Welcome all IS-U'ers to our Frequently Asked Questions and Answers page. Please note that this page is under construction! More detail will be added soon.
Choose one of the following sections for which you would like to see existing Q&A's. Last updated: 22/05/99.
Question 1: 14/11/1998
We are currently in the blueprint phase of an IS-U implementation, and the question has come up if a separate Customer Service Department should be created, and where in the organisational structure such a department should fit in.
Currently at our SAP installation customer, the financial department is in charge of the front offices, and they also deal with the day to day financial enquiries of the customers. However, the technical department also deals directly with the customer enquires relating to incorrect meter readings, faulty meters etc.
Our SAP installation customer would very much like to become more customer focused, and have a customer care department. The question however is whether the technical or the financial department should be in charge of this customer care department. Or should it be a department on it’s own interfacing to the other departments? Any examples of how other IS-U companies deal with this will also be of great help.
Answer 1 to Q1: 14/11/1998
It's ideal that Front Office should be put under the responsibility of Customer Services. Finance Dept. is only the support back-end of the Front Office operation i.e., all business transactions' financial documentation (trial balance, cash analysis, etc.). Customer Services is really a totally different animal from the Finance area. It's the window to the outside world and the window to the inside world. Finance is only one of the hinges to these dual windows.
Answer 2 to Q1: 15/11/1998
It has been my experience so far that a separate Customer Service department is established. Depending on the complexity of the company, and the use of such things as IVR, various calls would be routed to groups of people within this organization i.e. financial vs technical. However, that would be for the initial call only. The customer service rep would be able to answer any question. In addition, I have seen certain customer calls (large commercial) would be routed directly to specific reps. As for where in the org structure this department is established is really a process oriented decision. If the focus of the company is sales and marketing, then customer service would be part of that group. However, if the focus is customer satisfaction then customer service would be its own department in parallel with sales, T&D etc.
Answer 3 to Q1: 15/11/1998
A power supplier of Australia has a "Customer Operations Management" department. This falls under the "Commercial" department. Also in Commercial, there are Retail Support, Pricing Analysis, Energy Trading, and Mass Marketing departments. The commercial department focuses on retail sales and its associated work. Finance, HR, etc. are completely different departments.
Answer 4 to Q1: 16/11/1998
I have dealt with this same issue across continents and many companies. My experience has been that the utility should have a unique department for customer service. This department should contain all of the processes and thus resources related to front office business transactions. In addition, I have typically placed a lot of the back room functions in this department. These would include for example, usage edit/validation exceptions, billing edit/validation exceptions, credit worthiness evaluation and collection actions. I would tend to make the technical and finance departments much tighter in both process and scope and control. In many ways we are creating a "chief customer service officer" just like we have a CIO or "knowledge officer".
Answer 5 to Q1: 16/11/1998
At a big power company Customer Service is a separate business unit with its own Vice President. It includes the following Departments:
Welcome to the political battle between the Front office and the Tech. side. There is no clean answer but if you follow the procedures required it is self-explanatory, all of the technical data resides with the meter shop up to the move-in. Where the financial dept. should verify that the proper billing has been set up. Once installed most activities are started by the front office and flow to the tech side.
Regional Structure and Scheduling
Under Construction
Business and Technical Master Data
Under Construction
Under Construction
Question 1: Reconciliation Keys (Individual Invoice Processing)
We have a question regarding CCS individual invoice processing. When we try to process an invoice using transaction EA19 (Create bill: individual creation), the system asks for a reconciliation key. During our class, we were able to freely assign any key but now, the system gives an error when we try to execute the run with a key defined by us. The error says: Reconciliation key XXXXXXXXXX not yet created. XXXXXXXXX is whatever we typed into the field.
Answer to Q 1
Create the reconciliation key firstly in FICA and it'll work. Here is the path in the IMG: Utilities industry / Contract AR + AP / Document / Reconciliation key / Create. This should give you a valid 'batch header' for the invoicing process.
Note to users of version 1.1b: You should be able to create a reconciliation key if one does not exist. You should be prompted to do this after the system tells you the key does not exist. Since you do not get this option and I assume you are using version 1.1b.
Question 2: CCS Rates Steps Structure
We have not been able to bill for 2 days due to inability of CCS to pick up schema related rate steps during the billing run. The original rate and schema did work and when attempted to re-create everything from scratch I still obtained the same error during billing. Appears that even though I can see the related rate steps on-line the billing run fails to pick them up and generates an error msg.
We are not sure why billing no longer picks up the rate steps in the schema. Creating a whole new infrastructure does not solve the problem.
Answers to Q 2 (Received from different correspondents)
1) Make sure the rate type assignment is done correctly.
