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November 2010

SAP SUPPORT UPDATE A MONTHLY PUBLICATION OF THE IT@JH - ENTERPRISE BUSINESS SOLUTIONS TEAM

Team Carts in the Shopping Cart Application

By Bob Sicoli

In May 2010 the SAP Shopping Cart application was upgraded to a newer version to

correspond with the technical upgrade. A new process called Team Carts was introduced in this

upgrade. The Team Cart process allows people to share their shopping carts with members of

their team or department. SAP refers to team members as purchasing substitutes and allows

these substitutes to view, copy, confirm, and check statuses on carts designated as team

carts. Some aspects of the Team Carts process are:

Team Carts are shopping carts that can be viewed, accessed, or confirmed by multiple

requisitioners.

Team Carts are set up in the Settings section of the Go Shopping Tab.

Individual Settings must be completed by every team member to view each other’s carts.

During the creation of a shopping cart, a button must be checked to make the cart a team cart.

Team Cart Quick Tips

Create Settings for Team Carts using the steps listed below (Each person on the team will need to adjust their own

Settings to have others view their shopping carts):

1. Click Go Shopping - Settings

2. Click Edit in the Settings screen

3. Click the User Account tab

4. In the My Procurement Substitutes section, enter or search for the JHED ID of the team member in the Name

of Substitute field

5. Enter the start and end date

6. Repeat this process for all of your procurement substitutes

7. Click Save at the top or bottom of the Setting screen

Creating Team Cart Shopping Carts:

When creating a shopping cart, you must check the Make accessible to my Purchasing Substitutes button in the

General Data section of each cart you want to designate as a Team Cart. The rest of the ordering process to create a

shopping cart is the same.

Bob Sicoli

SAP IT Trainer for

Organization Dev. Training

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SAP SUPPORT UPDATE

Searching for Team Carts in the Shopping Cart Home Page:

You can view Team Carts that you created by making sure the Show Only My Team Carts checkbox is checked in

the Quick Criteria Maintenance screen, then Apply:

You can view carts that someone else created (who listed you as a Purchasing Substitute) by using the Team

Carts query in the Shopping Cart Home Page and Refresh the screen:

For more information on the Team Cart process visit a FastFacts session on the subject recorded in September 2010

at this link http://www.hopkinsfastfacts.org/rsessions.html#pd . There is also a Team Cart job aid on the Supply

Chain Shared Services website at this link: http://ssc.jhmi.edu/bin/g/k/using_team_carts.pdf.

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SAP SUPPORT UPDATE

What is an encumbrance?

By Robin Denning

Encumbrances allow organizations to recognize future commitments of resources prior to an

actual expenditure. Anytime you hear words like “resource”, “source of funds” or

“expenditure” you are probably talking about Fund Accounting. And even if you took an

accounting class, it’s not likely the course covered encumbrances.

Most of us learn about encumbrances when we come to work in a university, where

encumbrances are widely used. In hospitals, expenses that have not yet been paid are

recorded with accrual journal entries. Both techniques accomplish the objective of

consuming budget and reporting expenses that will be paid for eventually. In SAP,

encumbrances appear in Funds Management (FM) reports using a variety of terms as follows:

Payroll encumbrances are called Funds Commitments

Shopping cart encumbrances are called Purchase Requisitions (since the May 15, 2010 upgrade)

Shopping cart encumbrances were called Funds reservations (before the May 15, 2010 upgrade)

F&A and non-payroll cost transfer encumbrances are called Funds Reservations

Encumbrances for online payment requests are posted as Parked Documents

Travel encumbrances are called Business Trip Commitments

Billing revenue encumbrances are called Forecast of Revenues

Encumbrances are also referred to as Open Items and also as Commitments. This FM report – the Non-Sponsored

Financial Summary, shows how actuals and commitments are shown. The FM module is on a budgetary basis of

accounting:

Robin Denning

Funds Management Finance/

Sponsored Team for EBS

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How do encumbrances affect me?

At the beginning of the fiscal year, at 12:01am on July 1, the carry forward of encumbrances begins. The process of

moving open items to the new fiscal year took over 9 hours last year. You need FM open items in the new fiscal

year, in order to take action on open purchase orders, trips, etc.

On July 1, first thing in the morning, you may see a notice on the SAP Welcome screen letting you know that the

new fiscal year is not yet ready for processing transactions that need to update FM open items. The SAP Welcome

screen will be updated just as soon as the processing has completed and you can carry on with your duties.

Throughout the year, users are occasionally prevented from completing a task because an FM error arises. When

these errors pertain to funds reservations, funds commitments, purchase requisitions, etc., the errors must be

cleared in order to proceed.

For help with FM error resolution, the Shared Services departments are your first option.

Supply Chain Shared Service will help you with purchase order problems: POMaintenance@jhu.edu.

Salary commitments can be corrected by Payroll Shared Services: payroll@jhu.edu.

Non-payroll cost transfers generate commitments and those errors can be cleared by Sponsored Services:

Effort@jhu.edu.

Accounts Payable Shared Services can help with invoice and travel problems: apSSC@jhmi.edu.

There is a BW Help Desk within the Financial Systems Administration Department of the JHU Controller’s

Office. They know how to fix many of the common FM errors that arise: fqchelp@jhu.edu.

To learn more about commitments, check out this FastFacts session: Commitments Overview.

If you aren’t sure who to call, contact the SAP Help Desk at SAPHelpDesk@jhmi.edu.

