Sap Ag

Horst Schnoerer

Andreas Schaefer

Thomas M Schaub

Juergen Hollberg

Christian Metz

A rule set for an AVC system permits AVC operations to be performed at various levels of hierarchy within a governing budget data structure. A rule set contains a plurality of rules, each having an address field which relates an arbitrarily assigned control object to budget nodes in a budget data structure. Control objects typically are assigned to various units and aggregation levels within an organization and also across other dimensions. Rule arrays with several independent rule sets can be activated in parallel for checking an individual input data record against multiple budgetary requirements defined for the organization. This structure provides a comprehensive AVC control feature even for very large budget data structures and complex budgetary control environments.

Parallel availability control checks in financial management system

A budgetary control system limits revenue generating transactions that may be entered in an enterprise management system. When a new revenue posting is proposed to the system, various AVC rules are evaluated. The evaluation compares the revenue posting against predetermined budgetary limits. The AVC rules may address various nodes within a revenue postings data structure and within a revenue budget data structure and they may define a test relationship that must be maintained between them. If proposed revenue posting would violate the test relationship of an AVC rule, then the revenue posting may be rejected from the system depending upon the contents of a response field in the AVC rule. Some AVC rules mandate that a violation cause the proposed transaction to be blocked while others may generate a warning notification within the system but admit the new transaction despite the violation.

Enterprise management application providing availability control checks on revenue budgets

Financial management applications may operate according to RIB rules in which expenditure budget limits are increased as an organization or department thereof realizes revenue. When such applications operate in conjunction with complicated data structures for revenues and budget, it can become burdensome to define a plurality of RIB rules individually. A configuration system includes a RIB strategy array containing a relatively small set of meta-rules for identifiers of various portions of a revenue data structure to which they apply. An automated configuration system surveys the revenue data structure, determines which value transforms and destination addresses of a budget database apply and generate a larger set of RIB rules that will govern in the financial management application during normal system operation.

Automatic generation of RIB rules in computerized financial management system

Enterprise management applications perform a 'revenues increasing the budget' (RIB) operation on general ledger data and store elements of the general ledger data that have a RIB effect in another ledger, called the 'RIB ledger'. RIB ledgers may include sets of RIB rules, storage for documents reflecting all relevant delta values together with the corresponding links to the underlying original transaction documents as well as storage for all relevant aggregated data. Accordingly, when audit operations are performed for RIB budget increases, relevant transaction data is readily available in the RIB ledger. Such copies of the data are more easily accessed than through a search of the larger set of general ledger data, thus facilitating and accelerating use of the RIB techniques in an online system.

Growing community of inventors

Angelbachtal, Germany

Horst Schnoerer