High- Level Specification

Functional Overview

The main purpose of this custom development is to facilitate detailed cost and spend reporting based on material group information in financial reports in S/4 HANA. Due to limitations of SAP standard as explained further in SAP note '2843578 - S/4 HANA Finance: Attribute assignment for material inventory lines' the material group is now available as a table field but it is only populated for specific posting scenarios which is insufficient for comprehensive cost analysis on financial reporting. By implementing this custom development, the material group will be available for all material movements recorded in the system and all financially-relevant relevant sales as well as purchasing transactions and therefore allows for a holistic and flexible reporting of financial costs and spend based on the material group classification defined in S/4 HANA.

Scope and Objectives

In SAP standard, the material group is only captured for integrated, sales-related financial postings in the financial line item tables used for Financial reporting in S/4 HANA. The material group is equally if not more important for cost and spend analysis in integrated, procurement-related financial postings as it provides further and more detailed insights into the nature of the costs that may not always be obvious from just looking at the G/L account used for the financial posting. The Chart of Accounts in S/4 HANA has been condensed to a large extend under the premise that auxiliary reporting dimensions such as the material group can be used for a more detailed and granular analysis of costs incurred in the operational activities of an organization in financial reporting. The material group 

The scope of this development therefore includes the following components:

• Derivation and capture of material group attribute from the material master data where available in the universal journal ledger (technical table name: ACDOCA) in S/4 HANA
• Derivation and capture of material group attribute from purchase order line item where no reference to a material is provided in the universal journal ledger
• Derivation and capture of material group description in universal journal ledger in custom field.
• Ensure custom field added to universal journal ledger is available for reporting across all key Finance reporting applications used in S/4 HANA.

Insert the flowchart and fill in the steps

Assumptions

• All purchase order line items are created in the system with at least a material group assignment.
• All materials are assigned to exactly one material group in the material master.
• If the purchase order line item is pointing to a material group which is different to the material group defined in the material master record of the purchased material, the material group used in the purchase order line item shall be taken for updating the Financial line item table. This is to keep the Financial reporting in sync with the Procurement spend reporting by material group.
• Financial cost and spend reporting in S/4 HANA will be based on the universal journal ledger (ACDOCA) and not the classic FI line item table (BSEG)
• Custom development will be deployed across all S/4 HANA instances as the material group per se is not relevant for export controls.

Dependencies

• Testing of this functionality will only be possible with a representative set of materials and material groups created in the system that follow the target design of those objects in the new S/4 HANA systems.
• All necessary configurations for procure-to-pay processing needs to be set up in the system to commence testing of the implemented custom development features.
• Key financial reporting Fiori applications need to be available to test the availability of the material group in them main reporting views used for Financial reporting in S/4 HANA.

Security, Integrity and Controls

No specific requirements for authorization checks identified. For the CUI instance, the overarching export control principles shall apply and data shall be masked as per CUI classifications.

Apart from that, for this custom development the calling program's s authorization checks shall be followed.

Configuration Requirements

Materials Management:

• Material Groups need to be set up in the system and assigned to materials with extended purchasing views.
• Basic configurations for testing procure-to-pay processes end-to-end needs to be in place. 

Sales and Distribution:

• Basic configurations for testing order-to-billing process end-to-end needs to be in place. 

Financial Accounting:

• Basic configurations for Financial Accounting and Controlling needs to be in place to post financial accounting entries via integrated MM/SD processes.
• Automatic account determinations for procure-to-pay and sales processes needs to be maintained.

Language Requirements

No specific language requirements for this custom development. Material groups shall be translated as per rules defined in KDD055 - Multi-Language Support.

Special Requirements

No other special requirements identified for this custom development. 

Design Rationale

Functional Requirements

The following functional requirements must be covered by this custom development:

• Material Group must be available as drill-down dimension in financial line item reports used in S/4 HANA
• Material Group Description must be available in financial line item reports used in S/4 HANA for ease of reconciliation.

The above details shall be provided for all line items posted in the universal journal table (ACDOCA) in S/4 HANA 

Proposed Technology to Use

The proposed technology to use is a custom enhancement via pre-defined BAdIs enhancement spots to update records in the universal journal ledger directly (e.g. enhancement spot: FINS_ACDOC_MODIFY) before the database updates are performed.

The advantages of this enhancement method are as follows as opposed to other methods such as classic FI substitutions via user exits:

• Call-up point is after document splitting routines have been processed hence all line items of the Financial Accounting documents are known and fully enriched once called.
• All FI documents can be checked and processed. With a classic FI substitution only BSEG-relevant line items are checked and processible, furthermore not all documents posted by integrated modules MM/SD are going through substitution routines defined in the classic substitution framework.

Data Source Considerations

This section is not applicable for this custom development

Data Validation Considerations

This section is not applicable for this custom development

Custom Tables

This section is not applicable for this custom development.

Master Data

This section is not applicable for this custom development.

Configuration Table

This section is not applicable for this custom development.

Selection Screen Enhancement

This section is not applicable for this custom development.

Processing Logic

The processing logic shall be sequenced as follows:

1.) To limit the number of line items to be processed, the following exclusions can be defined:

• Document type (BKPF-BLART) not in set 'Z_BLART_MATKL'

2.) For all documents that need to be included, proceed with the following step:

• Check if purchase order line item is populated in table record (ACDOCA-EBELP <> 'blank')
• If it's not populated, exit and proceed to step 3.).
• If populated, go to the PO line item table 

3.) 

Volumetrics

Volumes are expected to be high as most Financial Accounting documents line items are required to be checked and potentially enriched. To limit the volume of call-ups for the custom development, exclusion criteria have been defined in the processing logics.

Performance Considerations

The volumes of custom code processing is expected to be high on the high side as most Financial Accounting document line items are required to be checked and potentially enriched. 

Technical team is requested to optimize the custom code such that system performance is not impeded.

Error Handling

No specific error handling is required as part of this custom development. 

Missing attribute derivations in the universal journal ledger need to be investigated by IT on a case-by-case basis via a support ticket as it requires custom code analysis.

Testing

How to Test

Please provide some guidance and/or test data to help the developer unit test the enhancement. Please include both positive and negative testing (to validate error situations handling). The developer will need to test repeatedly, so where appropriate provide instructions to reverse the actions performed so the test may be run again or explain how to create new input data to the test. The developer will need logons for test users representing the various roles within the approval process.

Test Conditions and Expected Results

Test Considerations/Dependencies

List any considerations essential for application test planning (e.g., test this before ABC along with DEF separate from GHI). If the development encompasses a user interface, explain how to test it. List any insights as to how this component could be tested the most efficiently.

Other Information

This section is not applicable to this custom development.

Development Details

Package

Enhancement Implementation

Other Development Objects

Appendix

Custom Authorization Group Naming Convention

This table is based on the Syensqo development standards document. It provides the naming conventions for authorization groups to associated with custom reports and tables to comply with security requirements.

See also

Insert links and references to other documents which are relevant when trying to understand this decision and its implications. Other decisions are often impacted, so it's good to list them here with links. Attachments are also possible but dangerous as they are static documents and not updated by their authors.

Change log