Explaining Account Assignment Derivation

The derivations described in this lesson are for the following:

• Commitment Documents

  Commitment documents such as purchase requisition, purchase order, and earmarked funds.

• Financial Documents

  For financial documents, this lesson focuses on budgetary relevant lines (for example, expenditure and revenues). Non-budgetary lines, such as liabilities or bank lines, are covered in the chapter document splitting.

• Master/Transactional Data

  Other master/transactional data such as assets, CLM contracts, HR personal, treasury instruments, time sheet tasks, and so on.

  For these objects, the account assignments are derived (or entered) and stored. In later steps, these objects generate commitments or FI documents. The account assignment stored in these objects will then be used into the asset master. Later on all asset transactions (for example, acquisitions, deprecations, and alike) are populated with the fund from the asset master.

Line items in commitment and financial documents are treated differently when it comes to derivations, depending on the type of the line item. The type of the line item has been derived from the G/L account in this line item. Therefore, it is important that a line item is first populated with a G/L account before any derivation can take place.

The main indicator in the G/L Account master is the budget consumption type.

The following overarching rules apply to G/L accounts:

G/L account: PSM attributes for budgeting:

• The GL account attributes are maintained in the G/L account master data under the Public Sector Management Data tab.
• The budget consumption type of the G/L account is pre-delivered and cannot be changed.

1. Described only under cash flow reporting
2. Described only under grants management

Account assignment can be either:

• Derived automatically without the ability for the user to change the values. The user will not see the resulting account assignment on the input screen, but only see the result using reporting.

  Example: The budget account is always derived automatically and only available through reporting.

• Derived automatically without the ability for the user to change the values. The user sees the resulting account assignment on the input screen.

  Example: A fixed fund assignment is set up in the cost center. When this cost center is being used in an expense line, the user cannot overwrite this fixed assignment.

• Derived automatically as proposal. The user is able to change the proposed account assignment.

  Example: A (non-fixed) fund assignment is set-up in the cost center. When this cost center is being used in an expense line, the user sees the fund assignment, but can change/overwrite it to a different fund.

• Entered manually without any derivation. The user has to enter the account assignment as no derivation rule applies.

  Example: No fund assignment is set up in the cost center. When this cost center is being used, the user must enter the fund manually (otherwise an error message appears).

The following is a list of sources where account assignment can be stored in order to be transferred for population of commitment and actual documents.

The derivation rules are:

• Either system-delivered (hard-coded) and cannot be influenced by the user (for example, derivation for budget accounts)
• Or can be influenced by the user, for example, by adding a fund as a fixed or non-fixed assignment to the cost center
• Or can be set up through configuration (for example, using the substitution rule)

Paradigm for the SAP S/4HANA Cloud version: most derivations work with the standard system-delivered rule without configuration. Configurations can be used to deviate from the standard behavior.

The budget account is taken 1:1 from the G/L account for all line items with budget consumption types 95,99. The budget account is always derived and cannot be entered.

Example: For a cost posting to account 61002000, the budget account is determined as 61002000. This cannot be influenced.

• For assets, there is a specific configuration called Budget Account Derivation for Assets. It is possible to overwrite a different budget account.

  Example: An asset acquisition or purchase order posting to a balance sheet account for office equipment 16105000 will use the account 80005000 (expense for office equipment) instead.

• For down payments, the budget account is used either from referenced commitment documents or from a specific configuration called Budget Account Derivation for Down Payments without PO reference.

  Example: A down payment with reference to a purchase order using G/L account 51100000 (cost for raw material) will post to budget account 5110000 instead of the down payment liability account.

• The derivation rule for these three account assignments is identical and mainly done through sources.
• In addition to the ability to enter these assignments, all derivation sources described before (except G/L account) apply to these account assignments:
  • Cost center and WBS element
  • External data such as HR master, assets, CLM contracts, and so on
  • Predecessor documents such as earmarked funds and purchase order/requisition
  • Substitution tool
• When multiple derivation sources occur, the following priorities apply:
  • For asset lines, these account assignments are always taken from the asset master (no exception).
  • For other expenditure lines and master data with cost center and WBS elements as sources, certain priorities apply (this will be explained further later on).

Using the Manage Cost Centers app, you can define default values for the PSM account assignment elements in a cost center master record. If you also set the Fixed Assignment indicator for a PSM field, the default value can no longer be changed manually when postings are made to that cost center.  If the indicator is not set, the system proposes the default values, but these can be overwritten when postings are made.

The previous figure shows an example of how the PSM field values (fund, functional area, and grant) can be proposed from a cost center master record or entered manually when a posting is made:

• The functional area value is derived from the cost center master data and cannot be changed manually during posting because the fixed indicator is set in the cost center master record.
• The fund value is also derived from the cost center master data. Since the fixed indicator is not set, it is a default value for the fund that can be changed manually for postings.
• No grant value is defined in the cost center master record, that is no value is derived from the cost center master data. The grant value must be entered manually during postings.

