SAP Simple Finance Controlling Questions and Considerations To Know

Different split of the modules with a lot of new areas for Treasury
Look into Cash Management/In-House Cash/ Bank Communications etc. House-banks for example have moved to a different module which is chargeable but there is a Bank Account Management LITE version so that you can still use the standard banking if you don’t have those modules
Account-based COPA is the default – although can implement both
Revenue recognition changes coming with IFRS 15, and the SD Revenue Recognition being replaced in by Revenue Accounting and Reporting.
Revenue recognition now in Universal journal and recognized as they incur – look into further – 2 postings one for initial costs/revenue and a separate posting for revenue recognition and new SAP Fiori (Learn from SAP FIORI training by experts) transactions/apps.
COPA data now in finance.
Check - standard credit management no longer available – only FSCM (Financial Supply Chain Management) Credit Management? What FSCM offers see SAP FSCM training overview.
Additional currencies available (from 1610 up to 10) – do you need this functionality?
Extension/Appendix ledgers (normal ledgers hold complete sets of books, these only hold deltas and are linked to a base ledger so that reporting gives a complete set by combining the base and extension ledger)
Check Cost of Goods Sold - more flexibility and a number of improvements (e.g. multiple accounts based on cost component split) but check whether when COGS in profitability analysis will be supported.

Finance, Controlling, COPA

Effectively merged, so cost element now part of GL account (and cost category field available in GL master).  In Finance, there is a new kind of document called the Universal Journal which posts to a single table (ACDOCA) which contains a lot of data from the other modules, so instead of having to run reports from a number of tables, you can now see almost everything in Finance, for example in line items, including COPA, SAP MM, SAP SD etc. Leads to Single Source of Truth i.e. you don’t have different results in different modules.

Considerations/Questions: 

• Different split of the modules with a lot of new areas for Treasury
• Look into Cash Management/In-House Cash/ Bank Communications etc. House-banks for example have moved to a different module which is chargeable but there is a Bank Account Management LITE version so that you can still use the standard banking if you don’t have those modules
• Account-based COPA is the default – although can implement both
• Revenue recognition changes coming with IFRS 15, and the SD Revenue Recognition being replaced in by Revenue Accounting and Reporting.
• Revenue recognition now in Universal journal and recognized as they incur – look into further – 2 postings one for initial costs/revenue and a separate posting for revenue recognition and new SAP Fiori (Learn from SAP FIORI training by experts) transactions/apps.
• COPA data now in finance.
• Check - standard credit management no longer available – only FSCM (Financial Supply Chain Management) Credit Management? What FSCM offers see SAP FSCM training overview.
• Additional currencies available (from 1610 up to 10) – do you need this functionality?
• Extension/Appendix ledgers (normal ledgers hold complete sets of books, these only hold deltas and are linked to a base ledger so that reporting gives a complete set by combining the base and extension ledger)
• Check Cost of Goods Sold - more flexibility and a number of improvements (e.g. multiple accounts based on cost component split) but check whether when COGS in profitability analysis will be supported.

 New GL

Considerations/Questions:

• If not already on new GL, don’t necessarily need all the new functionality, but recommend to set up in the beginning if you think you may need it in the future (document splitting can be tricky)
• Document Splitting – not mandatory but previously it was not possible to implement once on S/4 HANA – have to do it before (check this – it was due to be added soon)
• Parallel ledgers cannot be added in earlier versions of on-premise – only1610 versions – check how it works on cloud.

New Asset Controlling

In addition to better reconciliation, there is no data redundancy as you no longer need delta depreciation areas, real-time postings to all ledgers etc. Some considerations are below:

Considerations/Questions:

• New Asset Accounting is the only option on Hana, although available in ECC6 from enhancement pack 7
• During a system conversion, there will be some customizing changes to do particularly for new Asset Accounting, important to understand and decide in advance whether you want to follow ledger or account approach for different accounting principles (even account approach now requires a “dummy ledger” to be configured)
• Even if Greenfield implementation, you will probably have some restructuring to do. Need to match ledgers and currencies and depreciation areas and accounting principles.
• You may see a lot of information about the New depreciation calculation engine. Generally, hardly any difference between the old and new calculations unless you are changing depreciation methods/useful lives mid-year - may be worth looking into that more if that is the case

Customer Vendor Integration

Vendor and customer master data held as BP (Business Partner) - if you have a customer that is also a vendor – use same general data (address), more data fields and addresses available, concept of relationship e.g. with contact person. Still keep original customer vendor number (so historic reports ok) but may have new BP number as well. Part of migration step is to synchronize customers and vendors to BP if not already using. 

