Exploring Maintenance Service

The following two options have been available to map service processes up to SAP S/4HANA 2021 OP:

• SAP S/4HANA Service 2021 OP
• SAP S/4HANA CS Compatibility pack 2030

The design of SAP S/4HANA Service eliminates functional redundancies and data replication. It unifies CRM and S/4HANA objects, so that unified objects share the same database representation, thus require no middleware. Furthermore, it identifies functional redundancies and is optimized by using the most suitable object / engine / process.

In order to help customers get the highest business value from their SAP S/4HANA systems, SAP has decided to align the usage rights for Customer Service as well as for Transport and Production Planning for Process Industries with the SAP Business Suite maintenance timeline. SAP is extending the usage rights exclusively for Customer Service, Transport, and Production Planning for Process Industries until the end of 2030.

Obviously, there are two almost independent options to map service processes as of SAP S/4HANA 2021 OP. This interim stage has been optimized and harmonized as you will find out now.

Maintenance Service is a service scenario built around the integration between SAP S/4HANA Service and maintenance management. With Maintenance Service, you can use asset management capabilities like maintenance planning and execution, along with commercial aspects of service like contract management, price agreements, credit check and so on.

The maintenance service order (MSO) and maintenance order (MO) are the core business transactions used in the maintenance service process. A maintenance service order can consist of a single or multiple maintenance service items. When a maintenance service item is released, a corresponding maintenance order is created.

Information that is relevant for both service and maintenance components, for example partner, planning plant, priority, reference objects, is shared between the maintenance service order and maintenance order. This allows the user to carry over the information from service into maintenance planning and execution.

A maintenance service plan is used to schedule periodic maintenance service orders, thereby facilitating preventive maintenance. The maintenance service process also supports the use of task lists. That is, a sequence of individual maintenance activities that must be repeatedly performed. Technical objects are managed in the master data of the SAP system as functional locations and pieces of equipment. A functional location represents the place at which a maintenance activity is to be performed. A piece of equipment is an individual, physical object that is to be maintained as an autonomous unit.

Service contracts are used to determine the terms of the service. A maintenance service quotation is used to provide a cost estimate for a requested service and a maintenance service order is used to manage a service that has been agreed upon by a service provider and a recipient. A maintenance service quotation or order can have multiple maintenance items.

The maintenance order that is created when the maintenance service item is released is used to plan and execute the service. The current status of the corresponding maintenance order is displayed by the execution status field in the service order.

After service completion, the billing process is carried out through the Dynamic Item Processor (DIP). A debit memo request is used to generate an invoice. The entire process works on item-based accounting. In this type of accounting, service transaction items are recognized as account assignment objects to which costs and revenues are posted.

You can use a maintenance service order to create and manage a service agreed by a service provider and a service recipient. This maintenance service order can be integrated with a maintenance order. Maintenance service orders contain all information needed to plan, execute, and bill a maintenance service.

Depending on your requirements, you can do the following:

• Create a maintenance service order by scheduling a maintenance service plan

• Create a maintenance service order as a follow-up transaction of another transaction (for example, a maintenance service quotation, or a service contract)

• Create a billable maintenance order when you release a maintenance service order

Maintenance Management involves the inspection, maintenance, and repair of a technical system. Maintenance Management does not include a billing process. However, in certain maintenance scenarios a maintenance order will need to be billed to an external service provider. Since this is not possible with a maintenance order, a corresponding maintenance service order is created. Using the maintenance service order you will be able to generate a billing document on completion of the service. You will need to select the Billable indicator to allow the creation of the maintenance service order.

Billing represents the final stage in the service process. It is triggered by the release of maintenance service orders or by individual completed items in service orders. Billing-relevant data is transferred in the form of billing document requests (BDRs).

In these cases customers are billed for the resources used (for example, personnel, material, travel) to carry out services. In resource-related billing, the system creates dynamic items from the expenditure information on the work order.

Data is summarized from defined sources, such as actual cost line items using the dynamic item processor (DIP) profile. The dynamic item processor is a tool that the system uses to summarize data into dynamic items in resource-related billing, sales price calculation, or data determination.

Resource-related billing can be either itemized billing or summarized billing. They are identified with the billing relevance field attribute at the item level and can be differentiated as follows:

• itemized billing: A service is billed as a list of subitems.
• summarized billing: A service is billed as a single main item.

In fixed price billing, the completed service is billed based on the price master data of the service product. The price master data (along with discounts) is maintained in the sales and distribution area of SAP S/4HANA. This price is proposed for the maintenance service order.

The billing relevance used for fixed price billing is always Billing on Completion. When the maintenance service order item status is in Completed status, a billing document request (BDR) can be created through the Release for Billing app.

In the following you will explore Corrective Maintenance Service.

In the following you will see how to create a Maintenance Service Order.