Parking and verification

Not every journal entry should go straight to the books. Large manual entries, entries by junior staff, or entries to sensitive accounts often need a second person to check them first. SAP S/4HANA supports this in two ways: classic parking with release, and the Fiori-based verification of general journal entries with a workflow.

Parking

A parked entry is saved but not posted. It does not update account balances, it can be changed or completed later, and someone else can review and post it. In Private Edition and on-premise, classic transactions such as FV50 (park a G/L entry) and FBV0 (post a parked document) remain available, and parked documents can be routed for release by workflow. Parking is useful when information is incomplete or when a second person must post.

Holding is different from parking. A held entry is a personal draft that has not been checked or numbered as a journal entry; it simply lets the user come back later. Parking creates a reviewable document others can see.

Verify General Journal Entries

For Fiori users, SAP provides a verification process introduced in SAP S/4HANA 1709. The requester enters the entry in Verify General Journal Entries – For Requester and submits it; the entry is held as parked. The system determines the processors from workflow rules, for example by amount or company code. A processor reviews the entry in the processor inbox app and either verifies it, which posts it, or rejects it, which sends it back to the requester for correction. The requester cannot verify their own entry, which enforces the four-eyes principle.

Administrators set the conditions with Manage Workflows for Journal Entry Verification and define who the processors are with Manage Teams and Responsibilities. Typical statuses a requester sees are initial, submitted, rejected, waiting and posted. A known pitfall: if the only processor the rules find is the requester, the entry cannot be verified and stays in a "no processor" state, so teams must have at least one other member.

Classic parking with release

Private Edition and on-premise also support the older route: parked documents routed for release through SAP Business Workflow. Workflow variants are defined in configuration and assigned to company codes, with an amount above which release is required. SAP delivers single-level, two-level and three-level release procedures, so large amounts can need two or three approvers. Approvers find their work items in the My Inbox app. Companies usually choose one route per type of entry: Fiori verification for general journal entries, classic release for, say, supplier invoices parked in AP. Mixing routes for the same entries makes the control hard to test and hard to explain to auditors.

When to require verification

• Manual entries above an agreed amount, for example 25,000 USD at Contoso.
• Entries to sensitive accounts such as revenue, equity, or intercompany.
• Entries prepared by new or temporary staff.
• Period-end adjustments that auditors will look at, such as accruals and reclassifications.