High- Level Specification

Functional Overview

Scope and Objectives

As part of the SyWay program, it was decided to implement a system-controlled review and approval workflow for high-value G/L journals for 

• better upfront posting control to ensure ledger owners are aware of significant changes to account balances caused by manual journals. This will help to improve the quality of the ledgers at period-end and eliminates the need for subsequent review of high-value journals by the ledger owners after the fact which can lead to complications such as re-opening of closed accounting periods, etc.
• increased SOX compliance by following a 4-eye principle for high-value journals before the actuals get posted in the system.

General Ledger journals are not expenditure-related and do not lead to any cash impact for the organization, as such integration into the overall DoA is not required. A simplified, single-tier approval workflow is requested.

Specific exemptions will also be granted from the mandatory journal review mandate to avoid bottlenecks with reviewers especially during peak periods for manual journals at period-end.

Assumptions

• Approvers are required to log on to the respective S/4HANA systems to complete the approvals via Fiori application ‘My Inbox'. Approval or rejection of invoices shall only be possible out of SAP Fiori application ‘My Inbox’. 
• This functional specification is written based on the assumption that SAP does not provide new applications in future releases until go-live for verification of accounting documents. If more favorable options become available (e.g. AI-powered verifications), this custom development may require further adaptations or becomes obsolete and can therefore be removed from the systems.

Security, Integrity and Controls

No special security, integrity or control requirements identified.

Process controls for the respective L4 the custom development is designed for ('09.05.04.01. Process General Journal Entries')

Special Requirements

Work item messages as well as custom error messages generated by the workflow need to be translated into the four core logon languages (English, French, Italian, Mandarin) defined for the SyWay program as endorsed in 'KDD055 - Multi-Language Support'.

Design Rationale

Functional Requirements

The following enhancements/customizations will be required to cover all business requirements for the workflow development:

• Custom field in document header table (VBKPF):
  

Processing manual journals are the responsibility of the shared service centres. Journal entry requests are therefore predominantly processed by the responsible teams within the shared service centres. In standard SAP, only the user ID of the journal processor is captured in the document header. To be able to differentiate between journal requestor and journal processor a new field needs to be created at document header level (table VBKPF) where the invoice processors are required to specify the user ID of the journal requestor. This must be a mandatory input field in the respective Fiori app used for manual journals (F2547A, F4670A and F1598) . The inputs in this field shall be validated against table USR01. A match-code search function shall be made available to search for the respective user IDs based on user’s first and last name.

This field shall be used by the processing logic of the workflow to enable workflow exemptions.

• Lock document after submission for approval:

Once a document has been submitted for approval it shall no longer be editable until it gets approved or rejected by the reviewers/approvers. In case there are any changes required to the document, the document needs to be rejected by the approver to flow back to the processor to make the necessary changes.

• Add variables to workflow container and include them in the subject line/work item body text:

Some variables need to be added to the workflow container and eventually included in the subject line/work item body texts. The required variables are:

• Document Number: <VBKPF-BELNR>
• Invoice Number: <VBKPF-XBLNR>
• Company Code: <VBKPF-BUKRS>
• Fiscal Year: <VBKPF-GJAHR>
• Amount: <VBSEGS-WRBTR>
• Document Currency: <VBKPF- WAERS>
• Document Header Text: <VBKPF-BKTXT>
• GBU: Derive from profit center standard hierarchy via profit center used in highest-value line item.
• Profit Center: <VBSEGS-PRCTR>
• Profit Center Description: <CEPC-LTEXT>

If multiple profit centers are used in one invoice, the profit center from the line item with the highest LC2 (VBSEGS-DMBE2) value shall be selected.

• Approval levels and agent determination logic

All manual G/L journals recorded in the system shall be subjected to the below approval levels and agent determination logic:

• All manual G/L journals exceeding the defined thresholds are subject to a mandatory review by a nominated approver.

Note:

• The threshold amounts are maintained in EUR for all company codes. The processing logic should compare the amounts in the agent determination table against the group currency amounts specified in the manual G/L journals.
• Columns Key/Non-Key Legal Entity, Region, Country and Company Code should be optional. Wildcard entries (*) should be possible for all three columns.
• All columns should be considered key fields. Multiple HR positions or bands may be assigned to a specific combination of row attributes.
• The dimensions Key or Non-Key Legal Entity/Region/Country/Company code shall be considered from most specific to least specific by the determination logic. The following order shall be followed (from most specific to least specific):
  
  1.) Company Code
  2.) Country
  3.) Region
  4.) Key/Non-Key Legal Entity

          Example:

• • In the decision table, an entry is maintained at level 2 for country BE (Belgium) and amount >=1,000.00 EUR assigned to HR position 'S01'. Another entry is maintained for company code 1000, which is an entity operating in Belgium, and amount >=500,000.00 EUR and assigned to HR position 'S02'. If an invoice gets parked in the system for entity 1000 with an amount of 600,000 EUR, the approver determined at level 2 should be the user assigned to position 'S02' not 'S01'. 

