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SRuthe
Advisor
Advisor
Recently, we received several inquiries from partners and customers how to change the company currency in SAP Business ByDesign. This question was raised for example from customers in Croatia as the country plans to join the euro area on 1st of January 2023. In this case, customers in Croatia need to change their company currency from Croatian Kuna to Euro on the given key date.

The company currency is defined in the company settings of a set of books.

Changes to a set of books are only possible as long as no journal entries exist in that set of books. For more information please read this help document Configuration: Set of Books. In addition, a conversion with a fixed rate from Croatian Kuna into Euro is needed on the key date.

If the company currency cannot be simply changed, what are the alternatives? In principle, the recommended approach is to set up a new company with a new migration. This can be done in two ways.

 

Option 1: Create a new company in the existing tenant

When creating a new company in an existing tenant, you can keep historical data in the old company and make use of the existing business configuration and master data. In case of data which depends on your organizational structure, you need to create or maintain it.

One example for organizational dependent data is the profit center derivation.


Another example is the financial data of customers or suppliers.

Drawback:

Certain data such as the company, profit center, cost center must be created with a new key, and not every business configuration can be changed due to veto checks.

 

Option 2: Start in a new system

When starting in a new system, you have the chance to optimize your system configuration and clean up your master data. In addition, you can use the same IDs, names, etc., because in the new system exists no data.

Drawback:

It is a new implementation, even if you can download data and copy the solution profile from your existing tenant.

 

Main steps for option 1

Which tasks are needed and in which sequence, if you want to create a new company in the same tenant. From my perspective these are the main steps which need to be considered for option 1:

1. Create a new company in parallel to the old company

Create a new company by creating a new organizational structure (business residence, sales organization, segment, profit center, cost center and so on). All new organizational units need a new key.

Use the existing business configuration, and maintain the organizational dependent settings.

2. Assign the new company to existing set of books

Assign the new company to the existing set of books and define the company settings, especially the company currency.

3. Maintain company dependent data in master data

Add the new company in the existing master data and maintain the organizational dependent data.

4. Transfer employees to the new company

All employees must be transferred from the old to the new company. Unfortunately, “fire and re-hire” is the only option.

I recommend to define a new termination reason, for example “Reorg” to see the transfers from the old to the new company.

5. Extract all open transactions and migrate them to the new company

Perform a migration for the new company like a standard migration. For more information please read Configuration: Understand the Overall Migration Process. Please check, if you need to migrate open purchase and sales orders as you cannot use existing orders from the old company.

Remark:

To prepare the migration templates, you can use the data extraction tool in SAP Business ByDesign. For more information please read Perform Data Extraction. In addition, you can use reports and lists from work center views to export data.

Before the upload

  • Please check especially with respect to fixed assets, that the right values are used.

  • Ensure that old bank account data is no longer valid, otherwise bank statement processing will determine the “old” bank accounts and clear old items.


6. Update user access rights

Please ensure, that employees can only create and edit data for the new company. Therefore, you need to check and update the access rights of all your employees, especially the read and write access to the associated data (access restrictions) and for which business data like company or site (access context). For more information please read User and Access Management.

The new cost center will be defaulted for self-services of an employee.

7. Delimit the old company

Finally, delimit the old company by maintaining the end date. The validity of an organizational unit is considered when creating new data. This ensures that users get an error message when they try to create for example a purchase order for the old company.

This short explanation helps to find the right approach in case you need to change the company currency. In addition, it guides you through the main steps for a new company in the same tenant.
14 Comments
JoergAldinger
Active Contributor
Hello Sissi,

Thanks for this informative blog post.

I wonder if there may be a third option, like simply creating an additional set of books with the EURO currency, and then creating a journal voucher only for that set of books representing the migrated values?

I'm asking because I'm not sure how the system would handle things like fixed asset and item valuation in the new set of books, since there are probably no historic values for these transactions.

With best regards,

 

Joerg.
SRuthe
Advisor
Advisor
0 Kudos
Hello Joerg,

thanks for your comment and additional solution idea.

Creating an additional set of books with company currency Euro, and then creating a journal voucher only for that set of books representing the migrated values will not work. You can only assign an additional set of books to a company, if there are no journal entries existing for that company.

The reason is that all source documents like customer or supplier invoices, expense reports, goods or service receipts, bank statements, payments, etc. need to be migrated to the new set of books as well. This is required in case such a source document gets reversed. If you just reflect the migrated values in the new set of books by a journal entry voucher, all source documents created before the new set of books was created, are not assigned to it. If you now want to reverse a source document with no assignment to the new set of books, this will lead to an error and cannot be resolved.

