Abubacker Malik SHFor many enterprises across various industries, it is a daily reality to face the same challenge. How to stay compliant while managing the relentless growth of financial and tax data? How to retain and access years of this data without overburdening the SAP systems?
Not long ago, A major consumer goods company found itself drowning in financial data. Their SAP systems were buckling under the weight of every transaction, every tax record, and every audit trail that had to be stored. The risk of compliance had also become high. Consequences? Regulatory penalties and a reputational blow.
Instead of waiting for a crisis, the company took a smarter route by turning to SAP’s Data Retention Tool (DART). They deployed the DART implementation with the expertise from Platform 3 Solutions. Result? It spoke volumes. Years of financial and tax data were extracted; audits became faster; and most importantly, compliance was assured with global and country-specific regulations.
SAP DART plays a crucial role where audit readiness and regulatory compliance are paramount. Purposefully, DART helps enterprises that are using SAP systems extract and retain critical transactional and financial data in compliance with evolving audit and legal requirements.
What is SAP DART? – An Overview
From finance and logistics to customer and employee data, SAP systems are used to manage a wide range of business operations. As a result, SAP systems generate vast amounts of data, which can be broadly categorised into five key types.
- Master Data (core business entities) – Customers, Vendors, Materials, Employees, Chart of Accounts
- Transactional Data (daily business operations and processes) – Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Financial Postings, Goods Movements
- Configuration or Customizing Data (system setup rules, parameters & workflows) – Tax rules, Company codes, Pricing conditions, Approval flows
- Organizational Data (structure & hierarchy of business) – Plants, Storage Locations, Sales Organizations, Business Areas
- Metadata (data elements for interpretation & integration) – Field definitions, Table structures, Data relationships
SAP DART Implementation for Section 128 Compliance
This document is about how SAP DART implementation meets Section 128 compliance by archiving financial data in an audit-ready format.
Much of this data must be retained for years to meet strict audit and compliance regulatory requirements. To support enterprises in meeting these requirements, SAP offers SAP DART (Data Retention Tool). DART is designed to extract and store key business data subsets from SAP, specifically for audit and compliance purposes. By selecting data from production systems, DART saves it in a flat-file format (.DART files), which is then provided to auditors or external systems.
Key features of DART include:
- Support for tax and legal reporting
- Compliance with Section 128 & other statutory body requirements
- Customized and standard segment-based data extraction
- Exporting to third-party audit tools
- Intact, read-only storage formats
How SAP DART Helps with Section 128 Compliance?
What does Section 128 require from enterprises? Under Section 128 of the Companies Act, 2013, Rule 3, an enterprise registered in India is required to maintain its books of account properly for at least an eight-year period. These records should be accessible at all times within India for audits and regulatory reviews. A global enterprise must comply with this regulation, regardless of where it hosts its IT infrastructure and centralized systems.
What are the obstacles encountered by SAP users in complyingwith Section 128 requirements?Have to overcome two major challenges –
- Data Volume – retaining eight or more years of records (transactional & financial) increases infrastructure load and cost
- Audit Accessibility – data should be available for quick access to the regulators during audits and regulatory reviews
How DART delivers its value in solving these challenges –
- By extracting structured tax and financial data into self-contained files
- By retaining data in a read-only, tamper-proof format that meets legal standards
- By providing query and reporting tools that simplify record retrieval during audit and regulatory inspections
How to Align DART with Audit Requirements?
A successful DART implementation strategy should have a strong understanding of audit and regulatory contexts.
What parameters define this understanding and strategy?
- Nature and Frequency of Audits – whether annual statutory audits, surprise inspections, or tax reviews
- Jurisdiction-specific Regulations – depending on the jurisdiction, the regulations can be, for example, Section 128 in India, Sarbanes-Oxley in the U.S., or GDPR in the EU
- Industry-specific Regulations – depending on the industry, the regulations can be, for example, Basel for finance, HIPAA for healthcare, or GDPR and Sarbanes-Oxley for any industry
- Data Volume Optimization – balancing compliance without compromising performance, and storage optimization
Which DART Strategy You Can Choose?