• Region and country should be determined based on the country of the legal entity (T001-LAND1) in which the journal gets raised.
• The approver positions specified in the decision tables are members of the regional GBS teams. It is not expected to have region-specific or even country-specific positions in the future organization chart design so identifying the correct reviewers/approvers for a particular company code based on the HR position alone may not be sufficient. It may be required to look up the approver's regional or country responsibilities based on attributes defined in the authorization roles or user profiles. Legal entity responsibilities in GBS can spread across multiple countries within a region so the company code maintained in the employee master record of the approver may not be indicative enough of the actual legal entity responsibilities within GBS.
• It may also be required in some cases to define bands instead of HR positions in the decision table if certain positions are not available in a specific region/country/company code.
• Exemptions:

  • An additional custom check needs to be implemented to ensure that journals requested by an authorized approver shall be auto-approved and posted immediately.

  • Journals requested by superiors of the nominated approvers (based on the organizational structure) shall be auto-approved and posted immediately.

  • Journals requested by Controllers (look-up job/position of journal requestor) shall be auto-approved and posted immediately.

  • Journals raised for the non-leading ledgers only (BKPF-LDGRP <> 'blank' or '0L') shall be auto-approved and posted immediately.

• Notifications to journal requestor:

Notifications shall be sent out to the invoice requestor and invoice processor once requested invoices have been approved and posted in the system.

Subject Line: 'G/L Journal <BELNR>/<BUKRS> requested by you was posted successfully'.

Body Text:

‘G/L journal <BELNR>/<BUKRS> requested by you was posted successfully. Journal entry details are as follows:

• • Document number: <VBKPF-BELNR>
  • Company Code: <VBKPF-BUKRS>
  • Fiscal Year: <VBKPF-GJAHR>
  • Amount: <VBSEGD-WRBTR>
  • Document Currency: <VBKPF- WAERS>
  • GBU: Derive from profit center standard hierarchy via profit center used in highest-value line item.
  • Profit Centre: <VBSEGS-PRCTR>
  • Profit Center Description: <CEPC-LTEXT>
  • Document Header Text: <VBKPF-BKTXT>

• Notifications to journal processor:

The work item shall be routed back to the journal processor in case errors are encountered during background processing of the journal after initial approval of the document by the journal approver. The following message shall be output:

Subject line: 'G/L Journal <BELNR><BUKRS> contains errors – action required.'

Body Text:

'G/L Journal <BELNR><BUKRS> raised by you contains errors. The following errors were encountered:

<Error Message 1>

<Error Message 2>

Perform the necessary corrections and re-submit the G/L journal for approval.'

• Approval/Rejection via Fiori application ‘My Inbox’

SAP standard Fiori application ‘My Inbox’ shall be the user interface used for approving/rejecting parked documents. 

• Substitution of user ID in document header:

The user ID of the journal approver shall be substituted into the document header (BKPF-USNAM) once the document has been approved and posted successfully. This is needed to enable easy identification of the approvers for follow-ups if audit queries arise.

• Fiori push notifications are required for this workflow:

The following Fiori push notifications shall be sent to by the workflow templates:

• Notification to approver once document got ‘submitted’ for review/approval.
• Notification to requestor once document got rejected by approver.
• Notification to requestor and processor once document got posted by approver.

Configuration Requirements

• Teams and Responsibilities may need to be configured via Fiori app ('F3932') if the technology chosen for this workflow development is leveraging on SAP standard's flexible business workflow.
• Trigger conditions and other settings may need to maintained via Fiori app ('F2720") if the technology chosen for this workflow development is leveraging on SAP standard's flexible business workflow.

SAP Standard Workflow

a) Classic Workflow Framework (via SWDD):

In the classic workflow administration framework in S/4 HANA, the following SAP standard workflow templates could be leveraged to meet the business and process requirements:

WS10000051 - Main workflow template to release parked documents.

WS10000052 - Sub-workflow template for single-tier approval of parked documents.

Functionally, these standard workflow templates activate a workflow messaging to the approvers once a document has been parked in the system. The standard workflow template does not lock the document once it has been submitted for approval. It can be re-submitted multiple times which leads to data inconsistencies in the approver’s inbox. 

Furthermore, the standard workflow template triggers the workflow notification upon initial parking of a document in the system. At parking stage, the system doesn’t perform thorough data integrity checks hence technically incomplete documents can be routed for approval potentially leading to a high number of rejections and documents in error.

Standard workflow templates also do not notify the requestor once a document has been approved and posted. A notification shall be sent to the requestor of the journal entry once the requested documents have been successfully posted in the system.

As SAP standard workflow templates do not issue error notifications to either the requestor nor the approver, further enhancements are required to enable such (push) notifications.

SAP standard also doesn’t support agent determination based on LC2 amounts (group currency) which is required to simplify the global threshold definitions across all Syensqo entities. It also doesn't support routing of invoices based on the new organizational chart designs introduced as part of the SyWay program.

