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Author's profile photo Stephane NEUFCOURT
Stephane NEUFCOURT
August 4, 2021 8 minute read

SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting 2108 is live

SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting release 2108 is generally available

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We in SAP Product Engineering team are happy to announce the general availability of SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting release 2108 on August 4, 2021. Our next-generation software for consolidation and management reporting follows the simplification model in S/4HANA accounting, and provides unified user experience from entity close to group close, unified analytics toolset and harmonized data model.

With our 2108 release, you can benefit from a series of new and enhanced features to help you run your group close process better:

  • Automation of elimination of unrealized profit on inventory
  • Manual journals with multiple consolidation groups
  • Collect texts for financial reporting
  • Front-end formula calculations during manual data collection
  • Extensibility of financial statement item master data attributes
  • Increased data and consolidation monitors’ configuration flexibility
  • Performance improvements on analytics

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Automation of elimination of unrealized profit on inventory
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When goods are sold within the group, and are still in the inventory, the margin must be eliminated. In release 2108, you can automate the internal profit in inventory elimination. This new feature helps deliver greater efficiency, reduces manual work, and provides better transparency and auditability of elimination of profit in inventory, and other eliminations that require similar rule capabilities. With 2108 the consolidation rule can now:

  • Read a percentage from a partner
  • Break down the percentage selection by additional dimensions (such as product)
  • Assign the retrieved percentages to the selected reported data of the trigger by partner and breakdown dimension value
  • Multiply the assignment

In the example above, the selling unit A reports margin rates for a specific characteristic value, for example material or any other dimension. The buying unit B reports inventory balances against a selling unit for the same specific characteristic value, for example material or any other dimension. The consolidation rule reads the percentage from the partner and the percentage per dimension value, and posts on selected additional fields.

As depicted below, in 2108 you can use two new options in the reclassification method:

  • Read percentage from partner (partner unit, partner profit center, partner segment)
  • Define characteristics to compare trigger and percentage

The following feature set is now available to enable the elimination of internal profit in inventory (see the screenshots below):

  • Consolidation task 2015 – IC Elim. Inventory Profit
  • Method S2015 – IC Elim. Inventory Profit
  • Document type 2J – IC elim IPI (20/AUT)
  • Statistical financial statement items
  • Clearing FS items to collect ending inventory amount and estimated profit margin

Get more information on the automation of internal profit in inventory elimination.

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Manual journals with multiple consolidation groups
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In order to increase efficiency in your manual journal posting in situations where the same group-dependent manual journal should be valid in multiple consolidation groups, with 2108 you can now create manual journals with multiple consolidation groups.

Create manual journal postings for group reporting in multiple consolidation groups in a single step:

  • Enable a multi-value field for consolidation group on posting level 30 for consolidation-group-dependent postings in the manual posting app or the manual journal import app
  • Create bundled journals for selected consolidation groups
  • Manage bundled journals together in subsequent activities, such as copies or reversals

In the “Post Journal Entry” app, you can post on you primary group, as well as on additional groups (see the GIF below):

For every selected consolidation group, separate documents are posted. To track these documents, the system assigns a document bundle number to every group journal entry, which posts to multiple consolidation groups. You can use the document bundle number for the reversal process, and you can also filter the document bundle number in the Post Group Journal Entries app and in the Display Group Journal Entries app. This allows you to search for the corresponding bundle based on this number.

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Get more information on group journal entries posting to multiple consolidation groups.

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Collect texts for financial reporting
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For more transparency in the group data collection and reporting process, you can collect text information using forms in our SAP Group Reporting Data Collection (GRDC) app. As described in our previous GRDC blog, while completing forms users can now enter comments for a number they see, enter, or change whenever they want to share additional thoughts. Comments are directly associated to the data – allowing their later re-use. So, if a comment is entered and the data in the cell is used in another form, the comment is also shown in that form. Comments can be short, which is what the dialog’s size encourages – or up to 10.000 characters long, if required in certain cases.

Get more information on comments in forms.

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Front-end formula calculations during manual data collection
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You can use front-end formula calculations in manual data collection forms in our SAP Group Reporting Data Collection (GRDC) app. As described in our previous GRDC blog, using formulas you can now:

  • Run real-time calculations, such as total row or column calculations
  • Create visual validation, for instance comparing dimension break-down values with total
  • Define KPIs, percentages
  • Calculate amounts and store the results in universal journals (ACDOCU), instead of entering them manually
  • Customize titles and add textual information

You can define a wide range of formulas when creating a form in “Create a form” application. Formulas are then run in real-time when opening the form and entering data in “Enter Group Reporting Data” application.

