SAP Banking - How to determine when you should create new Bank Keys (and BPA's, and PTA's)?

[Former Member]

Hi again folks,

     what questions / factors / and funcational considerations do you use in determining how many Bank Keys to create / when to create a new Bank Key for an SAP Banking Implementation?

     thank you for any insight you can provide into what factors have been central to your similar decisions in past (or present).

Cheers,

     Russ

[former_member540059 · Accepted solution]

Hi Russ,

The bank code (for example bank country and bank key) is used to identify your bank within the system. Depending on the country where your bank is located, there are different ways to define the bank code and therefore how to identify your bank. The bank code definition depends on the corresponding bank country. For eg: In Australia, The BSB (bank state branch) number is a unique numerical code that identifies individual branch of a financial institution within Australia. The Six digit BSB + account number is used to identify the individual account.

Other considerations could be assignment of number range interval for account contracts and check digit methods ( method used to check the correctness of the structure of an account number). It is possible to assign different country specific methods for check digit calculation to a bank key.

Drivers for Payment Transaction Area: PTA is used to map the bank internal payment transaction structure. PTA also has a internal number range assignment.  Each payment order / payment item receives a number from this interval. PTA should be assigned to every bank key. It is possible to assign several bank keys to same PTA.

Drivers for Bank Posting Area: The following functions are controlled by Bank Posting Area.

• Current posting date for payment transactions
• Current posting date for End of Day processing
• Posting Calendar for calculating valid posting days
• The units to be processed in mass processing
• The account symbol for P&L clearing accounts in the subledger for return charges

And if General Ledger component is active

• The independant accounting unit represented by FI company code
• The valid GL accounts defined by a FI chart of accounts in the GL variant.

Based on the above drivers, In a recent implementation project, we decided to use multiple bank codes (per branch), one PTA and one BPA.

[Former Member]

Hi Joshy,

     thank you greatly for your reply. 

Here's our situation:

  We have already gone live with one set of accounts, all held within a single BPA.

  Now, we are bringing on (to SAP BaS) another "grouping" of accounts.  I'm trying to ensure I consider everything in terms of the client's request to create a new BPA for this new "being migrated" set of accounts (they are the contracts of a new Product to be migrated onto SAP BaS). 

Thus, I am trying to identify all reasons why a new BPA would indeed be necessary, and why it would not be a good idea to do so otherwise.

    Reasons to mandate the creation of a new BPA in SAP BaS for the new accounts include:

-  The new Contracts will need to be assigned to a different Posting Calendar than the existing Contracts;

-  The new Contracts need to map to a different Legal Entity (Accounting) than the existing Contracts;

-  The new Contracts need to apply different Posting / EOD Dates than the existing Contracts have;

-  The new Contracts need to be separated into their own grouping for Mass Processing activities exclusive of the existing Contracts;

-  The new Contracts need to be separated by Geographical, or Political, differentiation, mutually-exclusive of the existing Contracts;

   Can you think of any other reasons why one might need to implement another BPA for this new set of contracts?

    And, can you think of specific reasons / considerations why one should not create a new BPA in order to avoid certain consequences?  Required duplication of existing configuration is one such "disadvantage" of bringing on a new BPA, as time and budget is tight for this project.  What else?

    Thank you Joshy.

Sincerely,

    Russ

[former_member540059]

Hi Russ,

You have laid down all valid reasons to go for multiple BPA.

I can't think of any other reason.

Best Regards,

Joshy.

[Former Member]

Cheers Joshy.  Thank you for the discussion!  It has helped me arrive at a very useable answer and documented that answer for others.  That's a great discussion!  🙂

Russ