Trailing Foreign Currency Valuation Posting Log in SAP S/4 HANA 1709

The valuation of foreign currency in SAP has always been a process that requires additional accounting effort to track historic posting for Financial reporting and auditing requests. Information reports available in SAP do not include some details usually requested by the auditing process (i.e., vendor or customer associated to valuation document, original open item document valuated, etc.) in a single report. Even though a log can be activated and stored for this transaction, further custom development should be done to fulfill internal information needs.

A single report gathering balance and open items valuations that could be executed whenever be required can have the following simplified layout:

Blog 1.png

      I. Process Overview

Foreign currency valuation runs utilizing transaction FAGL_FCV.  This application allows the valuation of balance accounts and open items.

Blog 2.png

The financial/accounting department has to define all parameters required to execute this transaction (i.e., valuation method, accounts to be valuated, etc.) per local accounting principles. Then it can be used to calculate how the rate of exchange of the balance is affected by foreign currency fluctuations at the month-end. As a result, a gain or loss is posted with correspondence to configured accounts.

Depending on what kind of valuation has been chosen by the user, there are two possible posting options: balance accounts and open items documents (accounts, vendors, and customers). Both scenarios will be presented in the next paragraphs.

Balance account valuation.

It is executed using tab ¨Open Items: G/L Accounts¨:

Blog 3.png

Resulting screen will look like:

Blog 4.png

Journal entries will have the following accounting structure:

Blog 5.png

The screenshot above demonstrates that valuated account 11010500 is directly debited or credited to a gain or loss account (i.e., 42020106 or 62010206); as a result, the actual account balance is changed.

 Open items valuation

It should be executed on the tab "Open Items: G/L Accounts":

Blog 6.png

The result is shown below:

Blog 7.png

The associated postings do not affect reconciliation accounts directly; they post balance differences to balance correction account. It keeps intact the reconciliation account balance of vendors and customers

For document 0800000004, currency exchange difference generates a debit to an expense account and a credit to balance correction account.  On the other hand, the document 0800000006 posting credit a gain account and debit to balance correction account. Hence, the document´s open balance remains unchanged.

Standard transaction log available in FAGL_FCV.

SAP provides the possibility of the store log from the execution clicking on “Save Log” option to store execution outcome in a log file:

Blog 8.png

But it does not bring information besides what you see in the standard screens showed above. Moreover, if this option is not timely activated, the log will not be saved. 

     II. Technical approach for custom log report

Three main tables store data created after execution of the valuation process: ACDOCA, FAGL_BSBW_HISTRY, FAGL_BSBW_HST_BL, and ACDOCA. Now we are going to see their relationship in the next paragraphs.

FAGL_BSBW_HISTRY - Valuation History for Documents

This table keeps historical documents created by the valuation of open items documents (vendors, customers, and balance accounts with OI management). In the next table, I have detailed principal fields that should be considered to build a link with Universal Ledger:

table 2.jpg

FAGL_BSBW_HST_BL  - Valuation History of Balances:

This table keeps historical documents created by the valuation of balance accounts.  In the next table, I have detailed principal fields that should be considered:

table 3.jpg

ACDOCA -Universal Ledger and Foreign valuation

In S/4 HANA 1709, the universal ledger provides the table ACDOCA for most financial data postings. So, this table must be used as a principal database for any report related to the FI module.  The next table shows the essential fields to consider:

table 4.jpg

III. Balance Report design

Using a query ABAP or an ABAP report is possible to do the desired layout following this mapping chart:

table 5.jpg

There are some crucial points to keep in consideration:

· Auxiliary tables FAGL_BSBW_HISTRY and FAGL_BSBW_HST_BL  collect information of balance and open items in a time interval selected

· FI documents created during FAGL_FCV execution are recorded in ACDOCA.

· Company code, year, business transaction type, valuated account, date, and time stamp are the key linking ACDOCA and FAGL_BSBW_HST_BL.

· Company code, year, business transaction type, date, and time stamp are the key linking ACDOCA and FAGL_BSBW_HST_BL.

· ACDOCA is the main table to collect data from auxiliary tables.

· Currency exchange rate used for each document in ACDOCA can be retrieved using function module READ_EXCHANGE_RATE.

Application Development in SAP S/4HANA

SAP Customers deal with many business objects in daily business. SAP developed many applications to manage several business objects to use. In many scenarios, customers do define and develop custom business objects (Applications) to speed up or to develop a new business process.

Most of the business objects are in hierarchical structures—a mandatory header, Item, sub-item, and so on. In SAP S/4HANA, one can utilize the power of SAP S/4HANA development artifacts to design and develop applications in simple steps that require basic knowledge of ABAP, Core Data Services, and Fiori Elements using WebIDE. Business object development starts with design. Let’s continue with an example of a business object with header and item relation.

