Intelligent ERP Update: SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1811 for...
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2018 is already coming to an end again and before we come into the holiday season, I want to give you some insight into the last release for SAP S/4HANA Cloud that we will deliver this year. After three releases with a great number of innovations, we will close this year strong with several new functions and features that will be very beneficial to our customers in the professional services industry.
As you might know, this video will give you a quick overview of the three highlights with 1811:
In this blog, I will also give you some more insights into what is new in SAP S/4HANA Cloud now.
Work Item Structuring
It is now possible to structure the work items under different groups. As a configuration expert, you could configure the set of work items under delivery organization under different groups. Therefore, a customer can define and group the work items under different departments and use them in the project by assigning grouped work items to work packages. This is very valuable if there are different tasks in the divers business areas.
This functionality enables quick filtering and assignment of grouped work items to the work packages and gives easy access of work items within the work package based on the assignment of grouped work items.
Mass release of billing proposals
The new mass release functionality enables the user to release billing proposals across projects instantly, which leads to minimal interaction between users and more automation, as there is an auto generation of the relevant debit memo requests on a mass scale.
The project manager now also has the opportunity to schedule single or recurring jobs for the release of billing proposals based on a pre-defined selection, thereby minimizing the needed effort.
OData Service for Cost Rates
The new ODATA Service (API_FCO_COST_RATE_SRV) enables you to process plan cost rates and service cost rates from external systems to S/4 HANA Cloud. With this we offer customers the flexibility to process cost rates from third-party systems to S/4 HANA Cloud in an efficient and secure way. With the API comes a fluid information delivery and an integtrated user experience.
The capabilities of this API include:
Retrieve (GET): It enables you to retrieve plan/service cost rates in an API call. You can apply any of the filters provided or else retrieve all existing data.
Update (PATCH/MERGE): You can update the plan/service cost rates.
Create (POST): You can create the plan/service cost rates
Delete (DELETE): You can delete the plan/service cost rates
Down payment
This innovation is mostly relevant to Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as it is needed to be compliant.
As the “on account” payment, the down payment is available for the time and expense contract type, which means that a project manager can choose it when setting up the billing plan for time and expense projects.
Down payment requests are not equal to an invoice and can be issued without prior delivery of services and serve as a security for liquidity.
But of course, there are differences between the “on account” payment and the down payment, e.g. down payments are reflected as payables against the customer account and do not have an impact on the financial result.
Received down payments have to be shown as liabilities to the customers rather than revenue and turn into revenue when they are settled against a normal invoice.
Intelligent suitable resource search
A resource manager is now able to include skills, consultants may have gathered from other assignments in the suitability search, even if they have not been maintained in their profile.
In addition, you can show an availability match percentage that is based on the monthly distribution of required hours and free hours.
This new functionality takes the project experience of a resource into account, in addition to the skills from the employee fact sheet. This can be done very easily via an activation on an additional filter setting.
Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. You may also be interested in this overview of relevant blogs for our professional services customers.
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
