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kristof_schneider
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
Below you find the SAP Business ByDesign release highlights 1811. Please click here to get to an overview of all new SAP Business ByDesign features in 1811.

  Financial Management


Receivables Collection Management
Adds a more interactive, customer-centric way to get due amounts paid while increasing customer’s satisfaction. Collection Cases are prioritizing work, keep track of activities and customer communication.

 Please select a link YouTube or SAP Media Share to watch the Release Highlights video for Receivables Collection Management.

Revenue Accounting Contracts (IFRS15/ASC606)
New accounting standards require customers to report revenue with customers differently. Now, it is possible to define several sales documents as one Revenue Accounting Contract with Performance Obligations, to allocate revenue according to Standalone Selling Prices and report on Contract Assets, Unbilled Receivables and Contract Liabilities. The enhancements are now general available.

 Please select a link YouTube or SAP Media Share to watch the Release Highlights video for Revenue Accounting Contracts (IFRS15/ASC606).

 

 Customer Relationship Management


Approvals for service orders
It is now possible to set up an approval process for service orders.

Renumbering and reordering of items
While the creation of a service order users some time are entering and maybe deleting service order line items. In many cases at the end you would like to reorder or even renumber the line items to achieve a specific order. This is now available for the service order.

Related improvement requests: 208875, 141569

Ship-To Party / Bill-To Party visible in Quick Activity Floorplan
Users want to be flexible and decide by themselves which details of a specific business document are the most relevant. In such cases you would like to see these details without the need of clicking around. In Business ByDesign we achieve this with the personalization capabilities. We have now included the ship-to party and the bill-to party to the personalization of the service order Quick Activity Floorplan.

Related improvement requests: 144806

Invoice volume report allows to drill down by service order and item
Users can now add a characteristic which allows drill-down invoices by service order and service order item.

Related improvement request: 203450

 Please select a link YouTube or SAP Media Share to watch the Release Highlights video for Customer Relationship Management.

Product & Business Partner Taxability in Avalara/Vertex Integration US Taxation
Customers can configure the Products or Business Partner in the third-party system(Avalara/Vertex) to get specific tax rates within the SAP Business ByDesign transaction documents.

 Please select a link YouTube or SAP Media Share to watch the Release Highlights video for Product & Business Partner Taxability.

 

 Project Management


Change Project Task Assignment of Time Confirmations
Time recordings for projects quite often are not assigned to the “right” task, sometimes even not to the “right” project. Adjusting this required a time-consuming process involving the project team members themselves or someone with access to the Time Administration work center.
Now, time recording reassignments can be done in the Project Management work center view Time and Expenses. The changes done are fully transparent to all parties involved.

Related improvement request: 141070

 Please select a link YouTube or SAP Media Share to watch the Release Highlights video for Project Management.

 

 Supply Chain Management


Customer Demand: Release of Partial Quantities
In a situation of insufficient available quantity for all demands, the planner can now distribute the scarce quantity to several orders instead of releasing the full quantity to one of the orders.

Related improvement requests: 117726, 201208

Production Order Release Only If Feasible
Now, you can prevent the release of a production order if the feasibility is not o.k. that is when the production order release status in the stock and demand overview is not green. You control it with new settings in the production model.

Related improvement requests: 117551, 213172

Creation of Product Count for Products with no Inventory
You can now choose to include products without stock in a product count. It enables you to count the products that are physically in the warehouse including those that do not show any inventory in the system.

Related improvement requests: 118311

 Please select a link YouTube or SAP Media Share to watch the Release Highlights video for Share Supply Chain Management.

 

  Human Resources


Project Time Approvals
Some project managers have a large number of time records to review and approve towards the end of the month. Every press of the Approve button triggers a performance intensive time valuation process, that made the interaction with the approvals list a slow and uncomfortable one.
Now the customer has the option to execute the approvals as a background process, thereby having a much smoother experience on the UI.

