First of all: Finally, an easy-to-explain release numbering for On-premise S/4HANA releases. From 2020 onwards it just the year, nothing else. I like it! Let’s hope they won’t change their mind at SAP and this year we will see a S/4HANA 2021 release.
The release highlights are already shared by SAP. I will focus on some key areas including Finance and highlight the, to me, most interesting new features in S/4HANA Core.
You will first find a summary of points followed by a detailed explanation per topic.
Global Highlights
Financial Accounting
Management Accounting
Sales
Data Migration
Import from flexible hierarchies
Import Flexible Hierarchy into Global Hierarchy. In other words, you will be able to re-use the already created alternative hierarchies as a standard hierarchy.
Change Log support
Changes made in the global accounting hierarchies app are logged so old and new values can be compared and the change history is saved.
Dynamic reclassification based on maturity
This functionality will make it much easier to classify FsV items based on maturity. For example short term and long-term liabilities.
Multiple Language support
Now it’s finally possible to translate your FsV or other global hierarchy nodes to others languages.
Universal Allocations are initially released in S/4HANA 1909. You can check out the following blogs to learn more about the general idea of universal allocations:
The updated roadmap of the universal allocation’s solution for this year:
Top-down distribution for Margin Analysis
The top-down distribution for COPA functionality is added to the universal allocation app in 2020.
Data is not always posted and available on the lowest possible level. For example, revenue is posted on the lowest level, but costs are not always available on that same level:
Cost by-product and margin by product questions cannot be answered.
Top-down distribution example by referencing the revenue data:
New Allocation context introduced and available in the Manage Allocations App:
This app is providing the functionality of GUI transactions KB21n, KB23n, KB24n, KB65, KB66, and KB67.
Features:
This app is providing the functionality of GUI transactions KB11n, KB13n, KB14n, KB41n, KB43n, KB15n, KB16n, and KB17n.
Features:
Preliminary billing documents for negotiation purposes based on items in the billing due list. You can change prices, attachments, and text for example. Output can be created for preliminary billing documents like final billing documents.
New App: Pricing Elements Flexible Analysis
New migration approaches from 2020 onwards:
App Migrate Your Data: