Two recent customers display a few uses for the Import Journal and Export Journal Data Manager Package. The first client, a large manufacturer of petroleum-based products, wanted to load existing Journals as part of a BPC 7.5 Microsoft to BPC 10 NW project, as opposed to entering BPC Journals manually using the BPC Journal module. In addition, they needed to load the BPC Journals in their quality and production environments. The second customer, a large telecom, had several needs including having the ability to fully consolidate a seeded forecast with journal entries, build custom BPC journal reports, and consolidate history.
So let’s take a look at how the BPC Import and Export Data Manager Packages can help accomplish some of the above scenarios. For this discussion, the Restore Journal package name has been changed to Import Journal.
All steps were performed on SAP BPC 10 NW on HANA using EPM Client SP 15 for Excel.
Initial Setup
Exporting journals using the standard Data Manager package is similar to running a normal data package except that there isn’t a transformation or conversion file. All available fields and journals are exported from the journal tables. This includes user defined fields added from within the BPC admin consol. It’s not possible to limit the fields or journals for export. Exported journal files also serve as a source file format for the Restore Journal Data Manager package for the current model.
Steps to export journals to flat file
1) Create an export .JRN template file for upload to BPC. This file must have at least 1 character but doesn’t need journal table headers. The Export Journal process will generate the headers at run time. This .txt file is simply a source file to which the journal package writes its results.
2) Now upload the .JRN file to BPC using Data Manager or UJFS.
If you try to upload an empty file the upload will succeed but the file will NOT be saved to the web folders.
3) If journals don’t exist for a given BPC Model, then create at least one journal entry.
4) The next step is to run the Export Journal Package from Data Manager.
Browse to the uploaded .JRN file and hit Next>Finish. Open View Status to see the results.
The export log doesn’t include details like a normal import/export load.
5) Download the .JRN file from Data Manager or UJFS and view the results in a text editor or Excel.
APPSET_ID
APPL_ID
JRN_TMPL_ID
JRN_ID
DESCRIPTION
USERC
DATEMODIFIED
USERP
DATEPOSTED
STATUS
IDJ_AUTO_REV
POSTED
IDJ_OLD
IDJ_GROUP
AUTO_REVERSED
BALANCED
REOPEN
EDITABLE
VARIABLET
<Dimension List>
ROW_NUM
DEBIT
CREDIT
REMARK
Importing Journals
Importing journals is useful for restoring journals after a Journal template has been rebuilt, for batch processing a large number of one time journals, or seeding journals for a budget or plan cycle. The standard Restore Journal package has been renamed Import Journal in this Model.As mentioned above, the importing of journal process starts with a journal export file from the current Model. This provides the correct fields and file format.
Key Concepts when Preparing an Import File
In the next installment we’ll look at a couple of real world examples of how to use the journal packages.
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