Month of release for S/4HANA in 2018

SAP has a cycle of 11 months for release of On-premise edition for S/4HANA like 1511, 1610, 1709.
So, want to know from SAP, whether the release for 2018 will be 1808 I.E IN August ' 2018 or not.
We want this information to plan better for our ongoing S/4HANA projects.

S/4HANA 1511 EM has been a blockbuster product from SAP with multiple
innovations, functionality consolidations, deprecations over traditional ECC
ERP resulting in enhanced UI, faster processing, functionality enhancement
and multiple other benefits.

SAP has provided multiple tools like Maintenance Planner, Pre-Check Tools,
Custom Code Impact Analyzer, Data Migration Optimization (DMO) to
enable impact analysis, preparation and execution of direct movement from
ECC to S/4HANA 1511 which is termed as System Conversion.

Although this new S/4HANA world appeared to be very complex in the

initial part of 2016, there is good traction in terms of S/4HANA System
Conversion, Green Field Implementation and Landscape Consolidation
projects based on S/4HANA 1511 EM version.

At this juncture on Oct 31 2016, SAP has released next major version in this
series called S/4HANA 1610. S/4HANA 1610 is a good illustration of how
SAP continuously thrives to improve the overall functionality, architecture,
GUI, scalability, compatibility year on year.

This blog is to provide at a glance What has changed in S/4HANA 1610 as

compared to 1511. Also tried to provide my point of view recommended
S/4HANA Version (1511 or 1610) for existing ECC installed bases starting
their journey now.

Financials – Key changes

 Central Finance functionality (as part of SAP S/4HANA 1610) is

released together with the rest of SAP S/4HANA 1610
 Technical Changes in Material Ledger with Actual Costing
  Summarization Hierarchies in Controlling
 Multiple Currencies in Universal Journal
 Material classification with commodity codes
 Conversion to S/4HANA 1610 Material Ledger and Actual
Costing

Logistics – Key Changes

 Performance optimizations within Material Document Processing

- lock behavior
 EWM in S4HANA
 Goods movements without exclusive locking by material
valuation
 Material Valuation Data Model Simplification in S/4HANA 1610
and Higher
 External Interfacing BAPIs, IMG Nodes and BOR objects of
SCM (Majority deprecated)
 PPDS functionality in S/4HANA core

Technical – Key Changes

 SAP Fiori 2.0 as the new User Experience

 MDG: Embedded in SAP S/4HANA; Product as unification of
Industry material and Retail Article; Simplified Master data
(Customer, Supplier, Product)
 Add-Ons support (~170) in consideration for SAP S/4HANA
1610
 New Best Practice Content: Belgium, China, France, Philippines,
Netherlands, Hungary, Singapore, Australia, Canada, UK +
Country Fiori Apps
 Simplification of copy/reference handling

Industry Solutions

 Complete the Industry Roadmap with S/4 compatibility with Oil,

Retail
 IS Utilities, Industry DIMP enhancements
If there is an installed base in ECC now, they need to take care of all Pre-
requisites of 1511 and then add up above Key changes in 1610 to arrive at a
scope of what it takes convert from ECC to 1610.

If this conversion jump is too large, then they can look at moving from ECC
to 1511 first and then after couple of years of stabilization move to 1610 or
1710 (future release).

Below is my POV on considerations and relative comparison of whether to

go for 1511 vs 1610 at this point of time:

Product stability : 1511 is more stable with initial

bugs/issues resolved over last one year after release of multiple SPS packs
(SPS01, SPS02..).

Support expiry : 1511 is support expires before 1610 and

hence it mandates for an upgrade again at the earliest opportunity before
1511 goes out of support.

User Interface : More Fiori Apps available in 1610

release and that too in latest Fiori 2.0 in 1610 and hence Enhanced User
Experience

Add-Ons/Third-party Plug-ins : There could be unexpected road blocks

in terms of delay in availability of Third-Party Plug-ins compatible with 1610
and may pose few showstoppers. 1511 is already one year old and hence
most of the Add-Ons/Third-party Plug-ins of various satellite products are
already proven and stabilized.

