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Table of Contents
1. Interview tips 7
6. Give an example of a situation where standard sap did not meet your 12
requirement and how you met the requirement?
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15. What is the difference between a residual payment and a partial payment 25
16. What does the field status group in a G/L master control 26
19. Give examples of issues you encounter while running the payment program,
F110 31
20. What is the difference between open item and line item managed accounts 32
26. What is the difference between the subledger and the ledger? 39
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30. Explain the process of setting up additional currencies in the system. Why 44
are they needed?
31. Explain SAP landscape structure- What is the difference between Dev, QA, 47
Sandbox and production
33. What is the difference between a year dependent and a calendar dependent 52
fiscal year?
34. What is the difference Between an internal and an external number range? 54
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44. Give examples of 3 issues you faced during month end closing for Asset 65
Accounting
47. How can an asset be auotomatically created when you release a wBS 68
element or an INternal order?
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Legal stuff
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the
publisher or a license permitting restricted copying in the United States or abroad. The
programs in this book have been included for instructional value only. They have been
tested with care but are not guaranteed for any particular purpose. The publisher does
not offer any warranties or representations not does it accept any liabilities with respect
to the programs.
Trademark notices SAP, is a trademark of SAP AG. We are not affiliated with SAP.
Please link to sapsharks.com/interview/
Rather than forwarding someone this book itself.
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Interview tips
Before getting into the SAP stuff- this stuff is
important!
Ask questions
You might be nervous and it is ok if you are, but it's ok to be a little casual.
Ask the interviewer a question which gets them to give you a slightly longer answer.
Why? The interviewer is probably checking email and you might be the 3rd person she
is interviewing, so she might not be paying attention to what you say a lot.
If you can get the interviewer to think and answer you might be able to grab their full
attention.
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why don't you find out a little about the interviewer and the company before your
interview?
Person 1- I know fixed assets really well. I have worked on depreciation issues,
integration with project systems etc.
Person 2- I would love to add to the great team of people we already have. I noticed
that you( interviewer) are part of the Fixed Assets experts group on linkedin and I
understand that Exxon has a lot of fixed assets of different classes which would have
different tax laws applied to them.
I have worked on various tax laws with depreciation and customized keys to meet the
business requirements.
- you see how I gave info which tells the interviewer that I did some homework about the
client. It could be a general statement that applies to all the clients, but because I
personalized it a little bit, it will make the interviewer know you a little better.
I asked a question at the end. I am trying to make it a conversation. The more the
interviewer talks, the better he/she will be able to recall your skills after the interview.
Remember you are probably not the only person she is interviewing.
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E.g. they tell you that they already have 10 people, 5 senior and 5 junior.
Those junior folks probably need help. If you can talk about how you helped others in a
prior project, the interviewer will immediately think of how you can help person x and Y
on their team.
Are they currently in configuration stage or in blueprinting? Why does this matter since
you know both?
if you talk about issues of blueprinting and how you solved them, the interviewer might
put a +1 in the related experience checkbox.
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There are differences between S/4 and ECCC, but it's not entirely a new concept.
You still need to impress the interviewer in the area that they are looking for. Here's
what you can do. Read the requirement. Write down what you understand about the
requirement. Which points are listed as a requirement and which ones are listed as a
nice to have? For e.g. The requirement might say Treasury skills are a must and
Accounts receivable skills are a nice to have. This tells you what you should focus on in
the interview, but also tells you where you can get an edge over the others by also
mentioning the other nice to have skills
Once you know what they are looking for, right down key points they might ask.
These are questions you would ask others if you were the interviewer.
Keep this handy and keep checking off questions if you get asked any of these.
Also, write down questions that you get asked. You can, later on, read this back to the
interviewer. For e.g., if the interviewer asks you about your asset accounting skills as
that is very important to them, you can, later on, ask, you had mentioned that you need
someone with great asset accounting skills, is there anything that I can answer or
comment on further to show that I meet that criteria?
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When they ask you to tell you about yourself, provide them information and relate it to
the current role.
E.g. Hi my name is John, thank you for taking the time to interview me. I know how busy
month end close can be or I know how busy Mondays can be etc.
At this point, I am trying to say something that will make the interviewer agree with me
or like me.
you could even throw in a small joke in there.
For e.g. Hi thanks for taking the time to interview me. I am really excited for this
especially after the Lakers won the playoffs last night.
When you say this, they might immediately say something back and it eases the tension
in the room.
Back to your introduction
Hi My name is John, I am an expert in Fixed Assets.
My most recent assignment was with Apple where we migrated to S/4 HANA.
Fixed Assets has changed a lot in S/4 HANA and I led our team to successfully migrate
1 million assets to the S/4 HANA system.
Speak about the most important thing first. I would say something like what is mentioned
above if you are interviewing for an S/4 HANA position with focus on Fixed Assets.
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The ticket is basically documenting the issue that the business user faced.
This ticket gets assigned to a group.
E.g. there will be one group for ABAP, one for FICO etc.
Each group might have a person who assigns tickets to others based on their workload
and skill level.
Once you are assigned the ticket, you will contact the user and get more information and
resolve their issue.
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Controlling Area -A controlling area is the highest entity for controlling. Controlling is
used for internal reporting. E.g. if your utility bill was 2 million and you need to know the
break down by each department, then you use the controlling module to get this break
down.
