Global Accounting Hierarchies in S/4HANA 1809: How to leverage existing hierarchies?

Gaurav Agarwal

As you all have heard by now that SAP S/4HANA 1809 has introduced “Manage Global Accounting Hierarchies” application (Fiori App ID F2918) having below key benefits:

• Unified way to maintain hierarchies for different master data objects – Bank Account, Cost Center, Profit Center, Functional Area, Financial Statement Version, Product, Consolidation related objects
• Single dashboard to control hierarchies
• Time dependent hierarchies, so that you can create hierarchies for future even in advance
• Status control, so that you activate hierarchy only when that is complete. Else keep that in draft mode
• Support custom extensibility – like custom hierarchy, custom field and custom logic (Refer my blog “Report on the Fly Using Flexible Hierarchies in SAP S/4HANA 1709” on this at SAPinsider)

E.g. see below Consolidation Financial Statement Items Hierarchy in this unified app:

So, what’s the motive behind this blog? It is to highlight one impact on your classical hierarchies existing in system. E.g. you might have created a lot of Financial Statement Versions using classical method, e.g.:

However, when you want to use these in fiori applications like “Display Financial Statement”, you would not be able to see these FSVs there, e.g. I am checking for FSV 1030 which exist in GUI, but not available in the fiori app:

To leverage existing FSVs, there are two options available:

(A) Keeping same FSV number as earlier:

Just go to the old method of maintaining the hierarchy in change mode and save it:

On the pop-up, you can click on activate to do instant activation:

By default, it will activate from system date as key date start:

And your hierarchy will get replicated and will appear in fiori applications:

E.g. now fiori application “Display Financial Statement” contains the FSV activated above:

However, the negative point in this route is that, this replicated hierarchy will not be available in “Manage Global Accounting Hierarchies” application and thus you will not get benefited by new way of working to easily manage hierarchies.

(B) Migrating old FSV to new FSV in Global Hierarchies:

You can import existing FSVs into new architecture by clicking on “Import Hierarchy” in Global Accounting Hierarchies app (Fiori App ID F2918):

And then select the hierarchy which you want to import:

And then specify the target hierarchy’s attributes:

And your copied hierarchy will start appearing in “Manage Global Accounting Hierarchies” application:

But till now it is in draft status, so you need to check the definition. If things are ok, then click on activate button:

And your hierarchy will get activated:

The hierarchy will be available in various fiori apps also where it is being used for reporting etc., e.g. in “Display Financial Statements” app:

This new app to manage various accounting hierarchies at same place is very interesting and harmonized way to manage and control, particularly with the feature of time dependency solving this age-old problem.