Product Information
Accrual Engine in S4 HANA 1909: Manual Accrual & how it is processed periodically – Part 1
Accrual processing is a typical and painful period end activity for the business users. SAP has come up with Accrual Engine in S4 HANA 1909 to make accrual processing easier. In this blog series we will discuss on Manual Accrual – how it is configured and how it is processed on each period end. I have divided the complete article into 2 blogs:
Part 1 – that describes the theoretical part of Accrual Engine
Part 2 – We will see a DEMO in the system
What is Accrual Engine:
- Accrual postings belong to the typical period-end closing activities, since the amount of the necessary accruals is not usually known until the end of the period.
- From a technical point of view, the Accruals Management functions build on the Accrual Engine, which calculates the accruals that are posted in Financial Accounting.
- Accruals do not need any separate journal entries but are saved as line items in the Universal Journal with REFERENCE KEY = ‘ACES4’
Accruals supported by Accrual Engine:
- Manual Accruals
For manual accruals, you enter the data of the business transaction to be accrued or load the corresponding data to the Accrual Engine. The system calculates the amounts to be accrued.
- Purchase Order Accruals
In purchase order accruals, the required data is taken from the Materials Management component, transferred to the Accrual Engine, and automatically converted to accrual items. The system calculates the amounts to be accrued
In this blog series we will discuss on Manual Accrual.
Business needs & Motivation: Advantages of S4 HANA Accrual Engine
The S/4HANA Accrual Engine
1. Is optimized for S/4HANA
- It is fully integrated into the General Ledger:
- All currencies of General Ledger are supported
- The Accrual Engine postings are stored only as line items of the universal journal entry, in table ACDOCA.
- The fiscal year variant of the G/L ledgers are supported.
- Standard FI reversal, e.g. using transaction FB08 or F.80 is supported.
- There is no redundant storage of the postings as original document.
- No reconciliation effort any more with G/L: Transaction ACACTRANSFER ‘Transfer of ACE Docs to Accnting’ is obsolete.
2. There are no summary records in the Accrual Engine:
- No limitation of the number of fields in reporting.
- No separate balance carry forward run required. The G/L balance carry forward is sufficient. Transaction ACACCARRYFORWARD is obsolete.
- Enables Complex Postings – More than two line items are possible by customer-defined of posting schemas.
- Allows optional review and/or approval of periodic accruals at period end.
3. Mass Upload of Accrual Objects is possible:
- Create or Update accrual objects with the total amount – For creating or update accrual objects. The total accrual amount is a required field.
- Create or update accrual objects with periodic amount – For creating or updating accrual objects. The periodic accrual amount is a required field.
- Update periodic amounts only (Quick mode) – For updating existing period periodic accrual objects.
Key Elements:
Delta Logic for Accrual Postings:
You can configure the accrual engine to post in each period the delta amounts compared to the former period or to reverse and post again the full amount:
- If delta posting is configured, the Accrual Engine calculates the amount for the given period and subtracts the amount that was already posted before. Only the delta is posted.
- If full posting is configured, the Accrual Engine first reverses the amount that was already posted. Then the Accrual Engine calculates the amount for the given period and posts this full amount. Both, reversal and full posting are done in the given period.
Journal Entries: For Accrual Transaction Type PP-Periodic Posting
COMPLETE POSTING
- 1st Periodic Posting
Dr Offsetting Account / COST Account
Cr Accrual Account / B&S Account
- 2nd Periodic Posting
Reverse previous period posting
Dr Accrual Account / B&S Account
Cr Offsetting Account / COST Account
Post the Accrual amount for current period in the same JV
Dr Offsetting Account / COST Account
Cr Accrual Account / B&S Account
DELTA POSTING
Dr Offsetting Account / COST Account
Cr Accrual Account / B&S Account
Review and Approval:
- Review means: A reviewer can adjust the periodic accrual amounts that are proposed by the system. If no user performs the review, the system will post the proposed amounts.
- Approval means: An approver can approve or reject the periodic accrual amounts that are proposed by the system. If nobody approves the amount, the system will post no accruals for this accrual object.
Accrual Transaction Types – Different types of Posting:
- IP – Opening Posting
When an accrual object is created, the total amount can be posted. - PP – Periodic Posting
The amount that is calculated by the accrual method for the single periods can be posted. - FP – Automatic Release Posting (also called Final Posting)
Reduce the accruals by posting them to some other account, for example a P&L account. This type of posting occurs if the status of the accrual object is changed to Prematurely Finished.
There are other transaction types as well which can be explored as per customer requirement.
Accrual Methods for Accrual Calculation:
- LINEAR – Amount equally distributed through all periods automatically
- UPLD_AMNT – Use amount that was uploaded into the Accrual Engine manually
There are other methods as well.
Configuration Steps:
- Basic Settings:
Step 1: Set Application Component to be Customized
Step 2: Assign Company codes
Step 3: Close Fiscal year in the Accrual Engine
Step 4: Define Accrual Line item type
If you want to use excel upload functionality, ‘Upld Allwd’ checkbox must be ticked
Step 5: Assign Currency type to Accrual line item types
- Accrual Calculation:
Step 6: Define Accrual Methods
In our DEMO, we have used LINEAR & UPLD_AMNT Accrual Methods
- Review & Approval of Accruals:
Step 7: Define Reasons why adjusting periodic amounts
Step 8: Define threshold variant for Review and Approval
- If Accrual amount is less than Lower Threshold, then the accrual object will not be processed by Accrual Engine.
