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Chr_Vogler
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
COVID-19 pandemic will accelerate the transition to the next-generation ERP as digitalization and new ways of working become more critical to business. For example, you will monitor the fulfillment status of all sales orders in real-time as you need often to resolve order fulfillment issues quickly to avoid delivery delays.

This blog will illustrate how SAP S/4HANA Cloud is Delivering Value with Intelligent Innovations and how Intelligent Technologies helps the sales process in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105.

To name just a few highlights:

  • Mass Changes of Sales Documents

  • Retroactive Billing

  • Automatic Delivery Block Removal after Posting of Down-Payment

  • New Variant of Sales Kits

  • Access for Auditors to Archived Price Master Data

  • … and more.


In case you do not need all the information below and just briefly want to get an overview of the release highlights, please watch this video with the top 3 key innovations:



Release video: SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105 for Sales: Top 3 key innovations.

 

Mass Changes of Sales Documents


The first innovation it’s about Mass Changes in sales documents. Typically, updating sales orders in SAP S/4HANA Cloud requires the user to manually open and make changes to the correspondent Sales Orders Header Data or Sales Orders Items Data, one after the other. Maybe this is a possible process for a very small list of orders, but it becomes time-consuming for larger ones.

With the new 2105 release, we have a new SAP Fiori app to manage mass changes of sales documents. We support the Mass Changes for:

  • sales orders,

  • sales orders without charge,

  • sales scheduling agreements,

  • sales contracts,

  • debit- and credit memo requests,

  • and customer returns.


 



Demo 1: The new SAP Fiori app enables you to trigger mass changes of sales documents and to manage and make changes to multiple documents at a time.

Trigger a mass change of a Sales Document


On launching the Mass Change of Sales Document SAP Fiori app, you will land at a landing page that allows you to create change jobs for the respective sales documents as well as allows you to monitor previously created mass change jobs.

Below the Sales Documents, you will see 3 tabs that show previously created jobs that have either “Failed”, and those which are “In Process” and those that are “Completed” successfully

On clicking on an individual sales document, the new SAP Fiori app will launch the respective mass change object app.

For example, if you click on Sales Orders, the mass change of Sales Orders app launches, which then allows you to search for sales orders that you want to execute a mass change and allows you to create a background job for the changes.

Monitor Mass Change Jobs: Option 1


Below the Sales Documents, you will see 3 tabs that show previously created jobs that have either “Failed”, and those which are “In Process” and those that are “Completed” successfully.

On clicking on an individual sales document, the app will launch the respective mass change object app.

Failed Jobs:

You can select one or more jobs under the failed jobs tab and “Set to completed”, this will then appear under the completed Jobs tab with the field Manually Completed set to “Yes”

On clicking on the job, you will be finding more information on the job status, the fields that were submitted for changes, Failed Documents, and Completed Documents.

You can also re-run the entire job by choosing “Schedule New Job” or you can also rerun the activity for a failed document by choosing “Repeat Activity”.

Monitor Mass Change Jobs: Option 2


Monitor Mass Changes of Sale Documents can be either accessed from the landing page under the 3 tabs “Failed”, “In Process” or “Completed” – or by directly accessing the new SAP Fiori app “Monitor Mass Changes of Sales Documents”.

Monitor Mass Changes of Sale Documents can be either accessed from the landing page under the 3 tabs “Failed”, “In Process” or “Completed” – or by directly accessing the Monitor Mass Changes of Sales Documents tile.

Situation Handling: Mass Change of Sales Docs


Situation Handling brings business issues to the attention of specific user groups. It helps the user to recognize, understand and resolve the situation and we are also shipping a new situation in Sales for Mass Change of Sales Documents.

Here, mass changes can be triggered as a background job, and automatically send a completion notification on the SAP Fiori launchpad. You can review the processing log and trigger follow-up actions if necessary.


Figure 1: End users are informed about the situations they’re responsible for by notifications

References

  • To learn more about the Mass Changes of Sales Documents see SAP Help Portal

  • To learn more about Situation Template: Mass Change of Sales Docs: Jobs Complete see Product Assistance


 

Create Sales Orders from Unstructured Data


Here I will share insighton WHY and HOW technologies like SAP intelligent Robotic Process Automation (iRPA), support your journey to the intelligent enterprise and allows you to go one step closer to fully automate the End-2-End process.

SAP iRPA is a strategic area for SAP S/4HANA Cloud which allows embedding intelligence and automation in E2E processes in a scalable way and with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105 release, the first iRPA bot which automates the email scanning and PDF upload for “Create Sales Orders from Unstructured Data” is now available in the iRPA store.


Figure 2: The iRPA bot will automatically monitor email inbox, once receiving a purchase order email, it will download the attached PDF file and upload it to the Fiori app

For more information see:

 


Retroactive Billing


Let’s take a business example here to explain the background: You are the billing clerk in your company, and you have to create billing documents, such as invoices, for customers. The amounts that customers are expected to pay depend on pricing agreements between his company and its customers. In the system, these pricing agreements are represented as condition records for pricing.

