Product Information
SAP S/4HANA Finance for group reporting 1909 is GA
We’re happy to announce the general availability of SAP S/4HANA Finance for group reporting 1909, as part of S/4HANA Finance 1909, on September 20, 2019. Our latest software version delivers on a series of new features to help you run your financial consolidation and close activities.
S/4HANA Finance for group reporting is the on-premise version of our next generation software for financial consolidation and close. We deliver one major on-premise release each year. From a functional standpoint, our on-premise version inherits from all the features delivered in the cloud version each quarter. Release 1909 includes the following new and enhanced functionalities.
You’ll find below all key innovations delivered in the 1909 release.
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ADVANCED INTERCOMPANY MATCHING AND RECONCILIATION
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With 1909 we deliver on four new intercompany apps. These apps are designed for matching and reconciliation of intercompany. They help you perform smart reconciliation on transaction level, and streamline your company to corporate close process.
The intercompany reconciliation apps help you:
- Perform real-time reconciliation and error detection
- Accelerate your month-end closing
- Streamline your company to corporate closing
- Automate process to save operational costs
- Improve compliance via accurate transaction-level data matching
- Benefit from “one source of truth” for multi-dimension reconciliation including legal and management requirements
As a business end-user, our intercompany reconciliation apps provides you with the following key features:
- Check the reconciliation status overview (see the screenshot above) and detailed amount comparison reports
- List the document matching items to find which documents are matched based on which matching rules, which documents are not copied yet or are copied but not matched yet
- Manually assign or unassign document items, add notes, or follow up by triggering a workflow or auto-postings
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CLOUD DATA MAPPING
In release 1909, we deliver new apps to help you extract, transform and load data from any source system into S/4HANA Finance for group reporting consolidated data (ACDOCU). Our first use case, the Data Mapping apps allow you to define mappings between source dimensions from any external system and target dimensions available in S/4HANA. In this version, the source is limited to .csv files, and the destination is limited to the ACDOCU table of SAP S/4 HANA Finance for group reporting. The mappings can be directly created in Microsoft Excel files, and then uploaded in the Data Mapping definition tile. These mapping files will be used to transform data and import it into SAP S/4HANA, using the Run Data Mapping tile. You’ll find below a simplified architecture diagram of our first available use case. Moving forward, more development and innovation are planned for data mapping.
Please note that as of today, the Data Mapping apps are only available for the cloud version of our group reporting software. We plan to make these apps available for the on-premise version in 2020.
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ENRICHED CLOUD DATA COLLECTION
In release 1909, we’ve enriched our cloud Data Collection apps with the ability to use additional measures in the reports. You can now enter data in local currency, group currency, transaction currency and quantities, percentages for example (see screenshot above). In addition, when you define a report, you can use a new method called “Selection by property” which allows you to create dynamic reports with characteristics values based on FS item property.
Please note that as of today, the Data Collection apps are only available for the cloud version of our group reporting software. We plan to make these apps available for the on-premise version in 2020.
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ENHANCED INTEGRATION WITH SAP ANALYTICS CLOUD
With 1909, we deliver two new web service APIs that enhance the connectivity with SAP Analytics Cloud. The first API is designed to populate and refresh SAP Analytics Cloud dimensions based on S/4HANA Finance for group reporting master data. The second is dedicated to populating and refreshing the SAP Analytics Cloud model’s facts from S/4HANA Finance for group reporting reported or consolidated data. The refresh of SAP Analytics Cloud is done either on-demand or on a regular basis with scheduled queries. Our SAP Analytics Cloud analysis reports include Planning, Actual, Predictive P&L reports as well as a new group financial KPIs report (see screenshot above).
As depicted in the diagram below, in release 1909 we provide new integration features with SAP Analytics Cloud to run planning activities at the group level. Consolidation master data (such as FS items and Consolidation units) as well as reported or consolidated data from ACDOCU can be imported in SAP Analytics Cloud. Consolidated data is retrieved in SAP Analytics Cloud via Live connection.