The following figures show the assignment of PSM account assignments and the fixed flags for cost centers and WBS elements.

If a situation occurs where a cost center and WBS element are present in the same posting line item, and both supply a PSM account assignment, then the following priority (depicted previously) is followed.

• These rules apply for commitments, actuals, and master data derivations.
• Real/statistical indicators are described in controlling.
• (*) PSM account assignment might be in line already from manual input, predecessor document, or API call.

Example: A document is posted against a statistical WBS element (assigned to functional area FA1) and a real cost center (assigned to functional area FA2).

No functional area is manually input.

The system derives functional area FA2.

• As the budget period needs to have the same frequency as the fund, the fund needs to be derived before the budget period.

• When the fund is available, the system uses the budget consumption date and the frequency to derive exactly one budget period (as it is not possible to have several budget periods for the same date/same frequency).

  Example: Fund1 has a yearly frequency. The budget consumption date is the 01/01/2020. The system derives the budget period "2020" automatically.

• If the fund is changed and as a result the frequency changes (for example from yearly to overall), the system tries to automatically change the budget period as well.

  Example: The user has used an internal fund for a grant posting with yearly frequency, and the system derived the budget period 2020. Now, the user changed the fund to an external fund with overall frequency. Then the system automatically adjusts the budget period to OVERALL. These changes only occur in documents that are not yet posted.

• Budget periods can differ from the budget consumption date through inheritance through the document chain (upward/downward adjustment rules might apply) or (if allowed) through manual adjustment.

  Example: A goods receipt in fiscal year 2021 inherits the budget period 2020 from a prior year purchase order.

• Refer as well to the specific chapter Describing Year-End Processing.

For every budget-relevant posting where the budget consumption type of the G/L account is set to 99, 95, or 61 (expenses/revenues/down payments), the cost center is a required field once PSM has been activated. As a result, the cost center must be populated in all these lines. The lines can be distinguished into the following:

• Cost lines

  These lines are populated through manual input (or non-PSM derivations/substitutions).

• Down payments

  These lines are populated through the cost center from commitments or using manual input (for example, in down payment requests).

• Revenue lines

  These lines must be populated through manual input (for example, for a FI-AR invoice) or using substitution rules (for example, for an SD bill).

• Balance sheet account lines

  These lines must be populated through PSM derivations. The main sources are as follows:

  • For asset balance sheet line items, the cost center from the asset master
  • For warehouse balance sheet line items, the cost center from PSM configuration (see specific derivations)

For cost or revenue lines where only a WBS element is entered in the posting, the standard delivered (hard-coded) PSM derivation derives automatically the cost center from the WBS element.

Customers can create their own rules with the substitution tool (available for user BPC_EXPERT). The business context for PSM account assignment derivation is "Public Sector" and the event is "Coding Block for Public Sector Management".

Rules must be active to be executed:

• A rule consists of a precondition and a substitution section.- All preconditions need to be fulfilled in order to process the substitution section.- For the precondition, many fields can be used as parameters. Through associations, it is possible to use further attributes of these fields (for example, choose the asset master and any field of the asset master for preconditions). It is also possible to use functions such as substrings and concatenations.- For substitutions it is possible to overwrite existing values, for example, entered manually by the user or derived in an earlier step.
• It is not possible to overwrite fixed assignments from standard delivered rules using the substitution tool (for example, from fixed assignments in the cost center, or the asset master cannot be overwritten by the substitution tool).
• It is possible to trace results during postings. The trace shows SAP standard rules and substitution rules side-by-side through the Substitution/Validation Logs app.

The following specific derivations exist (more details appear in specific sections).

For some controlling transactions (for example, universal allocations or settlements), the system reads account assignments from existing postings and populates them into sender lines. Specific rules apply for the populations of these lines (for more details, see the chapter on controlling integration).

For asset management all actual and commitment postings are always populated with the fund, grant, functional area, and cost center from the asset master. Budget accounts can exceptionally be derived using the following configuration:

For down payments, it is possible to derive a specific budget account (and cash origin account) for down payments without commitment reference.

For warehouse balance sheet accounts and actual and commitment postings, the PSM account assignments are populated through the following configuration:

For FI-CAC (Contract Accounting Cloud), all derivations are done through a specific substitution context during the transfer of FI-CA postings into FI-GL. PSM account assignments are not derived and stored in FI-CA.

For SD billing, the substitution tool (with business context "Coding Block") is mandatory to derive a cost center. The cost center can then be used to derive further required account assignments (for example, the fund). The condition ReferenceDocumentType (Field) Equal (Operator) to VBRK (Value) is used in the order to process this rule only for billing.