According to the requirement, you can choose from three recommended approaches: Proactive, Informed Proactive, and Reactive
| Approach | About | How it Works | Advantages | Best Suited for Enterprises |
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| Proactive (Standard Segments) |
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| Informed Proactive (Expanded Segments) |
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| Reactive |
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Among the three methods, the best practice adopted by many enterprises is the Informed Proactive approach. By balancing both proactive and reactive strategies, this method achieves both readiness and resource optimization.
What Technical Setup and Configuration Are Required for DART Implementation?
Is the technical setup of DART over with installation? Configuration of DART determines its effectiveness, yet its installation is straightforward.
- Customized Segments – using exits like FTXW0002, standard segments (For example, FI document headers) are extended to capture industry-specific or company-specific data
- Optimizing Performance – package sizes (like package size of 100), indexing, and memory allocation are optimized to handle large datasets
- Validating Data – extract accuracy is verified by enabling control totals and checksums
- Integrating Archive – supports extracting SAP’s Archive Development Kit (ADK), and both live and archived data are extracted
What Makes Platform 3 Solutions an Expert in Compliance Regulatory Solutions?
SAP DART implementation is never just running a technology. More of staying on the right side of strict compliance mandates. With its unique expertise and experience in regulatory and compliance-driven data strategies, Platform 3 Solutions makes a real difference. From finance to manufacturing to healthcare, having spent years, P3’s team has been helping large-scale enterprises navigate the complex world of regulatory and compliance-driven data strategies.
With its combined expertise in technology and regulatory insights, Platform 3 Solutions doesn’t just implement SAP DART, but builds a compliance framework enterprises can trust. Ensuring its DART implementation can meet Section 128 compliance requirements without overburdening the active SAP systems.
For any global enterprise having its registered office in India, Section 128 of the Companies Act, Rule 3 requires that the books of account and other financial data have to be –
- Maintained for a minimum of eight-year period
- Accessible at the registered office in India
- Available at any time for audit and regulatory inspection
Platform 3 Solutions achieves this requirement by –
- Building and implementing DART extraction strategies aligned with audit and compliance needs, as required
- Retaining data in secure, compliant formats that meet legal admissibility standards
- Integrating with Archon Data Store for long-term storage of DART files, aligning with Section 128 compliance regulations
Store DART Files Securely with Archon Data Store (ADS)
DART extracts can only be useful with their proper storage. While SAP DART stores the mandatory eight years of data required for Section 128 regulation, Platform 3 Solutions’ flagship product, Archon Data Store (ADS), can take care of the older historical files. It securely preserves the previous years of DART files that don’t need to remain in DART for compliance. ADS ensures enterprises still have access to the historical data whenever needed.
ADS, as a central repository, stores the historical DART files, offering –
- Scalability – for variable storage needs of large historical datasets
- Global Accessibility – records retrieval for regulators and auditors, regardless of location
- Disaster Recovery – built-in redundancy for reliability
- Cost-efficient – lower in comparison to on-prem storage
- Security & Compliance – aligning with compliance frameworks like Section 128, SOX, HIPAA, or GDPR
Are You Ready to Partner with Platform 3 Solutions for DART Implementation & Section 128 Compliance?
Implementing SAP DART is a compliance enabler, instead of looking at it just as a technical exercise. Because it requires a fusion of an audit-ready strategy, technical configuration, and robust storage practices. SAP DART implementation, when combined with Archon Data Store (ADS), enables enterprises to gain not only compliance assurance but also scalability, accessibility, security, and a cost-effective solution.
Whether meeting global compliance standards or India’s Section 128 regulatory mandate, a well-configured DART implementation strategy ensures that records are compliance-enabled, accessible, and audit-ready. Partnering with Platform 3 Solutions can streamline this complex journey of SAP DART implementation.
Talk to our experts to simplify your SAP DART implementation journey.
Frequently Asked Questions
Abubacker Malik SH is the AVP of Product at Platform 3 Solutions, where he leads the design and delivery of enterprise-grade products and automation initiatives. With nearly a decade at P3, he has been instrumental in developing Archon, the company’s flagship platform for data archival and application decommissioning.
