SAP FICO Interview questions

• 1. What is the role of a "Document type" in SAP ?

A Document type is specified at the Header level during transaction entry and serves the following purposes:

1. It defines the Number range for documents
2. It controls the type of accounts that can be posted to eg Assets, Vendor, Customer, Normal GL account
3. Document type to be used for reversal of entries
4. Whether it can be used only for Batch input sessions

• 2. Define Financial Statement Version ?

FSV(Financial Statement Version) is a reporting tool and can be used to depict the manner in which the final accounts like Profit and Loss Account and Balance Sheet needs to be extracted from SAP. It is freely definable and multiple FSV's can be defined for generating the output for various external agencies like Banks and other statutory authorities.

• 3. How are input and output taxes taken care of in SAP ?

A tax procedure is defined for each country and tax codes are defined within this. There is flexibility to either expense out the Tax amounts or Capitalize the same to Stocks.

• 4. What are Validations and Substitutions in SAP ?

Validations/Substitutions in SAP are defined for each functional area eg. Assets, Controlling etc at the following levels

1. Document level

2. Line item level

These need to be specifically activated and setting them up are complex and done only when it is really needed. Often help of the technical team is taken to do that.

• 5. What are the Customizing prerequisites for document clearing ?

Account must be managed on the open item management. This tick is there in the General Ledger Master Record called Open Item Management. It helps you to manage your accounts in terms of cleared and un cleared items. A typical example would be GR/IR Account in SAP(Goods Received/Invoice Received Account)

• 6. Explain the importance of the GR/IR clearing account ?

GR/IR is an interim account. In legacy system if the goods are received and the invoice is not received the provision is made, in SAP at the Goods receipt It passes the accounting entry debiting the Inventory and crediting the GR/IR Account .Subsequently when an invoice is recd this GR/IR account is debited and the Vendor account is credited.

• 7. What the steps are configuring check deposit ?

The following are the steps for configuring check deposit:-

Step1: Create account symbols for the main bank and incoming check account.

Step2: Assign accounts to account symbols

Step3: Create keys for posting rules

Step4: Define posting rules

Step5: Create business transaction and assign posting rule

Step6: Define variant for check deposit

• 8. What is the clearing basis for check deposit ?

In the variant for check deposit we set up the fields document number ( which is the invoice number), amount and short description of the customer. The document number and the invoice amount acts as the clearing basis.

• 9. How do you configure manual bank statement ?

The following are the steps for configuring manual bank statement:-

Step1: Create account symbols for the main bank and the sub accounts

Step2: Assign accounts to account symbols

Step3: Create keys for posting rules

Step4: Define posting rules

Step5: Create business transaction and assign posting rule

Step6: Define variant for Manual Bank statement

• 10. What are steps of Electronic bank statement ?

The steps for Electronic Bank Statement are the same except for couple of more additional steps which you will see down below

Step1: Create account symbols for the main bank and the sub accounts

Step2: Assign accounts to account symbols

Step3: Create keys for posting rules

Step4: Define posting rules

Step5: Create transaction type

Step6: Assign external transaction type to posting rules

Step7: Assign Bank accounts to Transaction types

• 11. Explain the importance of asset classes. What asset classes are there ?

The asset class is the main criterion for classifying assets. Every asset must be assigned to only one asset class. Examples of asset class are Plant& Machinery, Furniture &Fixtures, and Computers etc. The asset class also contains the GI account which is debited when any asset is procured. It also contains the GI accounts for depreciation calculation, scrapping etc. Whenever you create an asset master you need to mention the asset class for which you are creating the required asset. In this manner whenever any asset transaction happens the GI accounts attached to the asset class is automatically picked up and the entry passed. You can also specify certain control parameters and default values for depreciation calculation and other master data in each asset class.

• 12. What are the depreciation keys ?

The specifications and parameters that the system requires to calculate depreciation amounts are entered in Calculation methods. Calculation methods replace the internal calculation key of the depreciation key. Depreciation keys are defaulted in Asset Master from the asset class. Refer to the configuration for more details of how depreciation is calculated.

• 13. What is an Account group and where is it used ?

An Account group controls the data that needs to be entered at the time of creation of a master record. Account groups exist for the definition of a GL account, Vendor and Customer master. It basically controls the fields which pop up during master data creation in SAP.

• 14. What is the organizational assignment in the controlling module ?

Every company has a unique company code assigned. The controlling module allows you to create a controlling area which contains all activities related to cost center accounting, product costing and profitability analysis.

• 15. What is a field status group ?

Field status groups control the fields which come up when the user does the transactions. There are three options for field selection.

    They are:

    1. Display only

    2. Suppressed

    3. Mandatory

So basically you can have any field either for display only or you can totally suppress it or make it mandatory. The field status group is stored in the FI GL Master Record.

• 16. What are the functionalities available in the financial statement version ?

In the financial statement version the most important functionality available is the debit credit shift. This is more important in case of Bank overdraft accounts which can have a debit balance or a credit balance. Thus in case of a debit balance you would require the overdraft account to be shown on the Asset side. In case of credit balance you would require the account to be shown on the Liability side.

• 17. What are the various organizational assignments to a company code ?

Company Code is a legal entity for which financial statements like Profit and Loss and Balance Sheets are generated. Plants are assigned to the company code, Purchasing organization is assigned to the company code, and Sales organization is assigned to the company code.

• 18. What is the relation between a Controlling Areas and a Company code ?

A Controlling area can have the following 2 type of relationship with a Company code

a. Single Company code relation

b. Cross Company code relation

This means that one single controlling area can be assigned to several different company codes. Controlling can have a one is to one relationship or a one is to many relationship with different company codes.

Controlling Area is the umbrella under which all controlling activities of Cost Center Accounting, Product Costing, Profit Center and Profitability Analysis are stored. In a similar way Company Codes is the umbrella for Finance activities.

• 19. How many Chart of Accounts can a Company code have ?

A single Company code can have only one Chart of Account assigned to it. The Chart of Accounts is nothing but the list of General Ledger Accounts.

• 20. How does posting happen in MM (Materials Management) during special periods ?

There is no posting which happens from MM in special periods. Special periods are only applicable for the FI module. They are required for making any additional posting such as closing entries, provisions. Which happen during quarter end or year end. 

• 21. How many currencies can be configured for a company code ?

A company code can have 3 currencies in total. One which is called the local currency ( i.e company code currency) and 2 parallel currencies can be configured.

• 22. What is dunning ?

Dunning is actually the process by which you “bill” or “invoice” a customer for past due items.

• 23. Describe the relationship between cost center accounting and profit center ?

Cost centers allow companies to capture all costs related to daily businesses operations, generally excluding unavoidable monthly expenses like rent or utilities. Administrative, entertainment, food and other expenses fall under this heading. Profit centers capture data related to both cost and revenue, showing how much each dollar of profit costs to generate.

• 24. What does system landscape mean ?

The system landscape represents the SAP system deployment at your implementation site. Ideally, in an SAP environment, a three-system landscape exists, consisting of the development server (DEV), quality assurance server (QAS), and production server (PRD). This kind of setup is not primarily designed to serve as a server cluster in case of system failure; rather, the objective is to enhance  “configuration pipeline management.”

• 25. What is “Extended Star Schema” and how did it emerge ?

The Star Schema consists of the Dimension Tables and the Fact Table. The Master Data related tables are kept in separate tables, which has reference to the characteristics in the dimension table(s). These separate tables for master data are termed as the Extended Star Schema.