In the financial planning area, SAP S/4HANA contains the following:
SAP Accounting
SAP Cash Management
SAP BPC for SAP S/4HANA Finance
In comparison with SAP ERP, the SAP S/4HANA based accounting solution contains the following:
New or reworked accounting processes
New user interfaces
A simplified data architecture with new tables, and so on
Line items as the only source for operative reporting and planning
You want to plan your project costs using a Web-based, flexible user interface that supports both the complete flexibility offered by spreadsheets and the integrated and transparent calculation process available in SAP S/4HANA. To achieve this target, you are using the new features available in SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC).
When planning project costs, there is often a business dilemma as to whether to use the complete flexibility offered by spreadsheets that requires users to build models and coordinate the planning process. It also requires data entry in SAP ERP, which is transparent to all users with access to the relevant transactions and reports, but is outdated in terms of the UI and inflexible in terms of the data model. The project planning functions in SAP ERP provide the flexibility of spreadsheets and minimize user input.
In planning, businesses frequently must decide whether to use the complete flexibility offered by spreadsheets, but force users to build models, coordinate the planning process, and enter data in SAP S/4hANA. This system is transparent to all users with access to the relevant transactions and reports, but features an outdated UI and inflexible data model. Dedicated planning tools, such as SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation), offer strong modeling capabilities, but the capital expense plan has to be transferred to the operative projects for active availability control. Master data checks against the WBS elements, version, fiscal year, and other objects are used to keep the date consistent between SAP BPC and SAP S/4HANA.
You want to plan your project costs using a Web-based, flexible user interface that supports both the complete flexibility offered by spreadsheets and the integrated and transparent calculation process available in SAP S/4HANA. To achieve this target, you are using the new features available in SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC).
SAP ERP integration is ensured because all master data is read directly from SAP ERP and validated to ensure that planning is allowed.
Basic Cost Planning Functionality
The basic functionality of cost planning includes the following:
Hierarchical planning in Web Dynpro
Microsoft Excel using the SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office client
Data integration in project planning
An alternative to current planning capabilities within SAP S/4HANA Accounting
Access to actual and master data in real time from SAP S/4HANA without data replication
An integrated data model based on new FI-CO documents to allow flexibility and simulations during the planning process
SAP BPC is triggered by SAP BW. It is a content-based planning solution utilizing the BW function built in SAP S/4HANA. The following functional advantages exist:
Line items driven by HANA
Fast plan data reporting and plan/actual comparisons
Fast plan data processing through planning functions of Planning Application Kit (PAK)
Integrated FI and CO
Excellent bottom-up and top-down planning capabilities
Integration of data from high level expense group level down to the most detailed market segmentations
Plan data available at any level without the need for replication between applications
Seamless upgrade possible
SAP BPC for SAP S/4HANA comes with delivered SAP BW content and BW Integrated Planning for SAP S/4HANA/PAK content. BW Integrated Planning for HANA is BW Integrated Planning for SAP S/4HANA, which is also called Planning Application Kit (PAK). BW is the tool with which planning queries (content and customer queries) are created. They can be compared to planning layouts.
BW Integrated Planning/PAK is the tool with the help of which planning structures such as content planning functions (and also customer-specific planning functions) are created. Working with content, SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office is used as a Microsoft Excel based content planning front end. The figure shows the delivered content workbook for project planning. Saving plan data using the Save button in the delivered workbook saves plan data to a delivered content info provider in BW. A retraction of plan data from this info provider back to the SAP S/4HANA back-end system plan data tables, for example, COSP_BAK, has to be executed separately afterwards.
SAP delivers a set of sample XLS workbooks. You are encouraged to use them as a reference when creating your own workbooks.
To copy plan data from Analysis to the S/4HANA table, SAP provides dedicated XLS workbooks along with a PAK FOX formula that's called a Function Module.
A further content workbook is the retraction workbook. This delivers preconfigured functionality to retract plan data from the delivered BW info provider to the relevant SAP S/4HANA back-end system table. The figure shows this workbook. These two buttons are important: Copy BPC to ERP and Copy ERP to BPC.
Both buttons contain delivered BW Integrated Planning/PAK planning functions for extraction and retraction. Using the Copy BPC to ERP button, you can write back data to ERP, and using the Copy ERP to BPC button, you can extract existing plan data from ERP into the delivered info provider for plan data and continue planning in SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office.
Before you can plan in SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office, it is necessary to create a category for planning. Working with the delivered BW content for planning, the Category field is the BW content field for CO versions in SAP S/4HANA. The Category field is part of the delivered info provider for planning. The characteristic value/key ACT01 has to be added to the category table because category ACT01 is mapped (hard coded) to Version 0 in ERP. For planning, you can add as many characteristic values as you want. These categories are offered in the input help for the category variable (in the analysis workbooks).
Before the end user can plan using the delivered workbooks, the administrator has to add the Set/Get parameters described above and add the relevant parameter values. Note that the controlling area has to be set in advance in the user settings, so you can open the delivered planning structures.
Note
The ledger is automatically set by the ledger assigned to controlling version 0. The chart of accounts is always the chart of accounts set in the controlling area.
The Cost Simulation functionality enables you to quickly identify the impact a change of primary costs (recorded at lowest level) has on top level. This helps you to find the most suitable cost structure. The main advantage of this solution is its high performance: A user can simulate a change in basic data and immediately see the impact.
Note
It is not the goal of the Cost Simulation functionality to provide identical functionality to allocations in CO.
Planning Functions
Modeling is supported by activating SAP BW Integrated Planning on top of SAP S/4HANA (no extra system needed) to allow the use of planning functions.
The following planning functions are available with cost planning:
Delivered planning functions:
COPY: Copies values from the referenced version and year.
REVALUATE: Changes all values by a certain percentage.
Customer-defined planning functions: Additional planning functions can be defined.
Microsoft Excel: Planning functions can be executed in Microsoft Excel using SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office.