2) Sounds like a time slice error. Check to make sure all dates are covered and do not correspond to the dates in the error message.
3) Make sure you have a billing order for the appropriate dates.
4) It appears that you may have changed something in the schema of the rate. Therefore, go to the schema and click the update icon (looks like an ugly little truck). Then, try to reuse the rate. If that doesn't work, review your rate determination to make sure the first date goes back far enough in your testing period (to the beginning).
5) I would like to suggest checking all the dates that come in way of creating Rate structure.
6) I would look at the meter readings and bill cycle dates. Make sure that the readings have passed validity and are ok for billing. Make sure that the bill dates fall into the same date range as the validity of the rate structure.
Question 1: CCS Operational Company Code
When creating a CCS contract account, in the Number/Dunning screen, the responsible company code is a required entry. When I put in a valid company code, I got an error message: Company code XXXX not defined as operational company code.
I searched the IMG on operational and got 3 hits under FI consolidation preparation, which doesn't sound like anything related to CCS.
Answer to Q 1
You must assign each company code you will use on your contracts to a responsible company code using the IMG configuration path: Financial Accounting / Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable / Organizational Units / Assign Company Codes to Responsible Company Codes
You must assign each company code to a responsible company code and then the responsible company code will be used in the Contract Account. Use F1-Help on the fields in the IMG to get more info.
Question 2: Main and sub transactions
How do you make the main and sub transactions defined available for selection in the DTS and CTS columns? I've selected a variant program and defined operands for it but it asks me to specify su b transaction for the variant when I try to save the rate step. When pressing the F4 key, the message says 'The system cannot display possible entries here.' I tried entering the sub transaction I defined but it says 'Select a valid object'.
When I tried to allocate the main and sub transactions for billing to the company code and division, I can't save the entry. The error message is: Maintain sub-transaction 0001 (reason for error 1., see long text).
The long text is as follows: When the sub-transactions for the billing in the IS-U application, Company code 1001, division 91 were checked, it was established that the entries in view V_TE305 are not consistent.
For these sub-transactions, the following additional requirements must be met: (The reason in the error message corresponds to the number in the list.)
1. If a sub-transaction is defined for at least one main transaction of the billing, it must be defined for all of them. The sub-transaction specified in the message has not been defined for at l east one of the main billing transactions. (The keys for the main transactions of the billing are defined in view V_TEIVV for the internal main transactions 0100 (consumption billing), 0200 (final billing), 0300 (man. credit/backbilling). The internal main transactions themselves can be found in table TEIHVOR.)
2. For the same sub-transaction key, the debit/credit indicator must be identical for all main transactions. For the sub-transaction specified in the error message, a deviating debit/credit ind icator has been specified in at least one main transaction.
The problem is, I've defined and allocated the main and sub transactions (0100,0200,0300) already for billing.
The budget billing entries were added because the configuration assigning company code & divisio asked for it to be there. Does it mean I have to add all the main and sub transactions and allocate them to all the internal main and sub transactions before I can continue on?
Answer to Q 2
You must have the same sub-transactions for all ISU main transactions
without exception. And the sub-transactions must be defined consistently
across all t he main transactions to which they apply. Also review the
FI-CA documentation for the creation of sub-transactions within the IMG
for more information.
Question 3: Updating G/L
When working on rate structure I was getting a message " Account determination not possible for "Record R/0020/01/0100/0020 not found in table TE305". We are on release 1.1b.
Answer to Q 3
Let me take a guess:
Your company code is 0020, division 01, you have a main and sub transaction 0100/0020 defined, right?
The reason you got that error is that you probably haven't linked your main/sub transaction to a company code. Try going to the following IMG entry: \par \par Financial Accounting / Contract accounts Receivable and Payable / Basic functions / Posting and Document / Document / Maintain document assignment / Maintain transactions for company code and division / Maintain transactions for billing.
Enter an entry: Application: R, CoCode: 0020, Dv: 01, Main: 0100, Sub: 0020, Debit/credit: S (if you decide to make this a debit entry).
You'll need to add another entry as R/0020/01/0100/0010 to represent the credit subtransaction in the rate step. What this enables you to do is to add or subtract to the G/L accounts (assigned later on in a different step) when a billable amount comes through the rate. If the amount coming through billing is +, than the A/R will be debited, Revenue credited. If the amount coming through is -, than A/R will be credited, Revenue debited. \par \par The G/L accounts for the A/R and the revenue account is done in the next IMG section, Define automatic account assignment. The A/R account is assigned to the main transaction, the revenue account to the main/sub transaction.
