SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting release 2111 is generally available
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We in SAP Product Engineering team are glad to announce the general availability of SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting release 2111 on October 27, 2021. We are continuously providing new capabilities to help you solve today’s challenges with our innovative cloud software. The latest version of our next-generation consolidation product delivers on a series of new and enhanced features to help you run your group close process better. For release 2111, we focused our development effort particularly on master data, consolidation rules, and SAP Group Reporting Data Collection (GRDC) apps:
- Increased flexibility in the consolidation process with consolidation unit extensibility
- Enhanced core consolidation rules including more flexibility in source and destination rules
- Improved “Import Consolidation Master Data” app with check and import all feature
- Use time and version-dependent as well as additional fields in the "Define Selections" app
- Reinforced guidance and controls in the additional master data fields configuration
- Enhanced movement flow management: assign a default subitem to a subitem category
- Reinforced audit capabilities with new traceability log in the GRDC "Data Mapping" app
- Enabling visual controls in the GRDC "Forms" app with conditional formatting
- Improved collection of text comments in the GRDC "Forms" app
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Increased flexibility in the consolidation process with consolidation unit extensibility
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Consolidation units attributes are key in driving the consolidation process. By grouping together like consolidation unit items under common attributes, you can already tailor the process steps of data collection, currency translation, elimination, and analysis around these groupings. Very often you would like to keep maintenance of your configuration to a minimum. Preferably you do not want to touch the configuration at all. So the most you would like to do is to maintain master data, which happens frequently. The new consolidation unit master data extensibility delivered in 2111 helps you increase this flexibility in your consolidation process.
With 2111, we provide the possibility to create customer attributes. After creating new custom fields and field values for the consolidation unit master data with the “Custom fields” app, you can add your new fields to the consolidation unit UI or the filter bar. Then you can use your new attributes in many different steps of the consolidation process, for example in the definition of selections and with that in many places where selections are consumed, in conditions of validation rules, as additional information in analytical reports, or simply to easily identify a certain subset of consolidation units during master data maintenance.
You can create your own additional customer individual consolidation unit attributes using the "Custom Fields" app. The attributes you create can be Time and version independent or Time and version dependent (see the screenshot above).
Once you created your own specific attributes, you can consume them in the “Define Consolidation Units” app, as depicted in the screenshot below. In the app, you can maintain attribute value assignments for these custom defined cons unit attributes, display assigned attribute values, and filter consolidation units with particular attribute values.
Your custom defined consolidation unit attributes may be consumed / used for example in selections, validation rules and analytics apps. Let's take two examples: selections and validations. For the selections, you can define consolidation units' selections based on your own attributes using the "Define Selections" app (see the screenshot below).
You can also leverage the consolidation unit extensibility for your controls in the "Define Validation Rules" app. This helps you maintain totals validation rules which make use of all custom defined cons unit attributes. In the example below, you define a totals validation rule that ensures all consolidation units which are not a production company should have a year end zero balance on Finished Goods (FS item 131500). In other words, only production companies should have any finished goods. Anything else should raise a warning.
These are just a few examples of how the consolidation unit master data extensibility can help you increase your consolidation process flexibility - there would be many more.
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Enhanced core consolidation rules including more flexibility in source and destination rules
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When you define your consolidation rules, flexibility is key to select the exact source and target dimension values of your automated elimination. For some rules, you sometimes need to be able to go beyond the standard features, and tailor your rules so that they exactly fit your requirement. With 2111, you can now change the dimension values of the source and destination in reclassification postings / consolidation rules using a BAdI (Business Add-In). A BAdI is an enhancement you can add to the standard version of SAP S/4HANA for group reporting. You can create BAdI's to accommodate requirements that are specific to your company's consolidation process.
For example, let's say you want to define custom and additional field values (such as material group, brand or cost centers) in the reclassification / consolidation rules:
- Clear the value (Cost Center = initial)
- Select a value (Profit Center = ABCD)
- Inherit the value from the Partner field in the Trigger (consolidation unit, profit center, segment...)
You can now define your own BAdI to do this, adding more flexibility and precision in your consolidation rule.
With 2111 you also benefit from a refined goodwill handling in step acquisition in Activity-based Consolidation of Investments:
- Purchase method - A negative goodwill during step acquisition was booked whereas it must be directly eliminated because it is an equity transaction. As of release 2111, the positive or negative goodwill during a step acquisition is now directly eliminated and posted to 310000 Goodwill elimination. The system doesn't post the value of the goodwill to the statistical net income, so it won't be considered for the calculation of revenue / expense during the total divestiture.