Thanks for patient reading and happy to receive your feedback.

Wish you happy S/4HANA Journey…..

What’s New in 1610 and 1709 Release for SAP S/4HANA FINANCE?
CATEGORY: SAP S/4HANA Simple Finance Training POSTED:Apr 24, 2018 BY: Ashley
Morrison 2036 Views 0Comments

The previous release of SAP S/4HANA 1610 in finance area had concentrated on embedded real-
time software. The new capabilities and innovations in SAP S/4HANA 1610 allow the
manufacturers to manage the embedded software all through the product lifecycle. The new
product development is quickening by the businesses with the response to the collected
information about their scholarly products, the requirements based on the product design, and
observe the development of the product status, involving quality, outline as well as development
progress.
Another innovation with SAP S/4HANA 1610 is the undertaking administration arrangement and
improved portfolio, which is an extra SAP S/4HANA component that accentuations on the
supporting the venture and portfolio chiefs. SAP has completely refreshed the way a customer
works together with the structure to engage perfect adequacy.

Image Source: news.sap.com

The additional options in the SAP S/4HANA 1610 include the propelled availability of potential
functionality, incorporated quality administration and SAP S/4HANA for worldwide exchange.
This post fundamentally focuses on the latest innovation of SAP S/4HANA in the field of Simple
Finance lets have a look at them. There are a few points of interest of SAP S/4HANA within the
organization. The distinction with the typical FICO in R3 are discussed, including some of the
features which are involved in the Simple Finance 1.0 in 2014.

Register Now for live webinar on SAP S/4HANA Simple Finance

1.One Single Source truth and all accounts become GL accounts:

At the point when all the genuine details are stored in the new table of ACDOCA, it will not create
any redundant, aggregate or total tables, as all the measurements of AA, ML, CO, GL will be put
away in ACDOCA.
The ACDOCA contains the multidimensional GL, parallel currencies and records, 999,999 details.
The latest innovations in the 1610 release have solved the challenges in collecting the substances
of various tables to display the reality and settle the details which are stored in different tables of
SAP.
 Image Source:www.michaelmanagement.com

2. Parallel Currencies and Valuation:

In the SAP S/4HANA 1610 release, the ten parallel currencies for every record can be seen
together. With this new innovation it is possible to convert all types of currencies in real-time, also
zero balance per document is now confirmed for every currency and the currency for the CO –
area is presently figured for all the records.
The parallel valuation functionality is now improved in the 1610 release. There are two ways which
are offered in this release to store the numerous valuations.
1.Parallel valuation updated in parallel single valuation record:
It provides a separate record for each valuation, including straightforward partition related to
posting and reporting.
2.Parallel valuation rationalized in the multi-valued ledger:
It includes an isolated quantity of segments in the similar record, facilitates memory impression,
effort and time required for closing.
3. Profitability Analysis in SAP S/4HANA 1610:
As the SAP S/4HANA highlights on the improvements and combination of record based COPA,
it is possible to analyze profitability. The profitability in light of costing is as yet accessible and
can be utilized as a part of parallel without any integration with the Universal Journal i.e.
ACDOCA table.
Following are the improvements in the account based profitability analysis:
  While posting the merchandises issue, the split of costs of goods which is sold on several
accounts is utilized.
 At the time of order settlement, the production opportunities on several accounts are split.
 The real-time derivation of market segment information from cost posting should be
possible.
 The 3 new quality fields are offered during the details.

Improvement Summary:
Following are the limitations of the account based profitability analysis:

 The sales conditions are not supported which are not posting to GL.
 The realignment of attributes is somewhat upheld, which are modified in the wake of
posting.