Image_1.jpg

Step 1: Design a database table for header and Item with respective keys and foreign key relation.

Step 2: Define basic CDS views on top of DB tables (Basic views starts with I_*). The basic view should reflect the underlying data model.  Define mandatory header annotations like

@VDM.viewtype: #BASIC, @objectmodel.representativekey: 'Material' @accesscontrol.authorizationcheck: #CHECK @objectmodel.usagetype.*, @abapcatalog:*

Tip: Make use of SAP Global Field Names (GFN) to refer to the DB field names. SAP GFN's are approved abbreviations to refer to a view field.

Tip: Annotate basic CDS view fields with semantic annotations like Currency key, Currency, Quantity Quantity Unit, Visibility, and so on.

Step 3:  Build a relation between header and Item CDS view via association.

Define consumption view, in view of the business process and user interface:

Step 4: Define consumption header(root) CDS view and include view fields from the underlying BASIC header view. Must include the mandatory header annotations

@VDM.viewtype: #CONSUMPTION, @objectmodel.*, @objectmodel.semantickey:*, @abapcatalog.* , @accesscontrol.*

 Step 5: Define consumption item CDS view and include fields from underlying BASIC Item view. Must include the mandatory header annotations

@abapcatalog*, @accesscontrol.*, @VDM.viewtype: #CONSUMPTION, @objectmodel.*

Step 6: Associate header and item consumption views with respective key combination.

Consumption views reflect the user interface. Which means, the UI technology ‘Fiori Elements’ will generate the user interface in resemblance to the annotations defined in consumption views.

Fiori elements offer different layouts to develop the user interface. The most popular layout is the list report. List report comes with the pattern of a list page, that displays the header data records in a table format. Upon selecting the record, user will be navigated to an object page, where further details of header data and items can be found. Header data and items are groped by Facets. Further selection of item from related table will navigate to the object page of respective item.

Application to use Fiori elements must define a set of annotations either in CDS views or in local UI project metadata.

Frequently used annotation in list report:

List page: @ui.lineitem, @ui.selectionfield

List page contains a table and associated filters. For an example, a header CDS view has 8 fields and list page must show 5 important fields in table and 2 of them are filterable.

@AbapCatalog.sqlViewName: 'CHEADER'

@AccessControl.authorizationCheck: #CHECK

@EndUserText.label: Header view'

@VDM.viewType: #CONSUMPTION

@ObjectModel.createEnabled: true

@ObjectModel.updateEnabled: true

@ObjectModel.deleteEnabled: true

C_Header as select from I_Header

association [1..1] to C_Item as _Item on $projection.ID = _Item.ID

{

@UI.lineItem: [{position: 10 }]

@UI.SelectionField: [{position: 10 }]

Key Field1,

@UI.lineItem: [{position: 20 }]

@UI.SelectionField: [{position: 20 }]

Field2,

@UI.lineItem: [{position: 30 }]

Field3,

@UI.lineItem: [{position: 40 }]

Field4,

@UI.lineItem: [{position: 50 }]

Field5,

@UI.SelectionField: [{position: 30 }]

Field6,

Field7,

Field8,

}

As a result, Field1, Field2, Field3, Field4, Field5 will be positioned in list page table. Fields Field1, Field2, Field6 will be positioned in global filters in respective position order.

Image_2.jpg

Object page:

Object page projects an overview of an entity and relation to associated entity sets. In our example, the general data facet should show all fields of header data and a facet for item data table.

Frequently used annotation in Object Page:

@ui.Identification, @ObjectModel.association.type, @ui.Datapoint

Below example can be followed to display non fields of root node in one facet and another facet to access item records formatted in a table.

{          

            @ui.dataPoint: { targetValueElement: ‚Field1‘ }

Key Field1,

@UI.identification: [{position: 10 }]

Field2,

@UI.identification: [{position: 20 }]

Field3,

@UI.identification: [{position: 30 }]

Field4,

@UI.identification: [{position: 40 }]

Field5,

@UI.identification: [{position: 50 }]

Field6,

@UI.identification: [{position: 60 }]

Field7,

@UI.identification: [{position: 70 }]

Field8,

@ObjectModel.association.type: [#TO_COMPOSITION_CHILD]

_Item

}

Result:

Image_3.jpg

As a result, fields from 1 to 8 are shown as a form in facet ‘General Data’ and Item table in another facet. Field1 will be positioned in Object page Header.