Fixed assets are migrated into the new company similar to a standard migration. This means, you convert the historic acquisition cost and cumulative depreciation of the fixed asset to the new currency and use these values for the migration. Of course, this needs to be checked and validated by an auditor.

Best regards,

Sissi
JoergAldinger
Active Contributor
0 Kudos
Thank you for that additional insight, Sissi. Much appreciated.

Best regards,

Joerg.
lukalancic
Explorer
0 Kudos

Hi Sissi,

Thanks for informative blog.

We already started testing your "option 1" two months ago but we encountered a problem with My Bank Accounts. I tried to create a new Bank Account and assigned it to newly created Company but I received an error "Combination of bank , account number  with different company exists". This is a standard system behavior also explained in note 2124362. But this is a problem because Companies want change their bank accounts, IBAN will remain the same, only currency of the bank account will change from Kuna to Euro.

As explained in note, only way is to close a bank account what can only be done if we set a balance of bank account to zero. We cant set it to zero because it will have some balance on migration date, and balance of bank accounts on 31.12.2022. in current company need to be same as balance of bank accounts in newly created company on 01.01.2023.

https://userapps.support.sap.com/sap/support/knowledge/en/2124362

How to resolve this issue. Or should I approach it another way?

Another question I have is regarding Global Settings for Cash and Liquidity Management. There we assign Operational Currency (currently Kuna), but it is not company level, its a global setting. How will this affect processes after conversion, because in January 2023 we will have parallel posting to both old company in Kuna, and new company in Euro.

 

Regarding Option 2:

If we approach conversion with starting a new tenant, does that mean can we copy configuration and solution from the current productive tenant, only without transactional data? (meaning that we only need to migrate master data and do configuration where repetition is required)

And what will happen with the old tenant? will we be able to approach historical data on old system? And does it means will have two productive tenants, or the old one can somehow become a test tenant? Because will need to do parallel posting on both tenants for some time during the beginning of the year

 

Best regards,

Luka

 

stanimir_pachev
Discoverer
0 Kudos
Hi Sissi,

Thank you for the information on this - really amazing article.

At least looking at it from a SAP's customer point of view, both options are not really what would constitute a superb customer experience. They create a lot of internal and external costs for us as customers.

Looking ahead more and more countries in Europe would adopt the EUR. Is there anything else from your side planned (like a conversion ability of the tables like in S4) to be able to revaluate the data without the need of any of these 2 options? Or rather each customer should then be aware of this risks and options available and plan the future costs of this move?

Looking forward to more articles from your side.

Best regards,

Stanimir

 
SRuthe
Advisor
Advisor
0 Kudos

Hi Luka,

thanks for your feedback and your questions.

Related to your question for the house bank account we received your incident. I will discuss this internally and you will get an update by the incident.

The operational currency in the Global Settings for Cash and Liquidity Management is only used for the conversion of payment files into the operational amount and into the liquidity forecast currency, as long as no other currency is defined in the forecast profile. Therefore, it only affects the liquidity forecast and no other processes.

Yes, with option 2 you can copy your configuration from the current productive tenant, only without transactional data. You can compare the step when you request your productive tenant based on your test tenant configuration during the initial implementation. You need to redo the repetitive configuration and do the migration of master and financial accounting data.

You can keep the old tenant to have access to historical data, but this comes with additional cost.

Why do you need to do parallel postings? As far as I understood, you need to display the Kuna amount on forms and reports. For this, it is not necessary to do parallel postings.

Best regards,

Sissi

lukalancic
Explorer
0 Kudos
Hi Sissi, thank for your answer.

By parallel posting I mean that, for example, Companies will receive Supplier invoices during January 2023, part of them will be for fiscal period January 2023 (in new currency Euro), but they will also receive invoices for December 2022 that will still be in old currency Kuna. Or Salaries, you post salaries in January for December. So there will be postings during January in fiscal period 01/2023 in Euro (new tenant)  and posting to fiscal period 12/2022 in Kuna (old tenant).

Best regards,

Luka

 
SRuthe
Advisor
Advisor
0 Kudos
Hi Stanimir,

thanks for your comment.

We already discussed internally, if we can provide in future additional support by conversion tools for such cases. This is still under discussion/analysis and will take a lot more time as it is quite a complex topic.

But to prevent wrong expectations: currently no other solution as the ones described above will be available in time in SAP Business ByDesign to allow a EURO conversion for Croatia.