4. Attribute Profitability Segments:

This is one of the best improvement in the field of profitability analysis. For example, when anyone
has a debit memo request in a period and material administration order with a settled rule for
COPA. The debit memo request will not have any benefit section, but an account assignment
related to the service order. It implies that until the service order is established to COPA, one can
not have the profitability segment information. By utilizing this new functionality one can have
the genuine account assignment in the service order and an attribute assigned to a benefit section.
5. Event Based on Revenue Recognition:
Presently, the revenue recognition procedure is completely incorporated with the Universal
Journal. In that respect, no distinct storage is available for revenue recognition. The cost and
revenues are known at the time of their arrival. There are two postings which will produce during
the entry of the source document. The two entries are:
One is the entry for the initial cost and revenue and another one is an entry for the revenue
recognition posting. The revenue recognition posting and manual modifications are monitored
with the new app, i.e. Event based revenue recognition.
 Image Source:s4hanablog.com

6. Bank Account Management (lite):

There were few house banks and bank accounts in SAP available in the old setup of bank account
management. The new version of SAP S/4HANA involves the basic functions related to the bank
management functionality of cash management is introduced in the core. This is known as Bank
Account Management lite.
Following are the innovative features and contrasts which are compared to the old house bank and
financial balance setup:

 Group-wise account administration

 Signatory
 Overdraft Constrain
 Opening and shutting with the approval process
 Easily managed bank accounts

The customers are able to maintain and manage the bank accounts with the help of a committed
application called Web Dynpro or Fiori application. The house bank can themselves created in a
customized way. The transaction of Fi12 is outdated now, which are supplanted by transaction
Fi12_hbank. In this manner, the procedure of creating the house bank and the house bank ledger
are disconnected and can be implemented in two separate spots.
7. New Asset Accounting
It is a pre-requirement to migrate towards the new asset accounting for transferring to S/4HANA
Finance due to the following reasons:
  Resolution amongst GL and AA ensured
 No data redundancy
 A simplified outline of deterioration: just 1 CoD
 No delta depreciation zones
 Asset balance in real-time
 Plan values in real-time
 No data idealness

8. Embedded Analytics and Reporting:

SAP incorporates transactions and analytics on one framework permitting the operational reporting
details regarding live transaction data. There are several new possibilities in SAP S/4HANA, with
the new data structure, pre-delivered virtual information models, the performance of HANA and
the modern and state of the art reporting tools and interfaces.
The idea behind using the embedded analytics in S/4HANA is to offer the models through the
entire suit in which the business logic is implanted. In this way, the data models which are offered
are used to carry out the appropriate information rather than crude information.
The most commonly used S/4HANA implementation used by the clients are Fiori-reporting, SAP
Lumira, and Analysis for office.

Image Source:s4hanablog.com

Innovation in 1709 release in SAP S/4HANA Finance:

With the achievement of SAP S/4HANA 1610, the SAP S/4 HANA 1709 is released on September
15th 2017. It involves many architectural advancements, including most recent tools which are
available for SAP S/4HANA adoption as well as the functional inventions and developments. The
SAP S/4HANA 1709 fundamentally executes on SAP HANA2, which is the second generation of
SAP’s in-memory database stage, which supports scale-out and utilization of active added
presentation. The architectural developments enable the clients to take the preferred standpoint
from the most recent developments in the database frameworks.

Learn SAP S/4HANA Simple Finance from Industry Experts

In SAP S/4HANA 1709, the innovations in the financial field involve embedded analytics
competences, improved real-time accounting and closing competences, advanced cloud apps on
the SAP cloud platform as well as the first machine learning scenario for finance.
Let’s now explore the five major areas in the finance, which is released with SAP S/4HANA 1709:

