Sneak peek into S/4HANA 1909 Finance Innovations

SAP has yet to release S/4HANA 1909, but I have some interesting sneak previews on what you can expect in the area of Finance. Of course, this would not cover everything, but I will focus mainly on the Finance capabilities in the S/4HANA Core. Interesting things are happening in the area of Profitability Analysis for example. Is COPA going to be replaced? Or is SAP just changing product names. Read more to learn.

The latest release of S/4HANA ads a variety of innovations to further extend the digital core and improve connectivity to other best of breed (cloud) applications.

I have categorized the topics in two areas and I will publish the post in 2 parts.

Part-1

Management Accounting

• Universal Allocations
• Where used list
• Margin Analysis (COPA)

Part-2

Financial Accounting

• Accruals Management: ML-Service
• Goods and Invoice Receipt Reconciliation: ML-Service + Enhancements
• T-Account Display
• Group Reporting: Advanced Intercompany Reconciliation

Part 1 – Management Accounting

Universal Allocations

Everyone who has worked with allocation or distribution cycles in SAP knows that it is a tidy job to define, customize, change, simulate and analyze all the cycles and segments. SAP realizes this and is going to improve in this area with “Universal Allocations”. It was already announced with the release of version 1809, but this functionality was not included yet. When we look at the roadmap, we can expect some functional scope to be included in release 1909.

As you can see, in the target SAP wants to move to only 3 applications to manage, run and analyze allocation cycles:

you might be interested in my new blog about the limitations of the universal allocations app in S/4HANA 1909. You can read it here.

Some more details about managing and running cycles in the Universal Allocation application:

Manage Allocations:

• Single point for creation & maintaining allocation cycles and segments
• Currently contexts of cost center & profit center allocations
• Manages actual and plan allocations/distribution & overhead allocation (assessment)
• Application consists of List report of cycles and object page of cycle & segment details

Run Allocations:

• Single point for allocation run execute and analysis
• Contexts of cost center & profit center allocations
• Executes both actuals and plan allocations cycles
• The application consists of a List report of completed runs and an object page for run worklist def&exec.
• Run report in new Fiori design including new innovative features

Innovative Aspects:

• Import of sender/receiver values via .csv file or manual entry
• Global accounting hierarchy groups integrated
• Allocation cycle groups enabled 
• New improved allocation run persistency layer
• Network graph for visualization of allocation run result
• Situation Framework for fast notification (errors/warning runs)
• Integration with Where-used list

Conceptual details:

• Cycles are defined with respect to a ledger and a single company code
• Universal Allocation posts with more detailed business transaction types (BTTYPE) –
  per context, actual/plan, and allocation type.
• Custom fields are not yet fully supported (only inherited from sender to receiver).

Where used list

To easily show dependencies between master data and to support impact analysis for organizational change, SAP has created a new where to used list functionality. This functionality is not intended to show transactional figures or to replace reporting.

Currently, it is released for the following objects:

• Cost center
• Statistical key figures
• Activity types
• Profit centers

Key capabilities:

• Standalone Fiori app for each object
• Can be launched from the “Manage” App for each object, the selection is transferred
• Search for multiple objects
• Configurable lists with results
• Navigation to object details via smart links.
• Export to spreadsheet

Example for Cost Centers:

Margin Analysis (COPA)

Interesting things are happening in the area of profitability analysis. Is COPA going to be replaced? According to the statement of direction provided by SAP, it is.

Or is it just a name change and basically providing the same features of Account-Based COPA?

To my understanding, it is the continuation of Account-Based COPA. SAP is just rebranding it. In all documentation, you will see that Margin Analysis is compared against Costing Based COPA. This was already the case with Account-Based COPA in S/4HANA. Everything that is mentioned as a benefit of Margin Analysis.

As part of this comparison, you can see the details in the diagram below. The 3 highlighted capabilities were already added in version 1809 and I have written separate blogs about these in detail. You can find these blog posts here:

• Enhancements in Cost of Goods Sold
• Statistical Sales Condition
• Predictive Accounting for Incoming Sales Order

These were the highlights of management accounting in the S/4HANA Core in 1909. There are more innovations in connected (cloud) applications outside the core. I will explain more about these in separate blogposts.