How to extract large data sets (GL line item details or Journal Entry detail) for auditors

[former_member95896]

Hi guys,

I'm wondering how other companies are handling requests for large sets of data from auditing companies like Ernst & Young?

In ECC or probably even on prem versions of S/4 you'd have access to pull the BKPF and BSEG tables using a table viewer like SE16N for the quarter or whatever period of time they need (see the attached document provided by EY to us requesting that info). 

In S4HC while we can see a large data set related to Journal Entries or GL line items, the browser times out every time we try to extract them to excel. We cannot even extract a single period at once without it timing out. We average 100,000+ Journal Entries, and 500,000+ GL line items a period. The apps we're using are Manage Journal Entries and G/L Account Line Items - Reporting view to try and extract. 

We're a medium sized company, and I know we're not alone in having journal entry and GL line item counts like this. Extracting a bunch of small files to work around this is the only way to do it at this point, but that is very time consuming and cumbersome. The audit teams also want one file (or very few files) to review and request that we do not manually manipulate the extracts.

Have you guys encountered this issue? How did you work around it?

Thanks!

Ryan

[former_member95896 · Accepted solution]

ccsmith I've added the request to the improvement site. Here's the link, and feel free to spread the word.

Thanks,

Ryan

Link: https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#/idea/218215/?section=sectionDetails

[former_member94298 · Accepted solution]

Done

[Jeffrey_Holdema]

Realize this question was asked a long time ago, but since it comes up first in search results thought I would share the answer to look into using the SAP Data Retention Tool which is included in SAP ERP and S/4HANA.

You can read about it on the SAP Help Portal (DART).

Best regards,

Jeffrey Holdeman

[former_member132345]

Hello guys,

Please, take a look at the Fiori App "Audit Journal".

https://fioriappslibrary.hana.ondemand.com/sap/fix/externalViewer/#/detail/Apps('F0997')/S11OP

Hope that this was helpful.

Cassiano Lins

SAP Labs Latin America

S/4HANA Cloud Product Expert

[former_member95896]

Hi Cassiano,

Unfortunately this application runs into the same issues as the GL Line Items report I tried to use above in that it times out when we try to export a large data set worth of line item data. In addition, this report only allows you to run one company code at a time based on my testing. It is a great report for analysis in S/4 (our accountants use it today to audit our store entries), just not for this purpose.

Thanks,

Ryan

[former_member94298]

Yes - had looked at the audit journal also - you would still end up coming up against excel line number limitations on the download (so doesn't really add that much more than the basic G/L line items report)

[former_member94298]

Thanks for the update - and agree - anything that involves an excel extract is going to fall flat, as auditors will typically want a full year of data - which is bound to be more lines than excel can cope with.

I have pushed the question to SAP by raising an incident - so will see if anything useful comes back from that.

Send a link if you raise something on the influence portal - happy to add votes!

[former_member95896]

Will do. I'll also poke people at TechEd in a couple of weeks to see if I get a good answer.

[former_member94298]

Ryan - did you ever get a response to this - or come up with a way of dealing with this issue - we are currently facing a similar scenario - so would be grateful for any learnings that you might be able to share!

Thanks!

Clare

[former_member95896]

Hi Clare,

No, I've not received any feedback from SAP or in general on how to address this issue. I was passed a link to a blog on how to connect S/4HC to Excel thru an oData service (http://pascalrenet.com/2017/12/s4hcks18-calling-s-4hana-cloud-odata-service-excel/) but that doesn't allow us the full data extract and Excel itself runs into row limitations around a 1 million rows in the .xlsx format.

There has to be some way to address this in the cloud environment.

I'll keep pressing. Probably going to put a request in on the influence site as well.

Ryan

[Former Member]

It's Nov 2019 now and I have the same question.

These is a standard request from external auditors

Is there any resolution?

[former_member95896]

No resolution. SAP seems to think that the Display GL Line Items report should suffice, but in my experience it clearly doesn't and times out in the 100k line item range.