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ACTIVITY-BASED CONSOLIDATION OF INVESTMENTS
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Consolidation of Investments (C/I) deals with the elimination of investment on investors and of equity of their subsidiaries. It calculates the non-controlling interests of the eliminated investment and equity and the differential amounts. Then it reclassifies the minority portion of profit and loss reported by the subsidiaries. The system performs these calculations and postings on the base of reported data for investment and equity and group-dependent investment share percentages.
Before 1909, you were able to automate C/I using the rule-based approach: the system performs C/I calculations and postings by processing a sequence of reclassification steps which you define in reclassification methods. Today, you can alternatively choose to reclassify your C/I with the activity-based approach: the behavior of this task is influenced by various configuration settings which are predefined and delivered by SAP.
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OTHER KEY NEW FEATURES AVAILABLE IN 1909
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In release 1909, you can also benefit from a number of other new capabilities that we developed for the cloud version and are now available on-premise.
- Streamlined master data maintenance with the Import Consolidation Master Data app
- Data Mapping apps to transform and load data from non-SAP systems
- Easier selections with the new Fiori Define Selections app
- Improved Data and Consolidation Monitors
- Enhanced preparation for consolidation group changes
You can find more detail on the features above here.
- Intelligent Reporting Logic
- Group Data Analysis apps
- Matrix Consolidation
- Group Structure apps
You can find more detail on the features above here.
- Consolidation validation result analysis
- Drill through from consolidation validation logs to the SAP S/4HANA company level
- Time dependent mapping between financial statement items and G/L accounts
- Account driven consolidation rules
You can find more detail on the features above here.
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MORE INFORMATION
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Here’s more information on S/4HANA Finance for group reporting 1909 release:
- Intelligent ERP: SAP S/4HANA 1909 Release
- S/4HANA Finance for group reporting Help Portal
- What’s New Viewer
- Product road map
- S/4HANA 1909 release information note
- S/4HANA 1909 release restriction note
For continuous updates and information on our next-gen consolidation software, you can also follow our tag SAP S/4HANA Finance for group reporting.
Thank you for your post on S4H 1909 and one of the best item was on : Key Features between S4H1809 vs S4H1909.
Also Matrix Consolidation(Multi Dimensional) in SH41909
Thanks
Venkat
Hello Stephane,
Thanks for sharing the blog on 1909 especially on Group reporting innovations. I do have small doubt on group reporting consolidation table ACDOCU. If customer is on CfIn platform, can we get the leverage by using this functionality...? Or This functionality use for only those customers won’t go for Cfin...?
Thanks in advance....!
Thanks,
Balaaji
Dear Balaaji,
All customers can use S/4HANA Finance for group reporting, both customers who use Central Finance and customers who don’t use it.
For customers using Central Finance, the basic architecture would be the following:
You can find more information here: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/05/13/sap-s4hana-finance-for-group-reporting-product-strategy/
For customers who are neither using SAP ERP nor Central Finance, they can use the data mapping and data collection capabilities included our Group Reporting Data Collection (GRDC) app.
You can find more information on GRDC here: https://help.sap.com/viewer/90c07e91c7a64f328be3fd6b48955b13/1908.500/en-US/c27c73226dac4e07ac8aa59a45f92fd8.html
Kind regards,
Stéphane
Hi Stephane,
Thanks for very nice blog.
I have one question on Group Reporting 1909. Is there any way out if we not activated SAP Standard Business content for Group Reporting or activation or 1SG and 3LX is mandatory? If it's not mandatory then what is another workaround where we can still work on Group Reporting without activating business content? Do we have any documentation provided by SAP on this? Can you please help me out with this. Client is not ready to activate content as they think it might impact on Central Fin S/4 content. Please advise.
Parag
Sawale, I didn[t try your specific scenario but I know SAP Activate concept. If you are in 1909 you could refer to Solution Scope and Building Blocks documentation (config guides) to see all required configuration - good approach to understand impacts on your current environment.