Get more information on formulas in forms.

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Extensibility of financial statement item master data attributes
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Financial statement item attributes are key in driving the consolidation process. By grouping together like financial statement items under common attributes, you can already tailor the process steps of data collection, currency translation, elimination, and analysis around these groupings.

With release 2108, you now benefit from increased flexibility in analytics and processing configuration with our new customer field extensibility. You can create your own financial statement (FS) item attributes. They can then be used in selections, reclassification rules, totals validation rules, and analytics.

After creating new custom fields and field values for the FS item master data with the “Custom fields” app, you can add the new fields to the FS item UI or the filter bar. Then you could use your new attributes in many different steps of the consolidation process. For example, as selection attributes to facilitate validations and eliminations at various stages in the life of an FS item. Or as a target attribute for a new swinging position reclassification based on FS item balances. Or as a further custom attribute for facilitating upload and analysis of financial statement hierarchies based on additional dimensions. These are just a few examples illustrating the flexibility of this innovation.

The custom defined FS item attributes can be time and version independent or dependent. The custom defined time and version dependent FS item attributes may be used like standard FS item selection attributes. They may also be used like standard FS item target attributes.

You can maintain FS item attribute value assignments for custom defined FS item attributes in two apps:

  • “Define FS Items” master data
  • “Import Consolidation Master Data”

Use the “Custom Fields” app to define your custom fields. Users who have authorization for extensibility can launch this app via the “Custom Fields” tile in the “Extensibility” group – see the screenshot above.

You can consume the custom defined FS item attributes for example in:

  • Selections – “Define Selections” app (see the example below)
  • Consolidation / reclassification rules – “Define Reclassification Methods” SSCUI
  • Totals validation rules  – “Define Validation Rules” app
  • Analytics  – for example in the “Group Data Analysis” app

Below is an example of custom defined FS item attributes in the selections. You can find under custom attribute under the Financial Statement Items, where you can see published custom defined FS item attributes. In the example below we choose “Sign Reversal Target FS Item”.

Get more information on financial statement item extensibility.

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Increased data and consolidation monitors’ configuration flexibility
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In release 2108, you have more flexibility in defining your own specific customer specific process monitors with with multiple tasks and document types for data collection, manual journal and reclassification. We now expose self-service configuration for task group definition (task sequence and predecessor tasks for data and consolidation monitor), data collection task definition and manual journal task definition.

You can now add multiple data collection tasks in the Data Monitor, where run the activities (called “tasks”) for collecting and preparing the financial data reported by your consolidation units.

Similarly, you can now add your own specific tasks for:

  • Manual Posting
  • Reclassifications
  • Intercompany matching and reconciliation elimination

In addition, you can create new task groups in the SSCUI “Define Task Group” and assign respective tasks to them. You can also configure the task sequence by specifying a preceding task logic.

Last monitor enhancement in 2108, you can use the implementation guide (IMG) activity to program your own custom tasks: Business Add-Ins (BAdI) extensibility in the custom task and monitor status integration. Please note you currently cannot use the custom task for data collection task nor for any task that requires document type (this is planned for a future release).

Get more information on custom tasks in the data and consolidation monitors.

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Performance improvements on analytics
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In 2108 we significantly improved performance on analytics to make your reports faster. Here are the key analytics topics where performance is improved:

  • Released Queries
    • 2CCCSMATRIXRPT10Q / C_ConsolidationMatrixRpt1OQ (without reporting rules)
    • 2CCCSMATRIXRPT30Q / C_ConsolidationMatrixRpt3OQ (with reporting rules)
  • Released Cube
    • I_MATRIXCNSLDTNREPORTC_2 (without reporting rules)
    • I_MATRIXCNSLDTNRPTENHCDC_2 (with reporting rules)
  • SAC based apps
    • Group Data Analysis (Fiori ID: F4325)
    • Group Data Analysis – With Reporting Rules (Fiori ID: F4324)
    • Group Financial Statements (Fiori ID: F4326)
  • API (Transaction Data for Group Reporting – Read)

Get more information on analytics for group reporting.

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More information
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Co-innovate with SAP Product Engineering
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Want to co-innovate online with ourselves in the SAP Product Engineering team? Join us on the SAP S/4HANA for group reporting Customer Influence platform.

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