Considerations/Questions:

May need to clean up vendors/customers if not using BP and see if any fields exist in BP that were not in old transactions. If not linked may need to decide if you want to link them, how that would be done.

Check bespoke fields in the customer/vendor masters.

Material Ledger

Material Ledger now mandatory.  Change in tables (MATDOC =main table in material ledger), lot more information in Finance.

• Some field lengths change (e.g. Material length now 40 characters) – check any other systems feeding in can deal with increased length here and elsewhere.
• Multiple currencies and valuations.
• Check transfer pricing functionality.
• Check capture of price variances.

IDOCS

Check whether still available and whether any changes e.g. DEBMAS and CREMAS (for customer and vendor) still available but may using the BP number as leading object.

Authorizations

Considerations/Questions:

• Fiori will work differently in any case, (one transaction may be split into roles) but if not using GUI should be standardized roles available for new implementation.
• There are a number of new GUI transactions that are almost identical to the old but allow for example to post to each ledger group separately so if conversion will need to add them to roles.
• If converting an existing landscape, there are a number of tasks as part of the migration to convert for example the cost elements into GL accounts, but going forward you will need to review authorizations e.g.  if different people have access to costements and GL accounts master data.

Licensing and Hosting

Varies greatly between the different options and landscapes. From subscription to itemizing everything out separately.

Considerations/Questions:

• Some programs such as SAP MDG (Master Data Governance) are based on each object for example if you want to use MDG for 5,000 GL accounts, 50,000 vendors, 2,000 cost centers, 10,000 customers, 5,0000 vendors, 20,000 materials that would be 92,000 items, and you may therefore need to buy the next available quantity that they are sold in e.g. 100,000
• Many of the financial packages are licensed based on revenue, regardless of whether you are only using IHC (In-house cash) for your vendors, and not customers/Treasury/intercompany etc.
• Types of users (used to have developer, self-service, professional, etc.)
• Is there a separate charge for HANA database?
• Charge for Fiori?
• Maybe review existing licenses – it may be possible to save money by reorganizing the assignment of licenses - not sure if reduced licenses still apply e.g. if somebody was only approving and not running transactions and one company I worked at saved a fortune by reorganizing the perpetual licenses.
• Check what is included for reporting (used to be BI Suite which had Design studio, HANA Live, crystal reports, web intelligence, advanced office analysis, business objects etc. included but may have changed).
• FSCM separate to main accounting license, if you had ordinary credit management you may now have to get FSCM.
• Netweaver/web dynpro? (Learn SAP Netweaver training)

Migration

Many different paths, especially depending whether Public Cloud or not – public cloud is new implementation but there are tools (SLT) to upload data quite simply from another SAP system.

Considerations/Questions:

• If planning to migrate in stages, you would have to go with a Greenfield migration or Central Finance.
• On-premise system conversion – code-checker tool to check your bespoke ABAP programs do not write to tables, and for example whether there are any Z tables etc. You may want to understand more about this tool if you have a lot of bespoke programs.
• Check whether your bespoke programs are calling other transactions/programs. Most old transactions that are obsolete call the new transaction instead but not all (e.g. display house bank FI13 gives the message “please use the Manage Banks and Manage Bank Accounts Apps) so would not work with bespoke programs calling a transaction code.
• Look in to SLT (SAP Landscape Transformation) tool if legacy system is SAP.
• Legacy Workbench functionality cannot be used in many areas for example Fixed assets and Business Partners, (does not support new data structure).

Rapid Deployment Solutions

This was deployed by SAP at a multinational project I worked on – they had a number or world templates and preconfigured building blocks in order to do a new implementation in a much shorter period of time than the traditional writing of the blueprint and then creating configuration line by line. 

Considerations/Questions

• Worth looking into.
• Check where it is available, not sure if replaced completely by Activate everywhere.

Reporting

Number of new options, with embedded analytics you should no longer need to wait overnight for data to be transferred to BW or a data-warehouse, no need to create permanent info-cubes. New concept in S/4 HANA (Learn ERP suite4 from SAP S/4HANA training) is that the reporting is real-time and virtual cubes or virtual data models that can easily be created as required. Some examples - Business Objects Design Studio, Lumira, Analysis for Office, HANA Live.

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