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Welcome to the year 2105 and a new blog in this release information series. Also with this release we bring several innovations for the professional services industry.
You can find a collection on overall professional services insights for SAP S/4HANA Cloud in this collection blog.
As usual, in the video below you can find a short summary of the three most important highlights of this release, but in this blog, you will also find more innovations than just the three highlights.
Let me start off with the billing process for our professional services scenario in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. As you know this process starts out in the project billing, either the long time existing one, including the Billing Request Editor, or the newly build one, of which the first version was delivered with 2008. After necessary steps have been taken there, the process moves on to the preliminary billing and then the last steps for invoicing in the billing and output management.
Additional information about workflows for preliminary billing documents
So, let us first look at two new items in the preliminary billing functionality. Number one is the additional information that has been added about workflows for preliminary billing documents.
In certain situations, it can make sense to ensure that a preliminary billing document is approved by a designated approver before the billing clerk can create the final billing document. You could, for example, define that preliminary billing documents with a net value higher than USD 10,000, or all those intended for a specific customer, must always go through an approver.
With this innovation the user therefore has direct access to the information regarding rework or rejection of a preliminary billing document, as well as:
User (approver) who sent back the preliminary billing document
Reason for sending back the preliminary billing document
Information provided in the My Inbox app by the approver who requested rework or rejected the document (including notes, comments, and attachments)
Availability of attachments from preliminary billing documents for printing in billing documents
The second items in regard to the preliminary billing functionality is the automatic copying of attachments in preliminary billing documents to the final billing document.
This functionality seriously helps in reducing manual effort to copy attachments to billing documents and therefore also improves usability with the option to print attachments added to preliminary billing documents in the final invoice
It gives users the ability to assign attachments in preliminary billing documents to output items and the option to copy output items to billing documents for printing together with the billing document.
Next up, let us talk about the previously mentioned new project billing.
Increase bill value by including items that were previously written-off
Also in this area we have two things that I would like to highlight with this 2105 release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. The first functionality you might already be familiar with, as it is also part of the former project billing functionality. Now we are also able to have a project billing specialist or billing team member is able to reinclude formerly written-off items, within the new Project Billing.
With this we deliver an increased transparency for formerly written off items. Users will be able to have a specific selection and decision of time and expense items that were formerly written off and bring back these written off items that are part of earlier created Billing Document Requests.
Automate the billing process in project billing through the application job
The second innovation is the new application job. This enables a project billing specialist or billing team member to automate the billing process.
Of course, this will increase the speed in project billing process, as the automation of billing process based on different attributes reduces time and effort.
As in the previous releases, you can also find more information on the new project billing functionality in this blog post from Andreas Hammerschmidt.
There is a new authorization role template “Project Manager - Professional Services” which provides improved flexibility on who has authorization to access and maintain the projects. With this 2105 release this is especially interesting in the context of private projects. You can define in more detail who is actually able to see and work with private projects.
Same as with the project billing functionality, this new role template will exist in parallel with the current role and will have more enhancements coming in further releases.
New authorization role template “Project Manager - Professional Services” (SAP_BR_PROJECT_MANAGER_PROF) provides improved flexibility to enhance authorization to access and maintain the projects. These are the additional restrictions types to maintain authorization for the projects:
Ability for service performers to book their time on non-project related tasks
In the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Timesheet application, the service performers could only record time on the Project related tasks . Unlike Internal employees, there was no possibilities for the external employees to book time on non–project related tasks like Training, Team activities etc.
With this new feature, such generic tasks can be configured and be made available to service performers as well to record their time.