Product Information
SAP Document and Reporting Compliance: Cloud or On-Premise? Not an “either or” option, but a streamlined solution for electronic compliance!
Tax authorities have been continuously increasing the number and complexity of legal mandates. They are now taking digitalization to the next level, introducing potentially disruptive changes that make the adoption of new technologies essential for enterprises to remain compliant. As a result, you will find your business needing to send electronic documents in real-time, verifying consistency between your system of records and authorities’ platforms and submitting returns, all electronically.
Beside the fact that this forces compliance to be embedded into business processes and prevents the opportunity to have ‘after the fact’ corrections, tax authorities now have visibility over transactions before your tax department has even seen the outcomes. This also introduces the need of a seamless integration to local platforms worldwide. Thus, it is fundamental to have a sustainable IT landscape and be prepared to rapidly respond to all new requirements that are emerging across the globe.
SAP Document and Reporting Compliance can help your business overcome these challenges and fulfill local compliance mandates, such as electronic documents and statutory reporting, by creating a scalable foundation to respond to emerging regulations without putting business continuity at risk.
To learn more about SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, check out this blog and this information sheet.
A new version of SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition is now available!
In December 2022, SAP has released a new version of SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition. This is not a solution replacement moving SAP Document and Reporting Compliance to the cloud in its entirety. Instead, it is a scalable cloud service that allows to connect your business systems (SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA, SAP ERP, SAP Business Network, Concur Expense and more) to local authorities and platforms to automate compliance within your business processes.
This new cloud service is complementary to your business systems (including SAP Document and Reporting Compliance framework in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA and SAP ERP), and it acts as a streamlined hub to centralize compliance across your enterprise, eliminating the need to implement local solutions for each country or scenario or business system.
Fig. 1: SAP Document and Reporting Compliance
All the business systems and scenarios supported with SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition can be found here.
Updating SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition to the latest version does not disrupt the regulations already supported with the combination of SAP Integration Suite and SAP Document and Reporting Compliance for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA and SAP ERP: existing scenarios continue to be maintained and the solution continues to run without disruptions.
For each country scenario, you can check if the integration to local authorities and platforms is enabled with SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition or SAP Integration Suite in SAP Help using the column ‘Supported Submission Type’:
For a given country scenario, you can’t choose between SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition and SAP Integration Suite (customer-managed tenant), they are not interchangeable. Only one solution is supported per country / scenario so no migration of existing regulations can be initiated at this stage.
And, if you have the previous version of SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition you can migrate to the latest one free of charge, check details here. Don’t lose time, it is very easy to migrate to the new solution, and this gives you the foundation you need to respond to the new regulations such e-invoices in Poland (KSeF), e-invoices and e-reporting in France, and more.
Cloud or On-Premise? No dilemmas!
If you have been wondering if you should consider SAP Document and Reporting Compliance ‘on-premise’ or ‘cloud’, the good news is that you don’t have to make a choice. SAP Document and Reporting Compliance consists of two parts:
- One in the business systems to make compliance a seamless step within your business processes, with no data redundancy and no data replication. This follows the deployment of your applications, hence it’s On-Premise if your ERP is On-Premise, cloud otherwise.
- One on SAP Business Technology Platform (always ‘Cloud’) to scale and simplify electronic integration to local authorities and platforms. As mentioned above, this can be SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition or the customer-managed SAP Integration Suite tenants depending on the country/scenario (again, not interchangeable for the same scenario).
Both components complement each other to give you a comprehensive solution to manage electronic compliance end-to-end.
Fig. 2: Native Compliance in your Business Systems and Seamless Integration with Local Authorities and Platforms
Are you now wondering what ‘SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, on-premise edition’ exactly is?
- In the past, integrations to enable the electronic exchange of business documents with Tax Authorities were enabled by providing integration flows on SAP Business Accelerator Hub that can be deployed on your instance of SAP Integration Suite. We refer to this as PaaS or SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, on-premise edition as this is the name of the (historic) license that provides you with the legal content required to remain compliant. Yes, it is called ‘on-premise’, but it’s not on-premise in its totality as it requires SAP Integration Suite that is a suite in the cloud.
To be even more precise, SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, on-premise is the name of the license for SAP ERP. It was also offered to enable electronic documents with SAP S/4HANA until October 2021, but it is now part of SAP Document and Reporting Compliance for SAP S/4HANA providing a comprehensive offer for electronic documents and statutory reporting.
- In the more recent years, SAP started to offer the integration as a service to minimize the implementation effort on your side and ongoing maintenance. It doesn’t run on your instance of SAP Integration Suite so SAP can take care of upgrades and maintain connections to external platforms on your behalf. This is SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition – SAP’s strategic offering for the latest requirements to streamline integrations with local authorities and platforms.
As explained above, SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition doesn’t replace the functionalities provided within the business systems (e.g. SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP ERP, etc.). In fact, in both cases, the electronic documents and statutory reports are enabled leveraging the same applications in the business systems, allowing you to embed compliance within your processes with one user-experience and one process standardized worldwide, irrespective of how the integration to local authorities and platforms is enabled.
As a result, you can further streamline your integration with local authorities and platforms without a negative impact to your running landscape:
- If you have been adopting SAP Document and Reporting Compliance to respond to existing regulations across countries, you can continue to leverage it and scale further to respond to the new mandates standardizing your processes worldwide.
- If you are considering to adopt SAP Document and Reporting Compliance to respond to the many emerging regulations requiring integration with local authorities’ platforms, you can take advantage of the latest offering to build a foundation to automate compliance in the digital world.
Are you using SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA? You can simplify compliance further!
