block the GL code for use, you can clear the Active check box. If you block a GL code, new lines of existing orders are still mapped using the GL code but you cannot select the GL code for newly created orders.

As soon as any integration transactions are mapped using the GL code, you cannot change the ledger account or the dimensions of the GL code, or delete the GL code.

If you enter a GL code for the transaction, the integration transactions are not included in the mapping process but mapped directly to the ledger account and dimensions of the GL code. The values of the mapping elements of such transactions do not have any effect on the mapping. In the Integration Transactions (tfgld4582m000) session, LN indicates that a GL code was used to map the transaction, and displays the GL code.

LN generates the document numbers for the integration transactions based on a transaction type and series. On the Document Numbering/Compression tab in the Mapping Scheme (tfgld4573m000) session, you can define a transaction type and a series for each integration document type. If you use different transaction types and series, each type of integration transaction gets its own range of document numbers in the General Ledger.

One exception to this rule exists: Fixed Assets transactions use the transaction type entered in the FAM Parameters (tffam0100s000) session.

Integration transactions can be compressed before they are posted. For each integration document type, you can indicate whether the debit transactions and /or the credit transactions must be compressed.

A reconciliation group is used to group related integration transactions for reconciliation purposes. Every integration document type belongs to a reconciliation group.

For example, the Purchase Order/Receipt and the Purchase Order/Price Variance integration document types both belong to the same reconciliation group (reconciliation group Invoice Accrual 3).

To support full reconciliation possibilities, the integration transactions can only be posted to ledger accounts that are marked as Integration accounts in the Chart of Accounts (tfgld0508m000) session. If an account is marked as Integration Account, you cannot manually enter transactions on the account.

As you cannot create manual transactions on the integration accounts to make corrections, the posting of the integration transactions is irreversible. You can only make corrections to the postings on the integration ledger accounts in the reconciliation sessions. You must make the corrections to other ledger accounts with the same parent as the integration ledger account. The result will then appear in the parent account.

Two fields indicate a mapping scheme version status: