Explaining the Process Steps and Prerequisites for Intercompany Billing for Service Documents

A customer orders a service (through a service order) or a repair (through a repair order) from company code 1010 (DE). Another company code (1710 US) is involved in delivering this service by sending a service technician to the customer.

Company code 1710 (US) posts expenses on the service order. These expenses are transformed into debit memo requests. An intercompany invoice with reference to the debit memo request is created by company code 1710 (US). The intercompany invoice is also posted automatically to Accounts Payables (AP) in company code 1010.

Scope item Intercompany for Service Documents (53Y) uses company codes in countries Germany (DE) and the United States (US) as defaults. If you want to set-up intercompany processes for other countries, you need to adapt country-specific data as mentioned in scope item Intercompany Billing for Cross-Company Cost Accounting Postings (4AN).

Before the scenario presented in this scope item can be tested, the following business conditions must be met:

• Scope item Intercompany Billing for Cross-Company Cost Accounting Postings (4AN) needs to be activated.
  Note

  You do not need to complete the step 'Setting up Internal Cost Rates', since this is done in scope item Intercompany Billing for Service Documents (53Y) itself.
• For scope item Service Order Management and Monitoring (3D2), the content for both company codes (DE and US) needs to be activated in order for the intercompany billing to work. An example is the pricing procedures, which are required for both company codes.

Once this is done, the set-up requirements as detailed below need to be met.

Regarding the intercompany sales order:

You then need to assign each involved employee to a cost center: all employees can be uploaded into the system via an import app.

Next, you need to maintain all relevant cost rates:

Another requirement is the correct maintenance of the cost element groups:

To block intercompany postings for certain company codes:

The next figures show some system examples of these set-up requirements.

The figure shows the SAP Fiori app called Manage Cost Rates - Services which is available for an overhead accountant in SAP S/4HANA Cloud (use template SAP_BR_OVERHEAD_ACCOUNTANT to create a role for an overhead accountant in the system).

This app can be used to maintain both the intra- and the intercompany cost rates. The first line in the figure is the intracompany cost rate for company code 1710 (US). This is where the service technician is from. The second line is the intercompany cost rate between company code 1710 (US) and 1010 (DE). Both entries must exist, otherwise no margin is calculated. It is best to maintain the intercompany rate for company code 1710 (US) in the currency of the receiving company code 1010 (DE). In this case, there is no exchange rate impact.

If, however, exchange rates are required, create role GL_ACCOUNTANT (based on template SAP_BR_GL_ACCOUNTANT) and use the SAP Fiori app called Currency Exchange Rates to maintain the exchange rates.

Use the SAP Fiori app called Edit Cost Element Groups to make sure that the required cost elements are assigned to the correct cost element groups (see figure).

SAP has already assigned the mentioned cost elements to cost element groups. A customer only needs to change this if they have added new cost elements to the system.

Using the Configuration Expert - Business Process Configuration (BPC_EXPERT) role (which can be created based on template role SAP_BR_BPC_EXPERT), it is possible to navigate to: Finance → Overhead Cost Management → Actual Postings and then select the option Block Intercompany Postings.

For a company code, you can then either allow all intercompany postings, or they can be blocked. it is also possible to allow only listed intercompany postings for a company code.

If an executing service employee in a service order is assigned to another company code and the intercompany posting is blocked or not allowed for the company code of this employee, the system reacts with an error message.

To solve this issue, you can assign a new executing service employee defined for company code 1710. Another option would be to change the configuration to allow intercompany postings or at least to allow intercompany postings between the company codes 1010 and 1710.

In SAP S/4HANA Cloud - Service this check is performed for service items and for expense items.

Another prerequisite for the process supported by scope item 53Y is an intercompany sales order. The figure shows such an intercompany sales order. It needs to be in place before the process can be executed.

Using the Internal Sales Representative - Professional Services role, the app List Sales Orders - Intercompany app can be used to check whether the intercompany sales order already exists. If not, the Create Sales Orders - Intercompany app can be used to create one.

The sold-to party used represents company code 1010 (DE) and the material used, describes the different services provided to the customer.