As of today, the electronic submission of statutory reports is still enabled with a dedicated cloud service (SAP Document and Reporting Compliance service), but, if you are live or implementing SAP S/4HANA Cloud or SAP S/4HANA, there is one more good news for you: further simplification is on its way and SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition will be extended to replace SAP Document and Reporting Compliance service and become the sole solution enabling all integrations provided as a public cloud service, both electronic documents and statutory reports (except for NFe in Brazil – for now!).
In summary, depending on the country/scenario, you can manage your electronic documents and statutory reports in the business systems, such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA, SAP ERP, SAP Business Network, etc., and handle the communication to local authorities and platforms either via SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition or SAP Integration Suite. A comprehensive solution to scale compliance worldwide.
For more detailed insights on SAP Document and Reporting Compliance and the cloud edition, see:
- SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition – Online Help Documentation
- SAP Document and Reporting Compliance for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition and SAP S/4HANA – Online Help Documentation
- SAP Document and Reporting Compliance for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition – Online Help Documentation
- SAP Document and Reporting Compliance for SAP ERP
- Overview video: Integration with Peppol network with SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition
- Overview video: How can SAP Document and Reporting Compliance support you in meeting the new KSeF requirements?
- Overview video: Exchange invoices over the Peppol network using the Cloud Edition and Concur Invoice
- Overview video: Discover the New eOrdering Process of SAP Document and Reporting Compliance
Thanks for sharing, like for Poland, if customer ONLY look for eInvoicing for Poland, is license of SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition enough? Any other license item for the SAP ERP part?
Philip - correct. Feel free to ping if further questions.
Thank you. Erika
Poland solution for SAP Document And Reporting Cmpliance works with On premise edition?
Erick - the integration is enabled with SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition so the corresponding license is required. It works with SAP S/4HANA (On-Premise) and SAP ERP (min SP in the overview note 3279206).
Thank you. Erika
Nice write-up, Erika!
Great Blog, thanks for sharing
if a New Zeland based customer on S4 Private cloud, is ONLY looking for e-Invoicing for supplier invoices
And already using Integration suite in BTP, Is SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition mandatory or Integration can be done using the CPI?
Thanks & Reagrds
For supplier invoices in NZ, we support integration with Peppol network through SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition so, yes, it’s required. As mentioned, they are not interchangeable.
You can check ‘supported submission type’ per country/scenario here for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, provate edition.
Thanks Erika
Appreciate your reply
Erika, Thanks for the blog.
If I understand correctly, depending on the country scenarios we could end up requiring both SAP Integration suite and SAP cloud DRC.
I was hoping that that SAP DRC cloud edition means that if the client does not have SAP integration suite in their landscape, they don't need to get one specifically for the DRC scenarios. I presume that is not true. Seems like cost will be more for the customers without benefit.
Krish - for countries that are currently supported with SAP Integration Suite, it continues to be required. For new countries that we support with SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition we indeed eliminate the need of buying and maintaining SAP Integration Suite, reducing ongoing effort for patches and keeping the connection up running (SAP maintains connection with tax authorities). This (integration as a service) also reduces the implementation effort so it's easier to respond to new mandates that leave less and less time for implementation.
We continue to look at simplification opportunities, while keeping running country solutions to prevent disruption.
Hope this clarifies. Erika
Does this mean that a customer may need to subscribe to both integration suite and cloud edition if they require e-invoicing for countries that are supported only on one platform? Let us say Portugal (which requires integration suite) and Poland (which requires cloud editiion). Would there be additional cost for subscription to cloud edition for such customers that already have integration suite?
Krish - yes, it is a cloud service so it needs its subscription. Please note that licenses are volume based so no invoices are double-counted.
Thank you - Erika
Erika, Thanks for your explanations and patience.
Assuming that basic subscription for DRC cloud edition is $300 per month per 1000 invoices , that is an additional amount we will always pay even if we have an integration suite (where depending on your license type the volume may not be factor). It makes great sense for customers that does not have SAP integration suite in their landscape, but probably not much of benefit for ones that do. Granted that this may not be significant cost for most of the big customers, but this hardly qualifies as simplification.
Hello Erika,
My customer is on ECC and needs to implement SAP document and reporting compliance cloud edition for the Polish KseF as per note 3279206. Is for the Polish KseF only a license enough for SAP document and reporting compliance cloud edition or is an additional license needed for SAP BTP integration suite?
The customer at the moment has no SAP BTP.
The customer needs to implement both B2B as well as B2G scenario.
I appreciate your feedback.
Thanks.
Nadim - yes, SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition is sufficient for handling e-invoicing.
Thank you - Erika
Thanks for the quick feedback Erika.
So I understand there is no need for the SAP integration suite, but we still need to have licenses for SAP BTP itself on top of SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition? Or there is also no need for a license for SAP BTP?
Thanks,
Nadim
Nadim - also no need as it's a SaaS offering. If the customer doesn't have a BTP global account already, it gets created automatically.
Thank you. Erika
Thank you!
Thank you, Erika, for this article.
Currently we are running different SAP systems in our company. How this integration works in such a scenario? Could we connect different SAPs (some S/4HANA other stil ECC 6) to one instance of SAP Document and Reporting Complience Cloud edition (many to one), or we need for each SAP separate instance (one to one)?
Is it possible to integrate SAP Document and Reporting Complience Cloud edition with non SAP systems?
Thank you.
Tomas
Tomas - it’s possible to connect one instance of SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, cloud edition to multiple SAP systems, SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA.
We don’t support direct connection to non-SAP systems, however we are working on an innovation to enable the processing of e-invoices for non-SAP systems starting with France and Poland.
https://roadmaps.sap.com/board?BC=6EAE8B27FCC11ED892E91F270C7200CC&q=data&range=FIRST-LAST#;INNO=57EA73B3B1E91EEE8CBA67499731F953
Thank you
Erika