Sometimes, pricing agreements are renegotiated and applied retroactively, meaning that new condition records are created and that these become valid for billing documents that have already been settled. For example, a customer was billed for 10 engine parts at USD 50 per part, so the amount due was USD 500. After the price is renegotiated, the new price per part is USD 40. Therefore, the amount actually due now changes to USD 400, meaning that the customer has paid USD 100 too much via the original invoice.

To both identify and settle this USD 100 difference resulting from the retroactive price change, you can now with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105 use the new SAP Fiori app “Create Credit Memos or Debit Memos – Retroactive Billing”. The app enables you to identify existing billing documents that are affected by changed pricing agreements and directly create credit memos or debit memos to settle the resulting differences with your customer.



Demo 2: The new SAP Fiori app helps you to identify existing, already settled billing documents affected by changed pricing agreements and settle the resulting differences by creating credit memos or debit memos.

Features of Retroactive Billing


With retroactive billing, you can do the following:

  • Generate a list of billing documents affected by price changes, according to specific criteria such as the business partners, sales organization, and billing date

  • Automatically create the required retroactive billing documents directly from the list

  • Simulate the retroactive billing process for any document to gauge the results before committing to document creation

  • Review any errors that may occur in a log


Processing the retroactive billing list


A list that the system generates when you use the Create Credit Memos and Debit Memos - Retroactive Billing app to search for billing documents affected by price changes. It contains billing documents relevant for retroactive billing as follows:

  • Documents with open values to be processed for price changes (that is, primary documents, which are typically invoices containing billed items whose value has changed, for example, F2 invoices)

  • Documents that refer to these billing documents (that is, secondary documents, typically G2 credit memos or L2 debit memos). When you create credit or debit memos in the app, they are secondary documents.

  • Documents that have already been created and processed for price adjustments.


For a detailed explanation of all fields displayed in the retroactive billing list see the SAP Help Portal.

 

SAP Sales Order Tracking


With the SAP Fiori app “Sales Order Tracking” internal sales representatives are enabled to monitor the fulfillment status of sales orders over the whole process chain of the order-to-cash process.

The app perfectly supports sales employees if a customer calls, asking for information on their order or if a colleague or superior asks for information on all sales orders belonging to a specific customer.

Issues can be recognized instantly, and appropriate actions can be triggered.



Demo 3: The SAP Fiori app ”Track Sales Orders” helps you to Track the fulfillment status of sales orders and you get a quick overview of the sales orders are on track or if they contain issues.

New with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105 release:


Approval Status and Approval Request Reason

The approval status and approval request reason is now displayed in the header section of sales documents (e.g. sales order, debit memo request) and sales order-related issues. This allows you to immediately see whether a sales document is in approval, which means that further processing of the sales document (including the creation of follow-up documents) is blocked.

Navigation to Schedule Line for all Item Issues in Track Sales Order Details

It is now possible to navigate to the schedule lines for all item issues. Schedule line details can be displayed for the entire fulfillment process, sales orders, and issues.

Schedule line information such as requested and confirmed delivery quantities can be displayed.

New Issue: Supply Issue in Sales Orders

This issue occurs if a purchase requisition has not yet been transformed into a purchase order in third-party processing in Purchasing (that is, the purchase order is missing for the sales order).

For more information see the SAP Help Portal

 

Automatic Delivery Block Removal after Posting of Down-payment


An internal sales representative creates a sales order with a down-payment-related billing plan item.

Previously, when the down payment is fully posted, the customer needs to manually remove the delivery block in the sales order.

With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105 release, when the down-payment is fully posted, the system will automatically remove the delivery block in the sales order.


Figure 3: Streamline sales order processing through automatic removal of delivery blocks at a sales order item level after down-payment posting

Configuration Settings


In the first step, you must make the configuration for the Billing Plan. The configuration expert can use the configuration step Maintain the Milestone Billing Plan Type to configure the billing plan type in the Manage Your Solution app.

After that, you have to Configure the Billing Plan Type. To do so., the configuration expert can mark the Relevant for Down Payment for the billing plan type, so that automatic delivery block removal can be applied to the billing plan type.

System behavior



  • When the checkbox Relevant for Down Payment is marked in the billing plan type configuration, the down payment status will be showed in the billing plan type assigned sales order item and sales order header.

  • When all down payment-related billing plan items are fully paid in FI-AR, the delivery block in schedule lines will be automatically removed and the down payment status also will be updated to fully paid. (The delivery block was previously assigned in configuration Maintain Date Categories for Milestone Billing Plans.)

  • When the checkbox Apply to BOMs in configuration Maintain Date Categories for Milestone Billing Plans is marked, the delivery block removal logic will consider all BOM items as a group


 

Create Sales Order


With this app, you as an internal sales representative can create sales orders containing basic information in a fast and easy way. You can open the app using the Create Sales Orders tile or from within the Manage Sales Orders app. Note that this app only offers the described functionality for a limited number of sales order types. It is not meant to replace the Create Sales Orders - VA01 app.

Again, with the SAP S/4HANA 2105, we extend this SAP Fiori app with new features to increase flexibility and brings better insight.

General Information in the header data.

  • New: Incompleteness Info (see additional chapter)

  • New: Menu actions have been enabled (Delivery Block, Billing Block).

