Statutory reporting transformation with SAP S/4HANA: charting a successful adoption journey

Update: The blog was initially written for SAP Solutions for advanced compliance reporting which is referred to as the SAP Document and Reporting Compliance solution now. The solution names and the licensing aspects have updated, but the technical components and information regarding the enablement of the statutory reporting solution is still valid and usable and would be kept updated. 

This blog post will be the one stop shop for all the information required to chart a successful adoption journey and deriving maximum usage value from the statutory reporting capabilities in SAP S/4HANA. Through the information structured in the various sections, readers would be able to achieve the following:

• Introduction – Understand the underlying solution offerings in detail and choose the correct path for their legal reporting transformation
• Adoption – Find a consolidation of all the necessary resources for a smooth and efficient go – live / enablement
• Enrichment – Get access to a list of resources helpful in better understanding and usage of the SAP solutions for advanced compliance reporting application

Introduction

SAP Document and Reporting Compliance – statutory reporting is the next generation reporting platform which aims at bringing in digital transformation in the critical area of Compliance Reporting and Monitoring. The solution helps you to create, generate, and submit compliance reports to the authorities on time and in the correct format. It helps you to ensure compliance with complex and ever-changing legal requirements. The extensibility capabilities of the legal reporting platform also help to adapt and create reports beyond the SAP standard offering and help organizations achieve the last mile of reporting compliance.

To get to know more about the solution, read the SAP press release, the solution one pager and watch this introduction video.

Let us now understand the underlying solution offerings and their capabilities in further detail. This helps customers and partners plan the adoption journey based on their S/4HANA journey.

Paths to Adoption

You can also have a look at the following solution videos to get further insight into the solutions:

• SAP localization hub, Advanced Compliance Reporting Service
• SAP S/4HANA advanced compliance reporting

Additional information on Central finance and the reporting via Central finance systems can be checked using SAP notes 2184567 and 2865139

The details in the introduction section would have helped the readers familiarize with and understand the solution’s context, it’s capabilities and variations in detail. The following section contains links and resources useful for customers and partners planning to and in the journey of the solution adoption.

Adoption

Based on the level of adoption of S/4HANA and the customer’s requirements, the solution of choice can be picked for adoption. Please refer to the relevant solution’s section for specific details.

Cloud customers

The one stop shop for the enablement of the ACR solution on cloud is the best practice explorer. Through the information structured in different sections, the best practice explorer for scope item 1J2 provides details like business benefits, key process flows and setup guidelines. Additionally, it also provides details about the configuration required for reports which are to be submitted electronically.

• As detailed in the Best practice explorer, scope item 1J2 is non-standard and so requires a bespoke activation. Please refer to the steps for activation below:
  • S/4HANA Cloud for Advanced Compliance Reporting, Essentials Edition – A scope item activation ticket needs to be created under component XX-S4C-OPR-SRV for scope item 1J2.
  • S/4HANA Cloud for Advanced Compliance Reporting, Extended Edition – As a part of the provisioning process, an EML questionnaire needs to be filled. This questionnaire has a specific question about the scope item 1J2. Based on the response provided, the scope item and the business function is activated.
• The help portal documentation is updated for each cloud release and provides all the essential details about the functionality and features specific to the release.
• This table of reports lists the reports available for each release and links to their respective documentation.

On premise customers

The feature scope description document equips the customers with better understanding of the features and capabilities of each solution for any S/4HANA release. Please refer to the following sections for details:

• Basic Compliance Reporting: section 2.5.2.3
• Advanced Compliance Reporting: section 3.3.2.5.

Further detailed information is available in the help portal documentation for ACR. Equipped with the right information, the next set of activities would be getting the right code and configurations in the system. These activities can be done in parallel or one after the other.

Code: This enablement step would be the implementation of notes specific to ACR framework for the customer’s release. The SAP note 2620211 provides the steps to fetch the list of notes specific to frontend as well as backend.

Configuration: The ACR framework offers a release specific Admin guide which is a detailed step by step document for configurations specific to the framework and provides links to the configurations for applications and components which are required for ACR reports. SAP Note 2584083 provides the admin guides specific to each release. Please note that certain configurations in the admin guide are only relevant for Advanced Compliance Reporting customers and not for the basic compliance reporting customers.

The following block diagram gives an overview of the configuration steps from the Admin guide.

Configuration Overview

Once the configurations for the ACR framework and associated applications has been completed, the next step would be the completion of configuration specific to the reports. This table of reports lists the reports available for each release and links to their respective documentation and configuration details. It would also contain the roles/authorization information specific to the individual reports. There may also be a need to implement certain notes which have been released for said reports.

With the completion of the steps in this section, the customers and partners would have a working ACR set up for their usage.

Enrichment

In this section of the blog, we would list down the resources which would be useful for existing users of ACR and would help them derive more value from the solution.

• Information on replacement of existing legal reports with ACR reports: With the advent of S/4HANA and ACR, certain legacy reports would be replaced by the corresponding ACR reports. The SAP Note 2480067 provides the details for these reports.
• Reports requiring data to be submitted electronically: With the increased adoption of technology by authorities, many legal reports need to be submitted electronically. This section of the documentation details the configuration steps (and list of reports mandating electronic submission).
• How to videos: To help end users familiarize with the functionalities and how to use them, a set of short videos hosted on SAP media share explaining the features and how to use them is available here.
• Requesting a feature / enhancement: To enable customers and partners to provide feedback and to identify and prioritize the most pressing requirements from the customers; we have a customer influence channel.  Here, users can provide feedback, request features and also vote on requests from others.
• Learning hub content: To familiarize users with the ACR capabilities and to assist in user training, there is an e-Learning course available on the Learning hub. Additionally, recordings from a four part webinar series for partners is also available for consumption.
• ACR on SAP Community: The advanced compliance reporting topic on SAP community is the window to the latest information, updates and discussion pertaining to the solution.

Hoping that the information in the blog post helps for a faster and smoother adoption as well as a better usage experience for the end users.

(Written with significant inputs from Ajay Krishna Uniyal.)