I am a bit surprised that you mention a conversion ability is available in SAP S/4 HANA as to my knowledge also for SAP S/4 HANA the same approach is considered than in SAP Business ByDesign, see blog post Croatia EURO Currency changeover / introduction from Uwe Kaiser ("... 2. Run a Local Currency conversion, the ‘EURO’ conversion., given the idea that you are not in S4H, ..." and Latest comment on blog post.

Best regards,

Sissi
SRuthe
Advisor
Advisor
0 Kudos
Hi Luka,

in the cases described by you, I expect that accrual postings will be done in December to reflect the supplier invoice part which belongs to December and is received in January. The same I assume for salaries.

Of course the year-end closing should be done as soon as possible to be able to migrate from the old company to the new company. But this also the case, if you implement a new system and migrate from an old legacy system.

Best regards,

Sissi
lukalancic
Explorer
0 Kudos

Hi Sissi,

We did steps as instructed in the blog but we run to additional and big problem with VAT return run and Company Tax Arrangements.

It seems that this is connected to Currency of Country that is set in Business Configuration - Activity List - Countries/Region. There is a Currency for Croatia - HRK kuna.
When I create a VAT Return Run for new Company that has a company currency Euro it shows values in HRK. So then I changed the Currency in Business Configuration to EUR for Croatia, and then I receive an error in VAT Return run: "Currency HRK differs from VAT return Currency EURO"

If I post documents after the change of Currency in Business Configuration in new month, then you can do a VAT return run, but this is also a problem. Because users do a VAT return run in Januray 2023 for December 2022. If I change Currency to Euro on 01.01.2023. then I want be able to do a VAT Return run for 12/2022 because those documents are posted in different Currency (HRK) and I will receive an error. And on the other hand if I leave a Currency HRK until the VAT return is reported for 12/2022 then I want be able to create a VAT Report run for 01/2023 because documents in 01/2023 will already be posted in Euro.

This is now a big problem, according to this we wont be able to do a VAT Return run for 12/2022. How can we solve this issue? Nothing was said that Currency of Country will affect business processes. Are there any other processes that are affected with this setup?

Best regards,
Luka

SRuthe
Advisor
Advisor
0 Kudos
Hi Luka,

can you please create an incident with high priority for it. This must be checked by our Globalization colleagues as I am not aware of this setting in the Business Configuration. This must be something specific related to the Croatian Localization.

Thanks and best regards,

Sissi
lukalancic
Explorer
0 Kudos
Hi Sissi,

I already created an incident 746199/2022 on 14th October, but still didn´t get a solution.

But this is a standard setting in the system, all the countries are there, you can change Currency on every Country and even create new Countries.

We didn´t develop anything like that four our localization. I don`t think this is specific for only Croatian localization.

Best regards,

Luka
lukalancic
Explorer
0 Kudos

Also, I found that that Currency of Country in Business Configuration settings "Countries/Regions" also affects some reports.

Invoice Volume report shows wrong Invoice Net Value if a Company Currency is Euro and Country Currency is HRK (Kuna), because although Company Currency is EUR and Customer Invoice is posted in EUR, the "Currency of Net Value" in report is HRK and what system does is converts the Invoiced net Value first from EUR to HRK and then again from HRK to EUR and you have a difference between the value in report and the value in journal entry.

For example. Customer Invoice was posted with one item in Euros, value - 2,00 Eur. Company Currency EUR, Account Currency EUR and Journal Entry was posted 2,00 EUR. But Invoice Volume report shows value 1,96 EUR. Because it firs converts 2,00 EUR to HRK and then back from HRK to EUR. And in this case the value can never be the same regardless of exchange rate. And if you select the characteristic "Currency of Net Value" on this Invoice it shows you HRK.

After I changed the Currency of Country in Business Configuration settings "Countries/Regions" and post a new Customer Invoice with same value, Invoice Volume reports shows 2,00 EUR and "Currency of Net Value" is EUR.

So I am concern what else is affected with this setting.

Best regards,

Luka

 

SRuthe
Advisor
Advisor
0 Kudos
Hi Luka,

thanks for the incident number. I already contacted the Globalization colleagues to further check it.

Maybe my previous answer was a bit misleading. I did not mean that you developed anything specific, but I think the setting is accessible and visible only in case of non- or pre-localized countries. In a tenant which has for example only Germany in scope, this configuration setting is not visible and accessible, see screenshots.



Best regards,

Sissi