Time Accounts Balances Report
A new report is now available that can help a time administrator review the number of hours that are collected in a time account, such as vacation or overtime. This report is time-series independent, so the administrator can choose any period for which the balances need to be reviewed. This report will make it significantly easier to review overtime recorded by employees, download to excel, and send to a payroll provider.

Payroll Reports Work Center View
The Payroll Reports work center view is a collection of analytical reports that would help the administrator review and download data that is relevant to send to the payroll provider. Customers typically use reports for the review and download of data for payroll, so we will focus on improving our reports and providing more data sources to help administrators in this regard. This would eventually replace the functionality behind the payroll extract file.

 Please select a link YouTube or SAP Media Share to watch the Release Highlights video for Supplier Relationship Management.

 

 Built-in Analytics


Improved Monitoring with Personal Dashboards

  • Personal Dashboards to Collect Important Insights
    You can now define your personal overview page and arrange important KPIs and report cards for your personal needs. Those Personal Dashboards can be managed and launched from the Insights work center, which is the first step to add more powerful dashboarding capabilities to SAP Business ByDesign. You can personalize your dashboard pages adding KPIs and report cards the same way you know from the personalization of Home-Overview and Work Center Overview Pages. After you have defined your personal dashboard, you can pin it to the dashboard area of the Insights work center or you can add it as shortcut to the menu. In addition, this allows you to add personal dashboard pages as tiles to your launchpad and launch them with one click.

  • Improved Card Arrangement within Overview Pages
    You can now arrange your cards on the overview pages in the personalization or adaptation mode. It is now very intuitive to move and arrange your cards using drag and drop and organize your overview pages according to your needs.

  • Change Report Card Titles in Adaptation Mode
    Since the last release, key users can define work center overview pages that contain a lot of information and share them with the business users. In the adaptation mode, you are now able to click the title and change it to a more meaningful title for your business users. Improved Card Arrangement within Overview Pages You can now arrange your cards on the overview pages in the personalization or adaptation mode. It is now very intuitive to move and arrange your cards using drag and drop and organize your overview pages according to your needs.


New Casual User Pattern Based on Report Bookmarks
The life of casual users can be simplified with one pull-down menu offering predefined report bookmarks. Bookmarks represent meaningful and predefined combinations of selections and views of a report. When a business user enters the report list using the Bookmark view, the user can choose the relevant bookmark with one click and can navigate to details using the “Analyze Data” button. The business user can define personal bookmarks within the analysis pattern. Alternatively, the key user can define corporate, company-wide bookmarks within the “Design Reports view” in the Business Analytics work center. Bookmarks can be marked to be available on mobile to show predefined combinations of selections and views in your report list on mobile devices.

New Options for Key Users

  • Filterable KPIs and KPI Variants
    KPIs summarize success-critical management information to one filtered value, which is being monitored on a continuous basis. The next evolution step of KPIs is to make them contextual. For this purpose, you can now enhance your KPIs with filters and enable the KPI to receive external filter values. With release 1811, you can leverage filterable KPIs in KPI variants. KPI variants allow you to maintain filter values for the defined filters or a filterable KPI.
    Example: If you want to monitor your revenues by regions in the past releases, you had to copy the KPI and create selections by region in your report. With the current release, you can add the region as filter to your KPI. So the KPI becomes filterable and you can create a KPI variant for each region. From the business user perspective, a classic KPI or a KPI variant are perceived as equivalent.

  • Hide and Show Relative Selections
    Until release 1811, a fixed list of relative data values was offered to the business user. With release 1811, the key user can now hide and show those relative selections, which should be offered to the business user. This reduces complexity and adds additional relative selections, which in the past have only been visible for key users.

  • Copy of Custom Data Sources and Custom Key Figures
    For secure testing and enhancements of custom data sources, you can now copy joined, combined, and cloud data sources as well as custom key figures.