CDS header annotations like @Objectmodel.create/update/delete enabled will enable create, update, delete operations on respective entity set. Of course, ABAP data provider class must be implemented to handle the request.

In addition, a gateway project should be defined (Tcode: SEGW) to build an interface between UI & Backend. The project should be created via Referenced Data Source in reference to the Consumption Header CDS view. As a result, Data provider class, Model Provider classes, Gateway service will be granted automatically upon project generation. Register the service in gateway client to build an UI project using Web IDE.

Using the Prediction and Commitment Extension Ledger for Sales and Purchase Orders

WALK AWAY FROM THIS SESSION WITH AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE PREDICTION AND COMMITMENT EXTENSION LEDGER FOR SALES AND PURCHASE ORDERS PAGE.

Watch this pre-recorded webcast with FI/CO expert Paul Ovigele to learn:

· The different types of Extension Ledger and what they can be used for

· The difference between Predictive Analytics and predictive accounting

· How to Set up the Extension Ledger for Prediction and Commitments

· How the Extension Ledger works with Sales Order postings

· How the Extension Ledger works with Purchase Order postings

The Ropes to a Successful Data Migration

The Ropes to a Successful Data Migration

SAP S/4HANA Migration Cockpit https://help.sap.com/viewer/29193bf0ebdd4583930b2176cb993268/1709%20002/en-US Steps to create a simple LSMW using batch input recording https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/ABAP/Steps+to+create+a+simple+LSMW+using+batch+input+recording Types of Enterprise Data (Transactional, Analytical, Master) http://bi-insider.com/posts/types-of-enterprise-data-transactional-analytical-master/

Optimization of Cash Operations using SAP Cash Management Powered by SAP HANA.

Optimization of Cash Operations using SAP Cash Management Powered by SAP HANA.

About the Author:

Dr. Ravi Surya Subrahmanyam   is a technical and Financials writer with a background in SAP Financial Accounting, Funds Management, Financial Supply Chain Management, Cash Management & in-house cash, SAP S/4 HANA Finance, RAR etc.   He has been working as a Director for the SAP Practice for The Hackett group India Ltd, GDC- India. He completed his Master’s degree in Finance from Central University, Master of Commerce from Osmania University, Master of Commerce from Andhra University, and Ph.D.in Finance from one of the best universities in India. His research Papers have been published in National and International magazines. He has been a Visiting Instructor for SAP India Education and SAP Indonesia – Education. He has been working on Conversion and Upgradation projects. He is a Certified Solution Architect for SAP S/4 HANA and an SAP S/4 HANA Certified Professional. He can be reached at sravi@answerthink.com  or fico_rss@yahoo.com.

Migration to SAP S/4HANA: What it means to SAP Customers

Globally, the technology space is changing fast and as such, the business enterprise systems are under immense pressure not only to keep up with these advances in technology but also the agile needs of business organizations and their desire to improve efficiency while simplifying business processes. It is with this regard that SAP embarked on a journey in 2015 to offer its customers new improved best practices, a simple and intuitive user interface coupled with faster processing speeds and embedded analytics powered by SAP S/4HANA. SAP, therefore, announced in 2015 that all its customers that the support for the SAP ERP will be ending by the close of 2025. According to a survey carried out by a market research firm IDC, 73 percent of surveyed businesses were planning to migrate into SAP S/4HANA, 18 percent currently deploying and 54 percent of SAP customers were planning to migrate in the next 3 years. Whether this is a sale strategy by SAP or not, we seek to evaluate what this migration means to the existing SAP customers and the expected changes.

Planning Your Finance Migration From SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA

To help organizations through the SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA journey, ERPFIXERS and Winshuttle have joined forces for a webinar to discuss our views on the tools, tricks, and processes that can help companies.

Watch this webinar to understand the complex challenges and choices involved in making the finance transition from ECC to S/4HANA as smooth as possible.

Journal Entry Fiori Upload

The purpose of JE posting is to take a batch, validate it for consistency, and create FI documents and post those entries in various line item accounts needed for subsequent business processing.

JE Posting is a process that with a few exceptions runs "behind the scenes" (without user dialog) and is the heart of Journal Entry. It receives journal entry data (representing financial transactions) from the PRA modules (Valuation, Revenue Distribution, etc.), and summarizes them in batches and posts them to the PRA JE line item tables and to SAP FI. JE Posting is the link between the journal entries coming from PRA applications and the FI documents and JE line item table items that are created.

