Understanding the Process Steps and Additional Configuration Requirements for Subscription Management with Sales Billing (57Z)

The process steps for Subscription Management with Sales Billing (57Z) are for a large part equal to the process steps as described for the Solution Order scope item (4GT). See also the unit in this course concerning that scope item. What is specific to scope item Subscription Management with Sales Billing (57Z), is that now a subscription (billing) item is integrated into the Solution Order (4GT) process. And processing such a subscription (billing) item, has its own requirements. These are described in the next slides and topics.

In the scenario supported by scope item 57Z, multiple systems are used: SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition can be used to trigger the creation of subscriptions (for example as part of a solution order) and SAP Subscription Billing can be used to manage these subscriptions and to e.g. create the billing data for these subscriptions.

Subscriptions in SAP Subscription Billing can also be created via an application programming interface (API).

SAP Subscription Billing manages the subscription life-cycle, charges recurring rates, prices usage data, and prepares the billing data at the end of each billing cycle. The billing data is forwarded to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition - Sales Billing where tax amounts and other billing-related information is added and the (convergent) invoice for the customer is created.

Note

A prerequisite for integration of subscriptions in a solution order, is that scope item Solution Order (4GT) is activate in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.

Note

Please choose the link below to execute a simulation/an exercise that contains an example of a process where a subscription item is integrated into a solution order.

Note also that this recording was done in a previous release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition. The look and feel of release 2302 of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition is slightly different, but the process steps and all info on all screens is actually still the same.

ExerciseStart Exercise

All process steps starting from the solution order, via the subscription in SAP Subscription Billing, up until the creation of the billing document request (BDR) are shown.

In order to activate scope item Subscription Management with Sales Billing (57Z), customers need to perform some additional configuration steps. These configuration steps are customer-specific and they can therefore not be pre-delivered by SAP.

The following figure provides an overview of the required systems and process and configuration steps.

To be able to work in SAP Subscription Billing with an SAP S/4HANA business partner (with the role of customer), this business partner needs to be replicated to SAP Subscription Billing as a customer. This is done using SAP Cloud Platform Integration.

Once this is done, a subscription can be created for this customer (in SAP Subscription Billing) and this subscription can then (for example) be included in a solution order (in SAP S/4HANA Cloud). You start by creating the solution order and you then add the subscription for the customer as an item to it.

Since the subscription is billed periodically, billing data needs to be maintained for the subscription (in SAP Subscription Billing). Since this billing data is also needed in SAP S/4HANA Cloud to be able to actually bill the customer, the SAP Cloud Platform Integration solution is used once again to replicate the billing data out of SAP Subscription Billing back into SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

An external billing document request (EBDR) is created in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, which can be included in a convergent invoice for the customer. Creating the convergent invoice and posting it to SAP S/4HANA - Finance concludes this process.

Business partner are replicated out of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition - Sales into SAP Subscription Billing via integration with the Business Technology Platform. The (customer) business partners in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition must contain the following information in order for replication to work:

• Company or first and last name
• Address information (for example e-mail and country/region)

The customers in SAP Subscription Billing must have the following information for the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition replication to work:

• Postal code
• City
• State

Note

In SAP Subscription Billing, every business partner has only one address. SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition however allows multiple addresses. If you replicate customers from SAP Subscription Billing to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, all original, non-default addresses in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition will be deleted and the default address will be overwritten by the default address from SAP Subscription Billing.

Note

Only the following business partner roles can be replicated from SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition to SAP Subscription Billing:

• FLCU01 (Customer)
• FLCU00 (Customer (Financial Accounting))

• If digital payments need to be set-up, scope item Digital Payments (1S2) needs to be activated. This is an optional step.
• The Cloud Integration service for integration with the SAP Business Technology Platform needs to be configured. One example of a step that needs to be configured here is value mapping. Value mapping of fields is needed between SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition and SAP Subscription Billing (where the billing data based on the subscription(s) is generated) for a list of specific fields. Another example step is maintaining the so-called Replication Model.
• SAP Subscription Billing supports two tax integration scenarios with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition: the net amount scenario and the gross amount scenario. Both scenarios require maintenance of sales area data mapping in SAP Subscription Billing, as the sales area will be directly used in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.
• If extra fields are required (Extensibility), the responsible integration flow needs to be modified to update the mapping of these fields between SAP Subscription Billing and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.

In SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, a user is needed with access to business catalog SAP_CORE_BC_COM (Communication Management). This can, for example, be a user with a role created based on template role SAP_BR_ADMINISTRATOR (Administrator).

A Cloud Integration tenant (plus user) is needed for the replication steps shown in the figure. The communication service user needs the following roles:

• AuthGroup.IntegrationDeveloper
• AuthGroup.BusinessExpert
• esbmessagestorage.read
• ESBMessaging.send

Communication arrangements for the following scenario's need to be created:

• Business Partner, Customer and Supplier Integration (SAP_COM_0008)
• Subscription and Provider Contract Integration (SAP_COM_0642)
• Enterprise Eventing Integration (SAP_COM_0092)
• Subscription Billing - Billing Document Request Integration via CPI (SAP_COM_0095)

Note

All prerequisites and configuration steps here serve as examples of what effort is required to set-up the scenario as supported by scope item Subscription Management with Sales Billing (57Z). Much more information and many more details are provides via http://help.sap.com.