Source:blogs.sap.com

1.Central Finance: The first major area is the Central Finance, which involves an another Fiori
app. This apps grants you to visit to the documents related the central financial perspective and
also you can visit to the source document as well. In place of making payment to each source
system, it is easy to make the centralized payments as well as carry out centralized clearing tasks,
this is conceivable by utilizing the central payment feature for SAP central finance. An enhanced
VAT configuration check for the company code is likewise included in the 1709 release, which
allows you to trigger an improved check related to the taxes. It is essential to utilize this check for
the central payment.
The clients are looking for a solution for the replication of costing-based CO-PA in central finance,
in the SAP ERP foundation framework with respect to productivity based on account in SAP
S/4HANA, which is not bolstered yet. In provision with SAP S/4HANA 1709, the duplication is
supported by utilizing a tool-set, as a part of the custom implementation project. The accessible
tool-set contains CO-PA mapping tool and also an improved strategy of duplication.
2.Financial Planning and Analysis: In order to support product cost analysis, the various
new enhancements, for example, the SAP Fiori app are also delivering that support the financial
planning and analysis. A work focus view is included in this, which not just gives the picture
related to actual cost at work focus but it also provides the organized data. Apart from this, some
progress is achieved in the profitability analysis in Universal Journal. The splitting cost of products
retailed in SAP S/4HANA is improved and now a reporting app that demonstrates the realignment
results are also brought out. These enhancements help to provide a vibrant picture to the clients.
The new exercise manual is another incredible component designed for the cost of products which
are fabricated. Alternate innovations are semantic tagging and flexible hierarchies. These
innovations are based on master data features and tags. These two innovations provide a flexible
design and simplify the entire revealing capability.
3.Accounting and Financial Close: This is another innovation in the field of finance, which
is divided into posting and reporting view. An introduction to the document splitting is now
supporting according to the requirements of the customers. The SAP financial closing and
accounting is a fundamental portion of SAP S/4HANA 1709, in order to accomplish the speeder
element close through meeting the supervisory prerequisites. The financial and accounting close
supports in planning, executing, monitoring, and analyzing financial responsibilities for the objects
within the group. The intervallic recurring actions are likewise performed with the participation of
several agents. A new framework is provided by the advanced compliance reporting, which helps
to meet the acute compliance reporting needs for the several accounting principles.
4.Treasury Management: The various innovations and improvements are delivered within
the treasury management, here are the list of them:

 Continued innovation of center treasury

 Stretched center treasury with value-added cloud administrations
 SAP cash management
 New functionality for treasury and cash management
 Upgraded foreign currency hedgerow management
 Upgraded bank relationship management.

The workflow functionality for the administration of financial account is reformed, so that a new
format for the workflow is now included, which further involves the new apps for processing and
tracking workflow requests and a new app called “Manage Workflows”.
5.Financial Operations: The financial operations in the SAP S/4HANA 1709 release include
four SAP cloud platform apps, i.e. SAP cloud for credit reconciliation, customer payments, for
digital payments and SAP cash application. These apps support the end-to-end techniques by
providing the cloud services. The enhanced incorporation of procedures between finance
operations and the business network applications is also an added advantage, including:

 Invoice and discount administration

 Supply chain
 Cost center with SAP SuccessFactors Finance solutions
 Payment guidance with SAP field-glass solutions
 Image Source:blogs.sap.com

Conclusion:
Thus, it can be expressed that the advantages from the previous releases of SAP S/4HANA are
still continuing in the latest innovation in 1610 and 1709 SAP S/4HANA Simple Finance,
including the resolution and popularization of usually addressed challenges in the field of
reporting. These innovations make the Simple Finance an appreciated addition to any business
software infrastructure.

Things that You should Know about Finance in S/4HANA 1610

Today’s Digital World S/4HANA plays a crucial role in fulfilling SAP customers needs. In 2014, simple innovations
was introduced in the area of Finance by SAP and this new product was initially known as ‘Simple Finance’. In 2015
SAP renamed Simple Finance to S/4HANA Finance. By doing this, SAP launched heterogeneous naming over various
product lines. Simultaneously it created huge confusions with various release numbers.
S/4HANA Finance is composed of finance innovations with existing system so that everything with logistics will
remain same. The complete functionality of S/4HANA Finance 1605 is included in SAP S/4HANA 1610. For this
product the migration effort is less when gauged with S/4HANA which indicates that S/4HANA 1610 and S/4HANA
Finance 1605 are in sync for only in terms of Finance where few minor differences are listed below:
Single Source of truth and merging of all accounts into GL account
The new table ACDOCA will reserve all actual line items thereby eliminating any redundant, aggregate or total tables.
All dimensions of CO, COPA, GL, AA and ML will be included in ACDOCA. Where ACDOCA includes
multidimensional GL, 999,999 line items and custom defined fields, parallel ledgers, parallel currencies. The
challenges of collecting several tables content to showcase the truth and reuniting the various level of information
stored in the different components or tables of SAP.
 Source:blogs.sap.com
All actual line items can be reserved in a single table by combining secondary and primary cost elements. Now up to
10 parallel currencies per ledger can be accessed in S/4HANA 1610. For all types of currencies, real-time conversion
is also possible, Zero balance per document is guaranteed for each currency and CO-area currency is now calculated
for all accounts (also non-cost element). There is a significant enhancement in S/4HANA 1610 due to the effect of
parallel valuation functionality. Now SAP delivers two options to load multiple valuations:

