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- Sep 17, 2017
- 4 min read

FI – Validation of Account Assignment Combinations

Background

This function prevents postings with invalid account assignment combinations from being posted and thereby ensures the consistency of your reporting.

You can define your own validation rules and use them to check whether different account assignment combinations are useful from a business point of view and, where necessary, prevent invalid postings. You can also extend the check to include an account assignment combination of G/L accounts and cost centres and prevent postings with this account assignment combination.

Why?

This function can be used instead of “Validation in accounting document” (OB28) and has distinct advantage over it. Before we go for Validation of Account Assignment, following points should be considered:

Validation of Account Assignment

Does not require any custom table and combination of account assignments can be defined as part of standard function
Has distinct advantage over Validation OB28
Has one shortcoming where we use custom message for the error
Has provision to specify valid/invalid account assignment combinations for periods
Different Strategies can be designed for different account assignment object combinations and does not require separate strategy per combination

Validation of Accounting Document (OB28)

Requires separate steps for each combination to validate (unless we decide to use EXIT with custom tables for values to validate)
Has provision to define own custom message for error
Difficult to define validity period for account assignment combinations (either needs EXIT or separate steps for different periods)

Having said this, we can evaluate the best strategy to adopt out of the above two i.e. “Validation of Account Assignment or Validation of Accounting Document (OB28).

In this article, we will look deeper into the function of Validation of Account Assignment available in SAP under Financial (FI) Module.

Configurations

IMG Path

IMG Path: Financial Accounting (New) > Financial Accounting Global Settings (New) > Document > Validation of Account Assignment Combinations > Define Validation Rule for Account Assignment Combinations.

T Code: FAGL_VALIDATE

We are navigated to the following screen:

Creation of Validation Strategy

Click on “New Entries” tab and we will be navigated to the following screen where we can create Validation Strategy:

Here, it is important to understand all the three fields that are required to be filled in for creation of a Validation Strategy.

Validation Strategy

This is the code that is assigned to a Validation Strategy. Use a better naming convention to help you identify the nature of account assignment validation just from the code.

Validation Type

This field specifies whether valid or invalid combinations of account assignments are checked in the selected validation strategy.

If you choose Valid Combinations of Account Assignments, specify in your validation strategy the account assignment combinations that are permitted for a posting. This is useful if you have a small number of valid combinations of account assignments.

If you choose Invalid Combinations of Account Assignments, specify in your validation strategy the account assignment combinations that are not permitted for a posting. This is usually a smaller number of account assignment combinations. For this reason, we recommend choosing this option.

Name

This is the description for the validation strategy.

We can create multiple Validation Strategies for different account assignment combinations and assign them to the relevant Company Codes

Create the Validation Strategy, Save and then we move forward to assignment to Company Code

Maintain Validation Strategy

Once we are through with creation of the Validation Strategy, we need to maintain validation for the Strategy for the same. Select the Validation Strategy and click on Goto > Maintain Validation as shown below:

System navigates us to the next screen that is used to maintain Strategy

The screen is same as screen used for “Characteristics Derivation” “KEDR” in Profitability Analysis (CO-PA). Click on Create Step and the system will ask us what kind of step we wish to create as below:

Select Derivation Rule and we will be navigated to the following screen where we can maintain combinations of account assignment:

Definition

In this tab we define the combination of Account Assignments that are to be validated.

Enter the combinations that we want to validate in Source Fields and system automatically brings either “Valid” or “Not Valid” based on our selection of Validation Type while creation of Validation Strategy. Save the combinations and we move on to the next tab which is “Conditions”

Given below is the list of account assignments available for validation:

Condition

This tab can be used to apply additional criteria, if required apart from the account assignment combination. We can define additional conditions here to gain maximum benefits from this standard function in SAP.

Attributes

This tab contains various options, out of which the Validity date option can be used if required.

Rule Values

After maintenance of the Validation Strategy, the values should be maintained for the validation strategy as below:

Click on the Rule Values button under Define entries, marked in the following print screen to maintain the values

After we click the button, we are navigated to the screen which contains list of account assignment as per the derivation rule

In our case, Cost Centre and G/L Account will be available as below.

Click on Edit button followed by Append Row button to start maintaining values

Now enter the Cost Centres and G/L accounts to validate and save entries.

Assignment

Assignment to Company Code

Select the Validation Strategy and double click on the left hand side on “Assignment to Company Code” and we will be navigated to a screen that helps us assign the Validation Strategy to Company Code as shown below: