Pros and cons of cats entry vs. input in co module

[Guest]

Hi. We are entering original SAP records in CATS via an interface. For corrections, we are trying to determine whether to do the input in CATS or directly in CO as an allocation. Anyone ever think of this? The reason for this is that we do not want to open CATS to users and the originating systems for the interface only have original data. Basically we are copying what they currently do. Thanks

[Jez]

Can the data not be corrected on the originating system and then interfaced to CATS?

I would certainly try to avoid making changes to data in CO that are the result of a transfer from CATS, as this transfer is one way and by changing data on the CO side you have put the two out of sync which can lead to many problems down the road.

[Guest]

Hi Jeremy. Unfortunately, the originating system does not handle corrections. They do the corrections in their legacy accounting system not the originating system. Do you know of specifc issues? I agree we should use CATS but the client want to know why before they say yes

[Jez]

I think it depend on whether there will be any human input to CATS. If your only method of entry to CATS is through the interface and you can design the interface to 1)not change any existing records, 2)only add new records, and 3) you are content that the CATSDB can never be relied upon to have 100% correct data (to report on etc.), then making corrections in CO may be okay. Why are you interfacing to CATS and not directly to CO? You say you are not using HR except for mini-master data, are you transferring to any of the other modules from CATS? Do you intend to use HR in the future?

In short, if you intend to use CATS to interface to, and the legacy system cannot accomodate your correction requirements, the correct place to make corrections is CATS due to the one way flow of data between it and CO.

[Guest]

Thanks for your input Jeremy. At this point there is no plan to use the HR module. They currently have Peoplesoft for all their HR processes. Your idea about direct entry to CO sounds plausible. To answer your other question, we are only using CATS to transfer data for CO. We are not using CATS for PM, PS etc. Thanks for your help