  • New: Display Change Log allows to show which user has changed sales order information at what date and time. This action is available after the sales order was saved


Prices on Header

  • New: Section title now is called Prices.

  • New: Option to filter conditions types

  • New: Option to maximize the screen



  • The user can create, change, display or delete header price conditions considering the current settings.

  • In general, header price conditions are only added manually.

  • Inactive price conditions are visualized in yellow color.

  • Erroneous price conditions are visualized in red color


Approval-Relevant Sales Orders

When a user creates/saves a sales order, based on the configuration of the system the order can become relevant for approval. Subsequently, a workflow must be triggered so that one or more approvers find approval tasks in My Inbox.

Sales orders, which are in approval cannot be processed further, for example, delivery document creation is not possible in such case.

If the order is relevant for approval, this will be indicated by:

  • an action Withdraw Approval Request

  • the inability to change the document (neither Edit nor “change” actions like Update Prices or Set/Remove Blocks are available in such case)

  • the value In Approval in the field Approval Status (Status and Blocks)



Figure 4: Create and edit sales orders quickly and intuitively with the enhanced SAP Fiori app

 

Action Processing

The user can execute the following actions for the sales order header:

  • Create Delivery (only if the user has the authorizations to do so)

  • Update Prices

  • New: Incompleteness Info

  • Delivery Block (Set/Remove)

  • Billing Block (Set/Remove)

  • New: Display Change Log


Incompletion Information

  • The user can trigger the action Incompleteness Info, which will then check the document for completion.

  • Fields, which should be filled based on settings defined for incompleteness (SSCUI’s) are shown with a yellow frame.

  • The message area lists all fields, which are missing for having a “complete” document. Depending on settings (Status Groups), incomplete documents cannot be processed further, for example, delivery or billing document creation might not be possible.

  • Hyperlinks allow navigating to the field as long as it is visible in the UI.

  • In case a field causing incompletion cannot be maintained in the Fiori UI, a dedicated message will indicate this. In this case, the user should navigate to Related Apps  Change Incomplete Data.

  • The messages will automatically update once the user continues to process the document.

  • If the document is complete, a dedicated message will indicate this.


Items

  • New: the user can change the default item category





    • by choosing another item category after the default item category has been determined (using the value-help)

    • by manually entering the desired item category, so that the default item category will not be determined.





  • New: Sorting and filtering can be applied to the items table

  • New: Purchase Requisition information is included in the table of schedule lines. If needed, use table personalization to display the related columns

  • New: It is possible to change Business Partners on sales order item level

  • New: Creating Items Manually, Choose ENTER on your keyboard (or Add Row).


Stay tuned on the progress of this function as in the future release, SAP will continuously add more features here.

 

Billing Plan Templates for Milestone Billing


You as an internal sales representative would like to create a sales order with a CBAO item.

Remark:  CBAO: Milestone-Billing Plan: Milestone billing means distributing the total amount to be billed over multiple billing dates in the billing plan.

Now with the new SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105 release, if a billing plan template is assigned in billing plan type, the predefined billing plan dates in the template will be automatically proposed in the billing plan of the sales document.


Figure 5: Increase processing times for sales orders while selecting a predefined billing plan during milestone billing

 

Billing Plan Configuration


The configuration expert can maintain the billing plan dates as a template for a billing plan type. After that, a reference billing plan number will be generated.

Reference billing plan numbers can be assigned to a billing plan type so that the predefined billing plan dates will be applied to the billing plan type.

System behavior



  • When a sales order is created, the predefined billing plan dates shall be proposed in the billing plan tab of the sales order header, if the billing plan type is assigned to the sales order header.

  • When a sales order item is created, the predefined billing plan dates shall be proposed in the billing plan tab of the sales order item, if the billing plan type is assigned to the sales order item.


 

Integration with SAP S/4HANA for Subscription Billing


SAP S/4HANA for Subscription Billing – Integration with SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Contract Accounting & Invoicing for High-Volume Scenarios – SAP Subscription Billing seamlessly integrates into Convergent Invoicing processes in SAP S/4HANA Cloud to enable consolidation of charges into a single invoice. The improvements include integration to contract-based revenue recognition using billing forecast information from SAP Subscription Billing,  fine-grained control of settings a level of subscription profile, enhanced integration of bills into billable items, and support for subscription lifecycle management, billing, & accounting.

 



Demo 4: Integration with SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Contract Accounting & Invoicing for High-Volume Scenarios (without audio).

Thanks for reading this blog post. Stay tuned!

If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community. This platform which is available to SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers and partners has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions.

For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:

  • SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info here

  • jan.gilg SAP News Center article here

  • Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105 Release Blog

  • The Link Collection for Sales here

  • Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here and previous release highlights here

  • Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist

  • SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here

  • Early Release Webinar Series here

  • Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here

  • openSAP Microlearning for SAP S/4HANA here

  • Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here

  • SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community: here

  • Feature Scope Description here

  • What’s New here

  • Help Portal Product Page here

  • Implementation Portal here


Follow us via @Sap and #S4HANA, or myself via @VoglerChrist and LinkedIn

 
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