Learn SAP S/4HANA Simple Finance from Industry Experts

In parallel single-valuation ledger parallel valuation is updated

 For each valuation, there is a separate ledger

 Based on different regulations there exist a transparent separation of posting and reporting

In multi-valuation ledger parallel valuation is updated

 Separate amount columns in the same ledger

 Reduce memory footprint
 Reduce effort and time for closing

SAP mainly focuses on the enhancement and integration of Account based COPA with help of S/4HANA. It is a
preferred type of Profitability Analysis. Costing Based profitability analysis can be used in parallel, but there will be
no unification with the Universal Journal (ACDOCA table).
List of enhancements on Account-Based profitability analysis are listed below:

 A split of Cost of Goods Sold on multiple accounts based on cost component split. This is done during the
posting of the Goods issue.
  The split of production variances on multiple accounts which were done at order settlement.
 Three new quantity fields are given in the line items and a BAdI for conversion of the logistical quantities to
common quantities in Finance.
 Real-time derivation of market segment information from cost postings (Cost Center, order etc.)

The limitations on Account-Based profitability analysis are,

 Few sales conditions which are not posting to GL (statistical) are not bearable
 The realignment of characteristics which change after posting is relatively supported
 Creation of sales order generates expected revenue, COGS etc.

Attributed profitability segments

Attributed profitability segments is one of the greatest enhancements in Profitability Analysis with a few extra
configuration steps like ‘Attributed PA segment’ can be operated.
Consider an example of a debit memo request in a time and material service order with a settlement rule for settlement
to COPA. Generally the debit memo request consists of account assignment to the service order without any
profitability segment. Indicates that until the service order is resolved to COPA, profitability segment data is not
available. This new characteristics consists of attributed assignment to a profitability segment and real account
assignment to the service order.

Register Now for live webinar on SAP S/4HANA Simple Finance

Event-based revenue identification

Now, the revenue recognition process is completely integrated with the Universal Journal and there is no more separate
storage area for Revenue Recognition data. The costs and revenues are identified as and when they occur. The
introduction of the source document will create two postings i.e is an arrival for the initial costs, revenue recognition
posting.

Bank account management

In S/4HANA the fundamental functions of the Bank Account Management functionality of Cash Management is
introduced in to the core known as Bank Account Management Lite.
Following are the important features and differences of the bank account setup and old house bank:

 Signatory
 Groupwise account management
 Opening and Closing with approval process
 Easily maintain bank accounts
 Overdraft Limit

The conclusion
SAP S/4HANA can assist in changing your enterprise, providing a tailored service or product to an audience of one
across the globe. The opportunity does exists to completely alter the business processes and achieve the digital
transformation of your business with better automation and real-time visibility.
Obsolete and New Transaction codes in S/4 HANA Finance 1610

Certain Transaction codes and programs have been removed and partially replaced with new
transaction codes and programs in S4HANA Finance.
I have attempted to furnish the maximum information on replaced and Obsolete T codes in the OP
1610. If you find something missing in this list, please comment.
However there are certain transactions and reports which are no longer compliant with certain
country specific (transaction codes and programs) legal requirements have been removed.
Please avail the list in PDF format that manifests the country wise transaction codes and reports
which are no longer available in the note -2227963)
For more info on this, kindly refer the following notes and simplification list for SAP S/4 HANA 1610
Initial Shipment stack.

OSS Note –2227963, 2270355, 2029012

Although some of the old transactions are still available, we can notice the additional features or else
optimized features in the new transactions.

Thanks for the opportunity. Happy Learning:)

Best Regards,
Hemanthkumar