Subject line and work item text also require additions (e.g. include Profit Center in subject line) which is not foreseen nor supported by SAP standard workflow templates in the classic workflow framework.

b) Flexible business workflows in S/4 HANA

In S/4 HANA a new generation of workflows was introduced under the umbrella term flexible business workflows. Among the available workflow applications provided by SAP in standard is Fiori application 'F2720 - Manage Workflows for Journal Entry Verification - In General Ledger' for defining triggers, start conditions and approval routing paths. Along with this new workflow definition application, a separate Fiori application is provided by SAP to maintain review and approval responsibilities under 'F3932 - Manage Teams and Responsibilities For Journal Entry Verification - In General Ledger'. Individuals or teams can be assigned as responsible reviewers/approvers for the journal entry workflows defined in the system.

Triggers and Start Conditions

The workflow shall be triggered once a document gets successfully ‘Saved as completed’ by the invoice processor. Users may directly press the ‘Save as completed’ button rather than parking the document first and saving it as completed in a separate step so the workflow shall be triggered upon saving the document as completed regardless of whether it has been parked in a preceding step or not.

Approvers/Reviewers shall not be given editing rights to the source document. Any changes to the document must be performed by the invoice processor to achieve clear segregation of duties.

Parked documents for sundry customer invoices will all be created via Fiori application 'FB70 -  Create Outgoing Invoices'.

Below a list of business objects that can be used for this workflow process:

Process Overview

The flow below is the standard process flow for a single-tier approval of parked documents in SAP (the required 2-tier approval workflow requested for this custom workflow will have another review loop compared to the below illustration but conceptually the document flow will be identical):

Note: Mail in this context refers to the workflow notification sent to the ‘My Inbox’ application of the approver. It will not trigger emails to the approvers.

1.) Business Scenario for regular invoices/invoices:

• AR Invoice Processor (initiator) parks the document.
• Workflow is triggered on ‘Completed’ event (document must be showing status ‘Saved as Completed’ to trigger workflow).
• A SAP Inbox notification will be sent to the reviewer/approver.
• Invoice gets either approved or rejected by the approver.
• When rejected, the document flows back to the processor for further adjustment and re-submission.
• When approved, the document shall be posted in the background. A notification shall be sent out to the requestor's and processor's inbox in SAP that the document has been approved and posted.

 2.) Business Scenario for Argentina e-Invoicing: 

• AR Processor (initiator) parks the document.
• Workflow is triggered on ‘Save as Completed’ event (document must be showing status ‘Saved as Completed’ to trigger workflow).
• SAP Inbox notification will be sent to the approver.
• If company code is not an Argentina-based entity, invoice is either approved or rejected by the reviewers/approvers.
• If company code is an Argentina-based entity, e-document XML is sent to the Argentina government for validation via the EDICOM e-invoicing portal.
• When rejected by the approver, or when the government portal returns failed validation result, the document flows back to the AR processor for further adjustment and re-submission
• When approved and government portal validation result is successful, the document shall be posted in the background. A notification shall be sent out to the AR processor's and AR requestor's inbox in SAP that the document has been approved and posted.

Workflow Steps

Error Handling

Should there be any errors returned by the workflow processing logics at agent determination stage, a notification should be sent to the workflow administrator to perform follow-up actions. 

The work item shall be routed back to the invoice processor in case errors are encountered during background processing of the invoice after initial approval of the document by the tax reviewer or the invoice approver. At the same the invoice document should be unlocked to be able to perform the necessary corrections before re-submission.

All error messages generated by or encountered by the workflow during background processing must be easily understandable to facilitate effective trouble-shooting and must be accessible via the workflow logs.

Deadline Monitoring

Deadline monitoring is not active for parked document approval workflows. Backlogs of parked documents in the system which are still awaiting release will be cleared out at the end of every month as part of the period-end closing activities. SAP has standard reports available to monitor outstanding parked documents.

Substitution/Forwarding/Reserving

Forwarding of workflows for the approval of parked documents is permitted. Forwarding should only be possible to approvers of the same HR level or above. It is the responsibility of the user to forward the work item to a person with sufficient authorizations to post in the company code of the invoice document.

Substitutions will be used especially in cases where users are on leave. The substitution rules should only allow for routing of the work item to a proxy of the same HR position/rank. The substitution rules should follow the rules and principles defined in the SoD principles introduced as part of the SyWay program.

Dependencies & Constraints

• Usage of the approval functions in ‘My inbox’ on mobile, handheld devices shall follow the overall guidelines of the UI strategy defined for the SyWay program.

Volumetrics

The expected volume of customer invoices subjected to this workflow is low. The primary reason for this is that the sundry customer invoice processing via FI-AR is only resorted to in exception cases in the SyWay process designs. The primary route for customer invoices remains the billing process via the Sales and Distribution module, also in S/4 HANA.

Testing

How to Test

The testing of this workflow needs to be conducted when the standard workflow has been enhanced to meet the specified functional and business process requirements.

Some temporary assignments in the user decision table will be required for agent determination.

All invoice documents shall be parked via Fiori application 'FB70 - Create Outgoing Invoices'.

Consult the functional consultant to receive a sample invoice document that can be used as reference invoice document for mass testing purposes.

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

Development Details

Package

Workflow Implementation

Other Development Objects

Appendix

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