Each company code is only assigned to one controlling area whereas one
controlling area can be assigned to many company codes
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but each company code can only be assigned to one chart of accounts.
If you go to tcode OBY6, you will see that there is only one field for assigning the chart
of accounts to the company code.
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You can open and close special posting periods in OB52 along with the regular periods.
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You can assign the range of G/L accounts that fall in this account group. These are
created through OBD4.
These account groups can have different settings. For e.g. The asset accounts can
have a field set to required.
Whereas the other account group might need it to be suppressed.
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E.g. if you have a G/L account for stationary purchases and it has a balance of
$500,000.
None of these invoices have the text in them when the invoice is being entered.
You can assign a field status to this G/L account which makes the text required.
This way no one will forget to enter the text next time.
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When postings are made to a cost center, they will flow to the profit center.
When we are making a posting, the system tries to determine the profit center from the
cost center, material etc.
If it can't determine the profit center, then it uses the dummy profit center.
We should check to see why the system wasn't able to determine the profit center and
fix the issue.
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On the G/L master in FS00, in the control data tab, you define if the account is a line
item account or an open item account.
Line item display- This will show you all the details of the account. E.g. if the account
has a balance of $50,000 and you want to see what makes up the balance of 50k, then
you can drilldown and view these details if the account is specified as a line item display
account.
Note- In S/4 HANA, everything is set to line item display.
Open item managed- Open item managed is for accounts that will balance to 0.
E.g. if you paid a vendor $100, this hits your check clearing account and not your bank
as the money has not come out of your bank yet.
When the vendor deposits the check , the check clearing account is cleared i.e.
balances to 0 and the bank account is hit at this step.
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What is a reconciliation
account
Reconciliation account
A reconciliation account is a G/L account in the subledger that updates this account at
the time of posting.
E.g. if you post to a vendor account, there is a balance in the vendor account, but this is
also updated in the reconciliation account that is in the master data of a vendor
When you make a posting, you can see that a G/L account is also updated when you
post to a vendor.
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The subledger gives the details of what made up the totals for the ledger.
E.g. if you see your Total Payables for 2019, they may be $1 million.
You see the total of $1 million on the G/L level.
This 1$ million is comprised of invoices paid to 500 vendors.
The vendor postings are called the subledger postings.
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Note- In S/4 HANA since the cost elements are now a part of the G/L, the KA02 option
doesn't remain and OKB9 is the only option to default a cost center for a G/L.
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But you also need to see these postings in USD. This would be setup as your group
currency.
Additional currencies are setup in OB22.
You can maintain 3 currencies in Ob22.
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1- Production System - This is the system that is 'live' i.e. this is your actual system
where the business users are performing day to day transactions like purchasing goods,
selling products etc.
The SAP IT team will not have much change or create access in this system. No
configuration changes can be made in this system directly.
2- Q- Quality system- This system is one step before the production system. No
configuration is done in this system directly. All configuration is done in the Dev System
and then moved to the Q system.
3- Dev System- The Dev system is where you do any configuration. The end users
usually do not have access to this.
The Dev system can have two clients.
A- Golden client- This is where you create the configuration change. No master or
transaction data is allowed in this client.
B- Unit Test client- you can move the transport to Unit test client without releasing the
transport and first test if everything is working fine and then move it to Q.
The ABAP programs might also be created from a specific client.
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After you have finished testing. This transport is released to Q using SE10.
The transport can automatically move to Q or you may have to request your Basis team
to move this.
In Q, you need to get the user approval and then send it to your manager/Basis and get
it moved to production.
Each company will have a different process of moving a transport to production.
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If it is a year dependent fiscal year, then you need to specify when period 1 starts and
when it ends.
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E.g. if you are creating a vendor under the account group "International vendors"
How does the system know which number it should be using.
You assign the account group to a number range e.g. 1
This number range has a from and a to number
If the external flag is checked, then the user needs to enter the number.
The number can be anything within that range.
If the external number is not checked, it is an internal number.
This means that the system will determine the number.
The numbers will be in sequence. E.g it will use number 3100000, then 3100001 and so
on. The user cannot provide a number.
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Define the special G/L indicator and specify if it is used for customer, vendor etc.
and then specify the regular recon account and the new account the system should use
when you post to this special G/L indicator.
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The process is very similar for wires and ach payments. Instead of mailing the checks,
we mail them a file which contains everything that needs to be paid.
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What is dunning
Rather than manually following up with all the customers, SAP has made it easy to send
then reminder letters.
The text of the letters varies based on how overdue each customer is.
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E.g. you can specify that if the document type is 'SA', then you want to change the cost
center to 1000.
The system will then check the document type as SA and then change the value of the
cost center to 1000.
Substitutions allow us to user user-exits where we can enter our code.
E.g. if the prerequisite is met i.e. the document type is X, then it goes to exit U102.
in U102, you can write your own rules, e.g. if the G/L is between 3000 and 4000,
change the cost center to A123, if it is between 5000 and 6000, then change the cost
center to B234.
This makes the substitution a great tool to use.
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Issue 2-The period control for one of the depreciation keys wasn't working correctly, so
the depreciation start dates were all incorrect.
I had to change the depreciation start dates using an LSMW to correct the depreciation
calculation.
Issue 3- The cost centers were blocked for posting and they had to be unblocked.
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