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Planning Templates

Planning Templates are used to post your planning values from Excel directly into SAP. Once you have in initialized the template in Excel you can use all the formatting and formula capabilities of Excel to customize it as needed.

This section contains the following topics:

Apply Groups

  • If you are initializing a planning template you will be given the opportunity to populate it using Groups from your SAP system after the fields have been selected.
  • You can cancel this operation and populate the new template manually if you wish.
  • The Apply Groups feature is also available at all times from the Budget Loader menu.
  • See Apply Groups for a detailed description of this feature.

Pick Budget Values

  • Budget Loader offers you a master data search feature similar to what you are used to in SAP.
  • Simply right click a cell and select the Pick Budget Values menu item.
  • Most fields in your Budget Loader template offer this feature for your convenience in populating the cells of the template.
  • See Pick Budget Values for more detailed information.

Populating the Header

Every planning template will have header values that must be populated so that SAP will know where the objects and line items should be posted.

Most of these fields will all be very familiar. They are the same ones you see in the SAP online screens.

  1. Controlling area
  2. Fiscal year
  3. From and To Periods
  4. Version

There are also a couple of other fields that you need to know about.

  1. Currency – You usually have 3 choices for the currency.  A drop-down list of the available values is provided in the template.  The available currency types vary depending on the planning transaction you have chosen.

    If you choose Transaction currency – The transaction currency field requires that the currency field be on the sheet.  When initializing a new template you will find the currency field in the ‘Line Items’ node of the tree.

  2. Delta (not available on all transactions)

    Delta tells SAP to either replace the existing values with the new values or to add the new values to the existing values.

    There is a drop down list of available values built into the template.

    • No indicates that the existing values should be replaced.
    • Yes indicates that the new values should be added to the existing values.  Keep in mind that you can add negative numbers to the existing values to reduce them.

Adding Line Items

Once the initial planning template has been Initialized you can begin to add details.

Each line of the template can contain values (1, 2, 3, A, B, C, etc.) or formulas that refer to other cells or worksheets.

Adding Skip Rows

To create a Skip Row simply type the word skip in column A of that row.  Budget Loader will ignore this row when you process the template.

Skip Rows are extremely useful for creating forms that users will be comfortable using.

You can use skip rows to contain subtotal formulas or other data that is to be used by formulas in your template.

You can also hide column A if you don’t want the skip rows labels to be visible.

Adding More Planning Sections Manually

Once you have completed the single Object and line Items section provided by Budget Loader when you initialized the template, you may wish to add more sections for other Objects.  For example, you may wish to have several groups of cost centers and line items on a single sheet. 

  1. Copy the completed section starting on the row above the Obj. Hdr.
  2. Paste the selection on the row following the last line item.
  3. Remember to change the Object Header values.
  4. Repeat as necessary.

Retrieving SAP Texts

When you have filled in the Object header and Line Item headers you can retrieve their SAP texts if you have the text fields displayed in your template.

From the menus select Budget > Edit > Load SAP Texts

Budget Loader will,

  • Evaluate the available text fields.
  • Find the associated object values.
  • Retrieve the appropriate text values from SAP.
  • Display them in the template.

Processing a Budget Loader Template

From the Excel menus select Budget > Process

At this point 1 of 2 following can happen.

  1. The posting works perfectly.  In this case you will see a message that says Posting Completed. You can go to SAP and see that all the values have been posted.
  1. Or something goes wrong. 
    • In this case NONE of the values are posted.
    • If only warnings are displayed Budget Loader will allow you to post your work or you can choose to not post your work.  In all cases, if errors are encountered, nothing will be updated in SAP.
    • On the errors dialog you see below, you may now double-click any error and be taken directly to the Excel line where the error occurred. 
    • You may show the validations errors (see below) as many times as you wish without any additional load on the SAP system

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