- Equity method (no change) - The positive difference (goodwill) is eliminated and posted to FS item 171000 Investments for using equity method. The negative difference is written off FS item 516000 Gain on bargain purchase.
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Improved “Import Consolidation Master Data” app with check and import all feature
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With the "Import Consolidation Master Data" app you can import consolidation-related master data entries into SAP S/4HANA for group reporting. You can download a template file or a file with existing master data, enter or change the master data, and upload the completed file back to the app. You can then import the validated master data into the database.
With 2111, you benefit from an improved "Import Consolidation Master Data" app. On the details page of any master data entity in the app, you can now either check and/or import only master data records that have been selected in the list, or check and/or import all master data records that have been uploaded via Excel file, independently from any selection. This new feature helps you gain time, and makes your consolidation master data maintenance easier. See the illustration below for the financial statement items master data import.
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Enhanced "Define Selections" app: new fields now supported
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With 2111, you can make use of new fields in the “Define Selections” app. For “Consolidation Unit”, now the time- and version-dependent standard attributes are supported. Furthermore, all custom attributes for cons units (time- and version-dependent as well as time- and version-independent custom attributes) are available under the node “Custom Attribute”. Also, completely new entities “Supplier” (with “Value” and “Hierarchy Node”) and “Record Type” (for ACDOCU records) are supported.
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Reinforced guidance and controls in the additional master data fields configuration
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With 2111, you can now avoid inconsistencies in additional master data field configuration. It's not possible any more to maintain the settings for Enable Inputs, Enable Master Data, and Enable Hierarchy for a partner object such as Partner Cost Center, Partner Profit Center, Partner Business Area, Partner Functional Area, or Partner Segment.
In 2111, these settings can be maintained on the original object - for example Cost Center, Profit Center, Business Area, Functional Area, or Segment - and are kept in sync on the respective partner object. The main background is, that anyhow there is no sperate master data or global hierarchies for partner objects, instead they use the master data and global hierarchies of the respective original objects. So whenever master data creation or hierarchy maintenance is allowed (let's say for cost center as an example), this will also be available for partner cost center. Regarding posting of transaction data (“Enable Input”), whenever posting on the original dimension is allowed, it is also possible to post on the partner dimensions.
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Enhanced movement flow management: assign a default subitem to a subitem category
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Subitems are used to further breakdown the values recorded on financial statement items with transaction types or functional areas. For example, transaction type 900 (opening balance) is used for balance carryforward. You can also use subitem default values. For example, you can define subitem 915 (net variation) as a default value. When you post journal entries on a certain category of financial statement items, the subitem 915 is automatically selected.
Before 2111, the “Default Subitem” field was a read only field, you were not able to change the assigned default subitem of SAP delivered subitem categories (such as “Transaction Types” and “Functional Areas”). Even more important, you could create your own subitem categories including subitems but were not able to assign a default subitem. A ticket had to be created and SAP had to assign the requested default subitem for you.
With 2111, as a cloud customer, you now have full control over the “Default Subitem” field: you can edit it, and assign default subitems on your own.
For every subitem category (1), you can now assign a default subitem (2) by yourself.—
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Reinforced audit capabilities with new traceability log in the GRDC "Data Mapping" app
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The new traceability log:
- Provides a log from target to source data
- Generates an integrated log for selected target data records
- Underlines the mapping and filters that have rejected data
- Links the target data back to the source data
- Indicates the mapping rule path that were applied from source to target
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Enabling visual controls in the GRDC "Forms" app with conditional formatting
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When using 2111 with the latest GRDC "Forms" app version, you now benefit from a new conditional formatting capability which improves the visual validation check of data entered manually in the forms. When creating a form, you can define that a cell is formatted with conditional formatting when the form is run. Depending on the cell value, the font color and the background color can be green, orange, or red. You can use the new conditional formatting feature in combination with the front-end formula calculations and embed nice visual controls in your forms (see gif below).
You can also leverage the improved insertion mode with more possibilities in designing the forms, more guidance for the business end-users, making the forms easier to collect; define read-only cells in a form; and design row height and column width in a form.
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Improved collection of text comments in the GRDC "Forms" app
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When using 2111 in combination of the latest version of GRDC Forms comment feature, your collection of text comments can now be edited, updated and deleted. By editing a comment, even several users can exchange their thoughts. In addition, the new hover and pop-over navigation provides an improved user experience. Last, the UI is improved, and the comment indicators now show the state of a comment with color.
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More information
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- SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting 211 feature deck
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting 2111 on our SAP Help Portal
- See all SAP S/4HANA group reporting releases, see our Release blogs
- Get insight in our road map with the SAP Road Map Explorer
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