The pain with editing this particular table TE305 (company code assignment) is that you'll have to maintain the subtransaction 0020 for every main transaction or it won't let you save. Or, if not all the 0020 have the same debit/credit key, it won't let you save either.
Question 1: CCS Security Profile
I've got some problems with the standard profile E_ALL, so do I have to create an extra profile where you add on the extra FI-objects missing in this profile, or do you have to use another profile? If you have to use another profile, which one?
Answer to Q1
I may be able to help you out with the security profile since we've run into that before. Here's how we've done it. We built a composite profile Z:ISU_ALL and below are the subprofiles you put in. It already includes the objects in E_ALL. We decided to group it according to menu/functional area so that it's easier for maintenance. Hope that helps!
Profile: &Z:ISU_ARAP
Object Text
Authorization:
F_KKSU FI-CA Reconciliation key and posting totals F_KK_ALL
F_KKPY FI-CA automatic payment transactions in contract accou F_KK_ALL
F_KKCC FI-CA correspondence generation in contract A/R and A/P F_KK_ALL
F_KKCO FI-CA correspondence in contract A/R and A/P F_KK_ALL
F_KKDU FI-CA dunning in contract accounting F_KK_ALL
F_KKDU_BUK FI-CA dunning in contract accounting: CoCode auth. F_KK_ALL
F_KKZK FI-CA payment lot in contract accounting F_KK_ALL
F_KKRK FI-CA returns lot in contract accounting F_KK_ALL
F_KK_SEC FI-CA security deposit F_KK_ALL
F_KK_SOND FI-CA special functions F_KK_ALL
Profile: &Z:ISU_BILL
E_DEV_RATE Authorization object for rate data E_DEV_RATE_A
E_VARIANT Authorization object for variants E_VARIANT_AL
F_KKKO_BUK FI-CA doc in contract accounting: CoCode authorization F_KK_ALL
Profile: &Z:ISU_BUSA
E_CUST_CHG Authorization obj. for maint. of standard customers in E_CUST_CHG_A
E_CONTRACT Authorization object for IS-U contract E_CONTRACT_A
B_BUPA_GRP Business partner: Authorization groups B_ALL
B_BUPA_ATT Business partner: Authorization types B_ALL
B_BUPA_RLT Business partner: Role types B_ALL
F_KKVK_BEG FI-CA contract acct: authorization group F_KK_ALL
F_KKVK_BUK FI-CA contract acct: company code authorization F_KK_ALL
F_KKVK_VKT FI-CA contract acct: contract acct type auth. F_KK_ALL
Profile: &Z:ISU_CUST
E_MOVE_IN Authorization object for move-in E_MOVE_IN_A
E_MOVE_OUT Authorization object for move-out E_MOVE_OUT_A
B_PCONTACT B_PCONTACT B_PCONTACT_A
Profile: &Z:ISU_DEVC
E_DEV_CHNG Authorization object for device modification E_DEV_CHNG_A
E_INST_REM Authorization object for install., removal, and replac E_INS_REM_A
E_LOG_REG Authorization object for logical registers E_LOG_REG_A
E_METER_RR Authorization object for meter reading results E_METER_RR_A
E_DEV_REL Authorization object for register relationships E_DEV_REL_A
E_REG_REL Authorization object for register relationships E_REG_REL_A
E_SAMP_LOT Authorization object for sample lot E_SAMP_LOT_A
Profile: &Z:ISU_MISC
E_MIGRATN Authorization object for migration to IS-U E_MIGRATN_A
E_OPERAND Authorization object for operands E_OPERAND_A
E_VARIANT Authorization object for variants E_VARIANT_AL
S_CFC_AUTH Clarification controller: General authorization object F_KK_ALL
P_PRWBENCH Print workbench P_PRWBENCH_A
S_USER_AMT User master maintenance: Authorizations S_USER_ALL
S_USER_PRO User master maintenance: Authorization profile S_USER_ALL
Profile: &Z:ISU_TECH
E_CONNOBJ Authorization object for connection object E_CONNOBJ_A
E_DEVLOC Authorization object for device locations E_DEVLOC_ALL
E_PREMISE Authorization object for premise E_PREMISE_A
E_INSTLN Authorization object for supply installation E_INSTLN_ALL
Question 2: CCS Profile Generator
We are implementing CCS version 1.1b on SAP 4.0b. We are currently having difficulty with profile generator, as it does not incorporate any of the CCS transactions or objects. Are you familiar with any type of preparation or load that would need to take place in order for profile generator to function effectively with CCS?\fs24\par }
Answer to Q 2
Make use of a so-called table compare to that will bring in all the
CCS information you need.
This page is maintained by Johan Yssel: yssel@email.com.
Last updated Saturday 22/05/1999. All comments are very welcome.