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Professional Services in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402 Release

KatharinaStopf
Advisor
Advisor
‎02-13-2024 3:54 PM

In this blog post I’d like to outline the innovations for SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2402 in the area of Professional Services. These are the topics that are covered:

  • Manage Workflow for Project Billing Requests: Custom Roles and Multiple Recipients (4E9) 
  • Editability of Billing Due Dates in the Manage Project Billing Application (4E9) 
  • Improvements for On-Account Billing in Project Billing (4E9) 
  • Creation of Preliminary Billing Documents for Down Payment Requests (J14) 
  • Giving project managers direct access to stage change, billing document, staffing and time-recording information (J11) 
  • Enhanced WIP reporting for customer projects in case T&E billing (1IL)
  • Drag and drop assignment in Manage Resource Utilization app (BTP)

 

Watch my video to get a glimpse of the new features:

Youtube.png

 

Let’s get started with all the new topics in the project billing functionality. But before we do, remember that Andreas Hammerschmidt updates his detailed blog “Project Billing for Customer Projects in SAP S/4HANA Cloud” with every release, so you can find a comprehensive overview of the functionality there.

 

Manage Workflow for Project Billing Requests: Custom Roles and Multiple Recipients (4E9)

When looking at the workflows we have in the billing process in the professional services scenario, it is always good to start at the overall process flow:

There you can see that we have workflow functionality in two places, one for the PBR (Project Billing Request) and one for the PBD (Preliminary Billing Document). The one which we are looking at today is the on the PBR side.

Now with this new release you are able to create custom roles for the workflow and also add in multiple recipients. You start off in the “Manage Workflow for Project Billing Request” app, which is off course where you create your workflow process. There you can see these additional roles. These are being created in the “Custom Logic” app. There you can implement a Badi as an administrator, to specify who are the workflow recipients.

If you are interested in the details on how to create that, please take a look at this video, where we explain the concrete steps:

Flow.png

For even more details, please have a look at the entry of this topic on SAP Help Portal.

 

Editability of Billing Due Dates in the Manage Project Billing Application (4E9)

With this next new functionality, we want to increase the flexibility in the billing process and speed up the bill preparation significantly.

In order to achieve this, now existing billing due dates in the Manage Project Billing application can be edited using the Planned Billing Dates dialog box. The billing specialist or billing team member can click on the billing due date of a billing element to open the dialog that lists the open billing plan items that belong to the billing element and edit their dates accordingly. 

With this feature, you can change the billing due dates of the billing elements of the following types:

  • Time and Expenses
  • Fixed Price
  • Periodic Services
  • Usage-Based

You must activate the feature POSTPONE_BILLING_DATE in order to use this new functionality. For more information on activating features, see Activate Features.

For this new functionality you can also have look on the details in this video:

Edit.png

For even more details, please have a look at the entry of this topic on SAP Help Portal.

 

Improvements for On-Account Billing in Project Billing (4E9)

In the 2402 release for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition, we are adding functions such as selecting, merging and submitting of items in the on-account billing functionality. This will significantly increase the flexibility for the project billing specialist or billing team members during the preparation of an on-account bill.

So what exactly does this entail?

Let’s look at the new merging functionality, here we mean you can now merge open on account billing plan items that are yet to be billed with other contract types such as time and expense or fixed price.

For the selecting and submitting functionality, you can do so with open on-account billing plan items that have billing due dates in the past or future​.

And in addition, you will be able to edit billing due dates and amounts.

You want more? Take a look at this demo:

Account.png

For even more details, please have a look at the entry of this topic on SAP Help Portal.

 

Creation of Preliminary Billing Documents for Down Payment Requests (J14)

With this next new functionality, we also see great value added to the overall process. Mainly we want to improve flexibility during the bill preparation process, facilitate handling of down payment requests in the billing process, and help ensure accuracy of bill preparation through the approval process for preliminary billing documents.

In short, Preliminary Billing Documents are now enabled for down payment requests. With this feature, you can create preliminary down payment requests to get down payment request details verified and approved by the involved stakeholders, before creating the actual down payment requests that request payments from customers. This verification and approval process improves the accuracy of the subsequent down payment requests and helps avoid the reworking of billing documents due to inaccurate billing values, for example, due to inaccurate down payment amounts. Preliminary down payment requests are optional. You can choose to use preliminary down payment requests for the verification and approval purpose, or you can skip this part of the process by creating down payment requests directly.

You can find a demo on this here:

Prelim.png

For even more details, please have a look at the entry of this topic on SAP Help Portal.

 

Giving project managers direct access to stage change, billing document, staffing and time-recording information (J11)

Since the last release in August of 2023, there have been several new capabilities that have been added in this app. This makes the “Project Control – Professional Services Projects” app more and more the one-stop-shop for project managers as they will not need to collect professional services project related information from different places but can find them in one place and navigate from there to more detailed apps.

Now you might ask, what exactly are these new capabilities.

Well, here is a list. Users can now:

  • Understand who changed the project stage​
  • Open PDF preview for billing documents related to your project directly​
  • Get insights to the staffing situation for your projects, for example to find missing staffing or understand the cost impact of a certain staffing​

Get insights to the time recording situation for your project, for example to get an overview for missing recordings, over-booking or open approvals.

Have a look at the functionality in the system:

Control.png

For even more details, please have a look at the entry of this topic on SAP Help Portal.

 

Enhanced WIP reporting for customer projects in case T&E billing (1IL)

 

The WIP on customer projects with T&E billing method needs to be reported and justified to internal and external stakeholders such as auditors. This must be possible for previous periods as well, thus we enhanced the journal entries of Event Based Revenue Recognition with additional information.

  • The Event Based Revenue Recognition journal entries have been enhanced by the hours and the billed product
  • write-off and CAP postings can now be determined by journal entry item fields
  • To enhance transparency we reduce the journal entry items for the CAP postings

 

To summarize, the WIP can now be explained by billed product and hours also for previous periods, and write-offs and cap postings can be analyzed in more detail. This will overall bring more information and therefore more transparency to the users.

Here is a demo:

WIP.png

For even more details, please have a look at the entry of this topic on SAP Help Portal.

 

Drag and drop assignment in Manage Resource Utilization app (BTP)

Let’s take a step away from the core functionality in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and look closer at the Resource Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Projects, which is on the Business Technology Platform (BTP).

Resource managers can now by drag and drop just move an assignment from one person to another person. To handle changes in staffing is part of the daily tasks of resource manager. People are not any longer available and an assignment has to be moved to another candidate.

You can see a demo in the “Manage Resource Utilization” app here:

Drag.png

For even more details, please have a look at the entry of this topic on SAP Help Portal.

 

Where to Find More Information:

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