- If Accrual amount is BT Lower Threshold & Upper threshold, Accrual object is auto approved.
- If Accrual Amount is GT Upper threshold, Review and Approval is required
Step 9: Define Time intervals variant for Review/Approval
- Accrual Posting:
Step 10: Define Posting Schema
Symbolic Accounts:
These are different type of G/L accounts that can be used for Accrual Postings.
Step 11: Assignment of Accrual Item types to Posting Schemas
‘Post Deltas’ checkbox unchecked here. That means full posting will take place in each period. Refer to the full posting logic mentioned above.
‘Post Deltas’ checkbox is checked here. That means delta posting will take place in each period. Refer to the delta posting logic mentioned above.
Step 12: Define Accrual object categories
Step 13: Define number ranges for Accrual Object Categories
Step 14: Assign number ranges to Object Categories
Step 15: Account Determination for Manual Accruals
This ends Part 1 of this series. We will discuss on the following in Part 2:
- DEMO in S4
- Batch jobs for Periodic Posting
- Available Fiori Apps
I hope you enjoyed this article. Please feel free to share your inputs/suggestion/corrections in the comments sections.
Let’s keep learning together.
Cheers
You can reach out to me directly here https://www.linkedin.com/in/theratulchakraborty/
Thanks Mr. Ratul
Your articles gave me better insight about Accrual Engine in S4HANA
Regards,
Muhammad Hasan Mufid
Im glad that you found my blog useful ?
Cheers
Ratul
Is there any second part of accrual Engine
For this blog series, yes. I'm yet to finish writing Part 2.
Well written blog, Rahul!
Thank you Nilesh. Btw I'm Ratul
Hi, Thanks for the useful blog.
Can you please explain the business scenarios which can be managed by the new functionalities.
e.g. is this just for the Prepaid accounting or the cost accruals (e.g. Services received but not accounted due to late invoice).
And how each scenario gets managed (with examples of entries)
This would really help to create value in business process discussions
Regards
Tushar
Hi Tushar,
Thank you. So many questions to answer in comments. You can go through the following link.
https://assets.cdn.sap.com/sapcom/docs/2019/07/d010dfa6-577d-0010-87a3-c30de2ffd8ff.pdf
Cheers
Thank you for very useful blog
Cheers Edalada
Hi Ratul Chakraborty2 :
Do you also have any documentation on Purchase order accruals customizing and user transcations?
Thanks,
Sreekanth
Hi Ratul,
Thanks for your explanation.
There are many scenarios where TDS has to be deducted on Prov. amount also. Just wanted to check how the TDS part has been considered in the Accrual management process ?
Regards
Dear Ratul Chakraborty2,
It's a wonderful article for learning accural techniques in S4 HANA, and we appreciate your time and effort.
I have some critical questions about the accrual created with WBS element. Is it possible that if accrual is posted with a PO that has WBS items as account assignemnt, the commitment of the PO would be reduced to the extent of the accrual?
Thanks .
With regards,
V.krishnamoorthy
Hi,
Yes, I think so. That is how PO accrual works. Accrual engine calculates the difference between the Planned & Actual cost. Accrual Engine stores this Accrual Amount in an Accrual Item Type ACCRL and when posting the accruals entry system inherits all the account assignment from PO like Expense GL and Cost object (cost center, Order, WBS etc. ) automatically.
Cheers
Ratul
Hi Ratul,
Let me expand this query a bit further. As we understand in S/4 system is allowing to post accrual against PO as per my understanding having account assignment objects such as WBS, IO or cost center.
What are the changes in S/4 functionally as far as commitment is concerned as system is allowing to post accrual against PO.
Hi,
If commitment management is activated at the Controlling Area level, there I see a challenge. The accrual postings do not reduce the commitments already generated by the POs. At least, that is what I observed when I did the testing, and I do not know if SAP has any solution to that, sorry.
Dear Atul,
Noted your response and Thank you.
This again qualifies for raising an OSS incident to SAP to understand in case there exists further developments, Solution or KBA notes to understand this behaviour.
Regards,
Yashpal Chauhan
Yes, please. I would really appreciate if you let us know the response from SAP here in this forum.
Hello Ratul,
First of all thanks for the wonderful article. One comments which i would like to add is that you should provide the relevance/details of each configuration node. this will be helpful to understand why the config step is required. Thanks.
Hi,
Thanks for the suggestion. If you are a functional consultant, you must be knowing that SAP has provided documentation for each configuration node in SPRO. Anybody can refer to that 🙂
Cheers
Ratul
Very Informative Document. My doubts are clear pretty much. Thanks a lot for such kinds of documents and also create more documents like this on other topics as well.😊👌
Thank you. I'm glad that you found my blog help.
Hi,
it's possible in s4hana when you use accrual engine, create profitability document with costing based copa ? I saw system creates document only in account based copa but not in costing based copa?
Regards
Hello Alessandro,
As far I know, future of COPA is account based and accrual engine is a relatively new product. So, I doubt if it will support costing based COPA. However, I can not confirm as I have not done similar implementation.
Thank you.
Hello Ratul Chakraborty2
Thank you for this insightful blog on Accrual Engine. It has increased my knowledge of the Accrual Engine.
I would like to know, with regards to the REFERENCE KEY = 'ACES4', the possibility of the accrual engine generating multiple journal entry numbers during posting to the separate the line items.
Thank you.