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Position Sensitive Wildcards

By Gina Gerald

Many users may already be familiar with using the “*” as a wildcard. The “*” is used to specify a

value which may have additional data in front of or behind the selected value. Users may not be

as familiar with the position sensitive wildcard, which is denoted by a “+”. This wildcard can be

used to express the starting position of a search value within the field.

An example would be in Project Systems Accounting. Projects are 10 characters long. The 1st

position is the type of project, positions 2, 3 and 4 make up the business area, positions 5 and 6

are the related fiscal year of the project and positions 7-10 do not have logical assignments.

A user can look for all projects

within a business area for a

specific fiscal year by using the

position sensitive wildcard. By

entering +40009* the result

would give all projects for

Business Area 400, for Fiscal Year

09. Each “+” serves as a

placeholder for a single character.

A user might wonder, can I use

*40009* instead? The answer is

no, using that string would include

other values, like C101040009,

which is a Project related to Business Area 101.

Users can also use multiple “+” signs, to denote a specific number of positions to pass over when searching for

specific criteria in a character string .

Cost Centers are 10 characters long, and have numbering logic. Positions 1, 2 and 3, are the business area.

Positions 4, 5 and 6 denote the Functional Unit/Dept, and positions 7 – 10 do not have logical assignments.

Knowing that Ancillary Service cost centers are assigned to functional units beginning with 3. A user can search for

all JHHS Ancillary Cost Centers, regardless of the business area by entering +++3* in the selection box for Cost

Center.

Gina Gerald

Programmer Analyst

for the EBS team

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Information Needed to Help Resolve Shopping Cart Issues

By Jeanne Young

In order to resolve shopping cart issues quickly, it is helpful for EBS and Supply Chain

Shared Service staff to have the following information associated with the issue being

reported:

1. List the steps you took that generated the error or incorrect result. This

will allow us to replicate issues that may be system wide and allow us to identify

procedural issues.

2. Supply your Name and SAP User ID (JHED ID)

3. Include important numbers. For Example: PO number, Shopping Cart number, or Invoice number.

Often, we can use this information to research the issue and find a solution before contacting users.

4. Attach screen shots of any error messages you receive. A picture is worth a 1000 words and we can

tell a lot from screen shots. Screen shots will often contain clues that will give us more information we can

use to resolve issues or allow use to rule out possible causes.

How to create and attach a screen shot using a PC:

Start by navigating to the screen or error message that is causing the issue. Press the Ctrl, Alt, and Print Screen

key on your keyboard at the same time.

Then paste the screen shot into an email or a word document. If pasting the screen shot into a word document;

save the document then attach it to your email.

Jeanne Young

Sr. ERP Business Analyst

for EBS

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Resources for SAP.

Knowledge Network:

knowledgenetwork.johnshopkins.edu

Fast Facts:

learning.jhu.edu

Shared Services:

ssc.jhmi.edu

JHU Controller’s Office:

www.controller.jhu.edu

SAP Support Update newsletter archive:

orchid.hosts.jhmi.edu/hopkinsone/News/archive.cfm

SAP Support Update newsletter archive:

orchid.hosts.jhmi.edu/hopkinsone/News/archive.cfm

For Our Readers. The SAP Support Update is published monthly to keep

you informed of the activities within the Enterprise Busi-

ness Solutions team and to provide tips and tricks that will

make your work with SAP easier.

For questions, suggestions, ideas or to submit an article,

please email us at: sapnews@jhu.edu

How to create a screen shot using a Mac:

As with the PC, Start out by navigating to the image you want to capture. Press the shift, command and 3 keys at

the same time. Attach the screen shot to an email by locating the stored screen shot on your desktop. The portion

of the screen that you would like to share can also be saved through a screen capture using shift, command, 4.

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Planned SAP System Maintenance Schedule

Upcoming Schedule

November 4 (Thurs. @ 3am - 7am)

Network outage at Mt. Washington. Will affect SAP.

Note: end time changed to accommodate an accounting adjustment.

November 6/7 (Sat. - Sun. @ 11 pm - 3 am)

Time Change

Maintenance

Note: Change to start and end times

December 3/4

(Fri. - Sat. @ 9 pm - 11 am) Application of calendar year-end support packs round 1 (all

components). This date is tentative pending what is learned from

SAP's support pack and notes release schedule.

December 17/18 (Fri. - Sat. @ 9 pm - 11 am)

Application of calendar year-end support packs round 2 (HR

only). This date is tentative pending what is learned from SAP's

support pack and notes release schedule.

January 14/15 (Fri. - Sat. @ 9 pm - 11 am)

Maintenance

February 18/19 (Fri. - Sat. @ 9 pm - 11 am)

Maintenance

March 12/13 (Fri. - Sat. @ 9 pm - 11 am)

Maintenance

Time Change

Training Opportunities at Johns Hopkins: A range of SAP training is offered to all employees in both “e-course” or traditional classroom format.

Employees can access the training centers by visiting their organization’s training sites at:

Johns Hopkins University: learning.jhu.edu

Johns Hopkins Medicine: www.hopkinsinteractive.org (clinical training)

Johns Hopkins Health System SAP: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/sap

It has become necessary to schedule monthly maintenance for the SAP system in order to perform routine

maintenance tasks such as: adding storage, deploying patches, and other activities that require the systems to be

offline. As always, our objective is to minimize the amount of downtime during these periods while accomplishing

important system management tasks. After coordinating with Shared Services and other key users, we have

developed the following weekend schedule.

Unless otherwise specified, the systems will be taken down for a 14 hour period, with a start time of 9:00 PM on

the evening before the specified date, and concluding no later than 11:00 AM on the specified date. If

the maintenance activities finish sooner, the system is released to the users at that time.