The JE Posting Module is automatically called by the various PRA application areas. For example, whenever you create a Valuation, Revenue Distribution, Checkwrite, Check Input, Tax and Royalty, Owner Suspense, or Accounts Receivable document, the JE Posting Process is automatically triggered, but the standard postings limited in such a way that it can’t handle mass upload of the JE records for various business needs like periodically post entire leasing documents and costs associated to it into SAP FI . Also, the standard SAP JE backend upload program provides the ability to rejected / errored out entries corrected online and it is a manual and tedious effort. This can be simplified by using this JE Fiori upload application by mass upload of the rejected records by downloading, correcting and uploading again

The need is to have an JE Fiori upload application so that the end users can validate, park / post the various financial records into SAP FI with ease , simplified and with great user experience.

Accelerated Accounting Close Can Fix So Many Problems!

The year-end close process is one of the important activities of companies. End users spend most of the time on reconciliations, collecting and validating the data from different components of the same company code or multiple company codes reconciling intercompany activities, reconciling accounts, and making necessary adjustments, finally producing the financial statements. Even today many companies are following outdated & poor closing processes using excel sheets. This paper is aimed to provide an overview on closing processes in SAP S/4 HANA, so companies can shorten the Accounting close and helps faster decision making

Fiori Advancements in Financial Closing Cockpit in S/4HANA

Period end closing is always a critical and high visibility item in any ERP. The timely and effective monitoring and control of period end closing is top most need for the finance department. For this purpose, you must process a sequence of interdependent steps diligently in a specific and well-defined order. Entities use various tools for this, ranging from excel to more sophisticated tools like SAP Financial Closing Cockpit, Blackline’s Runbook etc.

Q&A: Enable Cost Component Split in G/L Accounts – Before SAP S/4HANA!

The Cost Component Split allows for granularity of the cost drivers in your inventory and cost of goods sold. The cost components can be seen in various reports in Product Cost Planning and Material Ledger. However, this breakdown has not been available in the General Ledger before SAP S/4HANA. By utilizing a Custom Enhancement, the Cost Component Split by G/L Account can be available in the ECC system. This will provide suitable transparency about cost drivers in the General Ledger, particularly for companies that do not plan an S/4 conversion for a few years, and also positions them with a Splitting Structure that is compatible for an eventual S/4 Conversion. This functionality can be used to split cost components for COGS accounts as well as Inventory accounts (which means that you can get transparency into how much material stock or Fixed costs are sitting in inventory). Also, this functionality can be used whether a company uses Material Ledger or not (i.e. it can be used for Standard and/or Actual cost components). Watch this pre-recorded live Q&A with FI/CO expert Rogerio Faleiros to learn:

  • The things to consider when deciding whether to split COGS in the G/L Accounts.

  • How to map the original COGS account to the Cost Component Split Accounts.

  • A demo of the Cost Component G/L Split program and how to view the General Ledger postings.

  • The Reports that can be used to display the COGS documents that have been split.

Ask A Fixer: Enable Cost Component Split in G/L Accounts – Before SAP S/4HANA!

Attend this live Q&A with FI/CO expert Rogerio Faleiros to learn:

  • The things to consider when deciding whether to split COGS in the G/L Accounts.

  • How to map the original COGS account to the Cost Component Split Accounts.

  • A demo of the Cost Component G/L Split program and how to view the General Ledger postings.

  • The Reports that can be used to display the COGS documents that have been split.

Introducing the Material Ledger in SAP S/4HANA: Functionality and Configuration

 Introducing the Material Ledger in SAP S/4HANA: Functionality and Configuration

Learn the basics of the Material Ledger in SAP S/4HANA! Explore processes such as actual costing, balance sheet valuation, and COGS valuation—and how they’ve changed since SAP ERP.

Q&A: Setting Up Transfer Pricing Between Plants

Transfer pricing is a widely used functionality which sets a price between affiliated entities. It is typically setup for cross border transactions and need to conform with the tax laws in the respective countries. However, in SAP Transfer Pricing can also be set up between profit centers (and plants). In this regard it is used as an internal mechanism that treats every transfer between profit centers as a sale and helps facilitate full management reporting by a plant, or group of plants.

Attend this live Q&A with FI/CO expert Paul Ovigele, to learn the following:

  • What needs to be set up for Transfer Pricing between Profit Centers?

  • How is standard cost calculated for Profit center Transfer Pricing?

  • How does a Transfer Pricing Posting look in the profit center View?

  • What are the options to convert to Profit Center Transfer Pricing in S/4 HANA?

S/4HANA Cloud (S4HC) Implementation: Key Watch-Outs For a Seasoned On-Premise Consultant

With SAP being a 46+ year old company, most of the SAP consultants are seasoned in on-premise world having deep knowledge and expertise in configuring systems, designing SAP according to business needs and following various implementation approaches. Now S/4HANA cloud version is gaining popularity and very useful in various scenarios, like professional services, affiliates of larger enterprises as two-tier implementation etc., so learning how it is different from on-premise world is useful. (Also refer blog “Critical insight into S/4HANA Cloud compared to S/4HANA On Premise” showing some differences in S/4HANA cloud vs S/4HANA on-premise.)

