Scenario
You are doing the SAP lab exercise, trying to create a new customer in the system, carefully following every word in the thick lab handout. For every sentence you read, you scan the screen with tens of fields, seemingly randomly arranged, to find the one field mentioned in the sentence, move your cursor there and enter the content instructed by the sentence. Then you repeat the same for the next sentence. Field after field, tab after tab, screen after screen,… It’s the slowest reading you have ever done. Doing the one-step exercise feels like running a marathon.
After going on like this for 15 minutes, you are finally on the last paragraph on page 3 – the finishing line is near. Pulse racing furiously, and palm sweating uncontrollably, you speed up the movements of your eyes, fingers and wrist. You are keying in the last field on the screen. Your eyes shift their focus to the SAVE icon at the top of the screen, and your hand moves the mouse cursor to it. Click. The screen shows a message that your customer XXXXX has been created. “Woohoo!” you cheer ecstatically in your mind, “I’m done!”. And then, without thinking, you click the EXIT button.
Mistake. The screen returns to the SAP easy access menu, and the message you just saw is gone. The next sentence on the lab handout says, “Record the customer number”. What is the customer number? You didn’t write it down, and you can’t remember it. In the subsequent steps of the lab, you are sure you will need to enter it somewhere (e.g., in a sales order). Are you doomed?
Remedy
Fret not. At this crucial moment, as long as you haven’t logged out of the system, or started performing another transaction which involves a customer, help is available.
You see, usually, the system “remembers” the last customer number you have used. When I say “used”, it could be one of the following situations:
- Created a customer successfully, causing the system to be “aware” of a customer number (and show it to you in the message); or
- Entered a valid customer number on a screen, followed by an action (e.g., clicking ENTER) which communicates the customer number to the system.
So, after you successfully create a customer, the system “knows” the number of this new customer, because it has just shown it to you in a message. You have forgotten to write it down, and now the message is gone. But the system still “remembers” it, and will retain it in its memory, until it has a new number to “remember” or you log out of the system (an event that will cause the system to “forget” everything about you).
Think of this memory as similar to the clipboard in Windows or OSX. After you create the customer, the system automatically performs a “copy” of the customer number into the clipboard. As long as you don’t log out of the system, or “copy” another customer number into the clipboard, that customer number will remain in the clipboard.
Now, you just have to make the system “paste” it, from the clipboard, for you to see. Then, you will get the customer number that you forgot to write down. Easy!
How to get the customer number from the clipboard
Usually, in SAP, if you can create something, you can also change it or display it (subject to your access right) later. Check out the options on the SD menu path for maintaining a customer:
You can see that, you use XD01 (Create Customer – Complete) to create a customer, and you can also use XD02 (Change Customer – Complete) to make changes to it or use XD03 (Display Customer – Complete) to display it. Since you have forgotten to write down your customer number after doing XD01, you can immediately launch XD02 or XD03 to make the system “paste” the customer number from the clipboard.
Launching XD02:
Launching XD03:
Both XD02 and XD03 require you to enter a customer number on the initial screen, and the system tries to be helpful by suggesting the customer number that it “remembers” (i.e., from its clipboard). As you can see, it not only does so for customer, it keeps a clipboard for each of several important objects and pastes their last “remembered” values from their respective clipboards wherever relevant – company code, sales organization, distribution channel and division are objects which benefit from this feature in XD02 and XD03.
What about other SAP objects used in AC2401?
Going by the same logic, if you can launch the Change or Display transaction for an object, you can get its last “remembered” value, as long as there is a clipboard for the object in SAP.
Let me show you the ways to launch the Change and Display transactions for the various objects you have got to know through AC2401:
G/L Account
For this object, Create, Change and Display are all done using the same transaction (FS00). You just have to re-launch the transaction, the system will paste the last “remembered” G/L account number there.
Credit Management Account
FD32 to change (also to create); FD33 to display.
Cost Element
KA02 to change; KA03 to display.
Cost Center
KS02 to change; KS03 to display.
Activity Type
KL02 to change; KL03 to display.
Statistical Key Figure
KK02 to change; KK03 to display.
Allocation Cycle
There are two ways to change or display a distribution/assessment allocation cycle:
(1) Launch their respective Execute transactions (KSV5 & KSU5), as if you want to execute an allocation cycle.
After filling in the Period and Fiscal Year fields, from the application menu, select Extras > Cycle > Change or Extras > Cycle > Display. This is similar to the method illustrated in the CO lab to create a cycle (Extras > Cycle > Create).
(2) Directly launch the respective Change and Display transaction codes (for some reasons, these transactions are not available on the SAP menu path):
- KSV2: Change actual distribution cycle
- KSV3: Display actual distribution cycle
- KSU2: Change actual assessment cycle
- KSU3: Display actual assessment cycle
Sales Inquiry
VA12 to change; VA13 to display.
Sales Quotation
VA22 to change; VA23 to display.
Sales Order
VA02 to change; VA03 to display.
Outbound Delivery
VL02N to change; VL03N to display.
Billing Document
VF02 to change; VF03 to display.
Account Document
FB02 to change; FB03 to display.
Controlling Document
You can’t change a controlling document, but you can display it with KSB5.
Conclusion
So, you don’t have to panic, during lab exercises or SAP quizzes, if you forget to write down the identification number of the object you have just created or posted. Calmly launch its Change or Display transaction, its last “remembered” number will be pasted, from its clipboard, onto the screen, right in front of your eyes.
AC2401 