  • Data Sources Preview Including ID and Description
    The release 1811 allows key users to display keys and texts within the data source preview in the Design Data Sources view within the Business Analytics work center


Analytics Integration and Data Upload into Cloud Data Source
A cloud data source can be used to extend built-in analytics with external data (for example, planning data).

  • View Logs for Cloud Data Source
    The new View Logs button allows you to better monitor all changes impacting your cloud data source. This includes structural changes as well as the status of the data load.

  • Additional Date Formats supported as of release 1811
    The data upload to cloud data sources now supports all common date formats. This also simplifies the data import from SAP Analytics Cloud.


 Please select a link YouTube or SAP Media Share to watch the Release Highlights video for Built-in Analytics.

 

  Mobile


Mobility on Smartphones
Introduction of a new smartphone app on iOS and Android with a new look and feel which supports:

  • Consume KPIs on the smartphone launchpad and with a separate KPI app and consume any report view on the smartphone.

  • Create and track expense reports and shopping carts.

  • Account 360 view for most important key figures, address and contact data including activity management for tasks and phone calls.

  • Receive and confirm service orders including easy route planning using e.g. Google maps.


Please visit this blog for further information on SAP Business ByDesign mobile apps for smartphones.

 Please select a link YouTube or SAP Media Share to watch the Release Highlights video for Mobile.

 

 Cross Topics


HTML5 only user interface for SAP Business ByDesign
With SAP Business ByDesign 1811, all users will be automatically directed to HTML5 UI when they connect to the tenant URL, irrespective of the preferred client specified in the Company settings.

Help and Learning Content Transition
With SAP Business ByDesign 1811, most of the help and learning content has been moved to a more modern platform, which provides better visualization of the content and improves the readability. This affects the Help Center, the Learning Center, and the business configuration documentation. As before, the content is available both directly within the SAP Business ByDesign system, as well as on the SAP Help Portal.

Major improvements in Output Management

  • Multiple Output Channels
    For each business document type you can now indicate multiple output channels (e.g. E-Mail, print and xml) and define conditions how these should be applied.



  • Flexible Sender E-Mail Addresses
    For every E-Mail output channel, you can use a separate sender address – either explicitly (e.g. sales@almica.com) or generically (use the address of the corresponding company or organizational unit).



  • Multiple E-mail Recipients
    In the account master data, you can now define multiple E-Mail addresses as recipients, including cc/bcc attributes. Also, several print queues using specific form templates can be defined here.


All these settings can be set per business document type.

Related improvement requests: 119006, 119478, 120750, 126276, 118656, 205808, 205831, 203815, 201712.

Request a new test tenant with time overlap
When requesting a new test tenant, so far, the precedent test tenant had to be terminated immediately. Now you can defer the termination by up to three weeks, during which you can temporarily use both test tenants in parallel.

Related improvement request: 127529

 

  Localization


Mexico
Multiple on-account payments in electronic payments
Customers can now generate e-payments document for multiple on account payments.

Italy
Self-Invoice Numbering
Separate numbering configuration and number generation is possible for self-invoices in Italy.

Netherlands
NL Irrecoverable Receivable
Irrecoverable receivable reported with VAT return.

India
Mass upload of HSN/SAC
HSN/SAC codes can be uploaded to Business Configuration using file input method using a csv file.

Germany and Netherlands
Aggregation Process for Monthly VAT Return
Customers with large number of tax reporting relevant transactions can now file the German & Netherlands monthly VAT returns using the aggregation process.

Germany and US
Tax Return Form Changes
US and German tax return forms listed below have been revised in accordance to legal form changes published by tax authorities.

  • Germany: Monthly and Yearly VAT Return

  • US: 1099-MISC and 1042-S


From the next financial year any format changes to these tax return forms can be done by the customer, kindly see blog: https://blogs.sap.com/2018/10/02/legal-tax-return-form-changes-in-sap-business-bydesign/ to understand how this can be achieved.

 

For complete details of all the topics delivered in the 1811 release, please visit our
Release Information wiki page.
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