Let’s observe some key watch-outs in a S4HC implementation:

Ask A Fixer: Setting Up Transfer Pricing Between Plants

Ask a Fixer

EXCLUSIVELY FOR ASUG MEMBERS!

Start: Wednesday, February 20th, 2018 12:00 PM (CT), 1:00 PM (ET), 11:00 AM (MT), 10:00 AM (PT)

End: Wednesday, February 20th, 2018 1:00 PM (CT), 2:00 PM (ET), 12:00 PM (MT), 11:00 AM (PT)

Transfer pricing is a widely used functionality which sets a price between affiliated entities. It is typically setup for cross border transactions and need to conform with the tax laws in the respective countries. However, in SAP Transfer Pricing can also be set up between profit centers (and plants). In this regard it is used as an internal mechanism that treats every transfer between profit centers as a sale and helps facilitate full management reporting by a plant, or group of plants.

Attend this live Q&A with FI/CO expert Paul Ovigele, to learn the following:

  • What needs to be set up for Transfer Pricing between Profit Centers?

  • How is standard cost calculated for Profit center Transfer Pricing?

  • How does a Transfer Pricing Posting look in the profit center View?

  • What are the options to convert to Profit Center Transfer Pricing in S/4 HANA?

Speaker:

Paul Ovigele, FI/CO Expert, ERPfixers

WHAT IS "ASK A FIXER" WEBCAST SERIES?

Ask a Fixer is a live ASUG-hosted Q&A session with one of ERPfixers’ top-rated SAP experts (“Fixers”) in a specific module or topic. In this real-time discussion session, you have the opportunity to pose your specific questions to a Fixer, who will provide an immediate answer during the forum. This is a great way to get quick answers to your pressing issues, as well as learn from questions posted by other users during the forum.

If you cannot attend: The webcast will be recorded. The link to the recording will be posted here and emailed to all registrants.

Q&A: Deep Dive into the Universal Journal

By now, everyone has heard about the Universal Journal. It is a revolutionary change of the table structures in the Financials modules. Although the conceptual understanding is widely spread, how about the practical aspects of it? How can you get better, more integrated Realtime reports across the various modules such as Financial Accounting, Controlling, Material ledger and Profitability Analysis among others? 

Watch this prerecorded Webcast Q&A with FI/CO expert Paul Ovigele, to learn the following:

  • How does the Universal Journal replace previous FI/CO reporting?

  • What reporting options do you have with the Universal Journal Table ACDOCA ?

  • What are the new functionalities of S/4 HANA that can be viewed in the Universal Journal?

  • What are the Multidimensional Capabilities of the Universal Journal?

Ask A Fixer: Deep Dive into the Universal Journal

Ask a Fixer

EXCLUSIVELY FOR ASUG MEMBERS!

Start: Thursday, January 31st, 2018 12:00 PM (CT), 1:00 PM (ET), 11:00 AM (MT), 10:00 AM (PT)

End: Thursday, January 31st, 2018 1:00 PM (CT), 2:00 PM (ET), 12:00 PM (MT), 11:00 AM (PT)

By now, everyone has heard about the Universal Journal. It is a revolutionary change of the table structures in the Financials modules. Although the conceptual understanding is widely spread, how about the practical aspects of it? How can you get better, more integrated Realtime reports across the various modules such as Financial Accounting, Controlling, Material ledger and Profitability Analysis among others? 

Attend this live Q&A with FI/CO expert Paul Ovigele, to learn the following:

  • How does the Universal Journal replace previous FI/CO reporting?

  • What reporting options do you have with the Universal Journal Table ACDOCA ?

  • What are the new functionalities of S/4 HANA that can be viewed in the Universal Journal?

  • What are the Multidimensional Capabilities of the Universal Journal?

Speaker:

Paul Ovigele, FI/CO Expert, ERPfixers

WHAT IS "ASK A FIXER" WEBCAST SERIES?

Ask a Fixer is a live ASUG-hosted Q&A session with one of ERPfixers’ top-rated SAP experts (“Fixers”) in a specific module or topic. In this real-time discussion session, you have the opportunity to pose your specific questions to a Fixer, who will provide an immediate answer during the forum. This is a great way to get quick answers to your pressing issues, as well as learn from questions posted by other users during the forum.

If you cannot attend: The webcast will be recorded. The link to the recording will be posted here and emailed to all registrants.