Hello Stephane,
Thank you for sharing this information. With regards to the new functionality - reclassify your C/I with the Activity-Based approach - Would you be able to share more information on this feature like the advantages of Activity-Based compared to Rule-Based, and how can we test this in parallel so we can review the result and chose the right option for the company.
Also a demo video would be very helpful - is there one?
Best regards, Aleysha
Hello Aleysha,
I would recommend you go to our Help Portal, as the documentation is quite exhaustive 😉
Kind regards,
Stéphane
Very nice material comparing S4H1809 x S4H1909 and new features of group reporting. I see that BPC (consolidation aspect) is fully replecable by group reporting in a very good way. How about the component Planning? I know that BPC support will ends soon. Thank you!
Hello Felipe,
For the consolidated planning activities, our strategy in Group Reporting is to use SAP Analytics Cloud. You can refer to our product strategy here: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/05/13/sap-s4hana-finance-for-group-reporting-product-strategy/.
All the best,
Stéphane
Hi, very interesting blog!
for me it is stil not celar the integration and then relationships between acdoca and acdocu for some fields.
if consolidation unit is 1:1 with company codes, partner consolidation unit During document release , wich is the field that is read from acdoca? If it reads from acdoca trading partner..how to deal with the case 1 company : n trading partners in interunit reclassifications ? Does other fields/logic is applied?
other question refers to balance sheet business transaction field to map increase, decrease etc..requirente to calculate and report equity and investiment eliminations or also assets: which is the relationship between the field in acdoca and in acdocu ?
On both points I do not find so detailed documentation that explain how to work.
regards
stefano
Dear Stefano,
I think your question refers to master data and the association between ACDOCA (general accounting) and ACDOCU (consolidation). As a starting point, I think the best would be to refer to the "Master Data" chapters in our Help Portal, which how to display and define consolidation-specific master data, such as organizational units and financial statement (FS) items: https://help.sap.com/viewer/90c07e91c7a64f328be3fd6b48955b13/2005.500/en-US/e609d9c04dcc4d0b82006e0bf4ac57c7.html
Kind regards,
Stéphane
Hi Stephane,
Referring to your information on S/4 HANA GR integration with SAC "Our SAP Analytics Cloud analysis reports include Planning, Actual, Predictive P&L reports as well as a new group financial KPIs report (see screenshot above)". Is there any business content Group reporting reports/stories/dashboards delivered in SAC for GR? if yes, could you please guide me where to find them?
Hello!
SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) provides deep insights into your business using reporting and data visualization, which will help you make better decisions. With live data connections, the integration between SAP S/4HANA Finance for group reporting and SAC enables business analysis at group or corporate level without data replication. In this release, the following detail and overview reports are available out of the box:
- Consolidated report book for actual data
- Periodic overview report book
- Actual and budget comparison report book
- Actual, budget, and forecast comparison report book
- Predictive consolidated P&L analysis
- Group financial KPIs overview
You can find more information on our SAP Help Portal here: https://help.sap.com/viewer/4ebf1502064b406c964b0911adfb3f01/1909.002/en-US/c27c73226dac4e07ac8aa59a45f92fd8.html
Kind regards,
Stéphane
As always Stephane your blogs are very informative. SAP solution is complex, its the helping people around makes adoption easy. Thanks Stephane once again.
Best,
Prabhakar
Great post Stephane!
Do you have information on migrating EC-CS to Group Reporting?
Regards
Greg
Yes it is available from S4H 1909 OP version and please refer below SAP Note for your kind info
2833748 - SAP S/4HANA OP ( "on premise" ) - Transition from EC-CS to SAP S/4HANA for Group Reporting
Thanks
Venkat
Thank you - very helpful.
Will we still need to setup ICMR on S/4HANA or is the intercompany elimination included as part of the migration process?
Need to understand your complexity of IC PROCESS in EC-CS before comment please.
Thanks
Venkat