S/4 HANA 1610 - Attributed Profitability Segments

In S/4HANA 1610 a new functionality called ‘Attributed Profitability Segments’ is introduced. It is now possible to derive a (statistical) profitability segment when there is another real CO object with a settlement rule to COPA.

I was hoping that this would fix some occurring issues with Account Based COPA in S/4HANA. Below, I will explain the scenario I have been dealing with in my example with a revenue bearing time & material service order which is billed with a debit memo. The debit memo request has an account assignment to the service order. The service order has an settlement rule to COPA. In this example I use an S/4HANA Finance 1503 environment.

In my second example I will show you how the Attributed Profitability Segment in S/4HANA 1610 works. See the difference yourself and decide if you can benefit from this new enhancement.

Current issues in Account Based Profitability Analysis

Here I will show you a time & material service order scenario and the reporting issues in Account Based COPA without having attributed profitability segments.

As you can see in the settlement rule, the order will be settled to COPA:

The Debit Memo request is created with DP90:

In the account assignment in the sales order line items you can see the assignment to the service order and no assignment to a Profitability Segment.

This means that you cannot report on the Revenu in Profitablity Analsyis untill the Service Order is settled. Even then, you will see the revenue on the settlement cost elements, not on the original revenue cost element.

Reporting

Let’s have a look on the data of this Invoice and service order in the ACDOCA table.

The top rows in the blue rectangular are the actual postings on the service order (e.g. Revenue Accounts). The others are postings resulting from the settlement of service order (settlement cost elements). In this example I have my COPA characteristic Ship to Party and Ship to Country. As you can see these fields are not derived during the daily postings. They are only derived when the service order is settled to COPA.

The result is that I don’t have my COPA characteristics on my revenue GL accounts. Reporting in COPA with the use of standard ACDOCA reports and KPI Fiori tiles will result in incomplete figures in these cases.

Have a look at the Actual Revenue KPI tiles in Fiori which come with SAP Smart Business as part of Embedded Analytics. The Revenue KPI app is based on Account Based COPA, thus Cost Elements and corresponding profitability characteristics. In this current scenario the profitability characteristics are not assigned to the revenue accounts. What you will see is this:

The same issues applies on the new ACDOCA report ‘Market Segment Actuals’:

The only way to overcome this is building your own reports in HANA Live and making reports in one of the SAP Business Object tools available (Lumira, Webi or Analysis for Office). Similar to what I have done for my T&M service order profitability in Analysis for Office:

Using the attributed Profitability Segments in S/4HANA 1610 

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, the new functionality called ‘Attributed Profitability Segments’ has been introduced. If there is a real account assignment to one of the objects below, the system can derive “statistical” (or attributed) COPA segments for reporting purpose:

• Cost Center
• Internal Order
• Project
• Sales Order
• Production Order

Unfortunately the service order is not included in this list as object. Thus a direct solution for my scenario explained above has not been provided yet by SAP. I hope the service order will be supported soon as receiving CO object.

However let’s see how this new functionality works with a supported object, the internal order. Technically it’s the same issue we are solving, but instead of the service order we use an internal order as account assignment. In the configuration I have activated the Attributed Profitability Segment for internal Orders only for postings on P&L accounts. As mentioned at the beginning of my post, I will use a S/4HANA 1610 environment in this example.

The below internal order has an settlement rule to COPA.

I create a sales order with assignment to the above internal order in the line item. As you can see there is no assignment to COPA.

Final posting of the invoice:

After posting the invoice you will see the attributed segment in the revenue line item in the ACDOCA table.

The real CO account assignment can be found in field Object Type (ACCTASY) which is the Internal Order in this case. As you can see the COPA characteristics like the Material, Customer, Material Group, Customer Group and Ship to Party are derived as well!

I see huge benefits in this new functionality for reporting purposes since profitability characteristics are derived directly at the moment of posting even if there is another CO assignment. For me it was a long awaited functionality, however I’m very disappointed that it isn’t working yet in scenarios were the service orders is the receiving cost object. I have addressed this to SAP and waiting for a reply.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this and I wonder if you have experienced similar issues with CO objects as well? If you have other thoughts or questions related to this subject, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. If there are any other S/4HANA related cases you would like to see, just let me know and perhaps I can write a future post on the topic.

Update September 2017: SAP has released an OSS note to enable the attributed Profitability Segment functionality for Service and Maintenance Orders. By default this is not enabled in the releases S/4 HANA Finance 1605, S/4 HANA OP 1610 and 1709.

After implementing the following OSS note this will be enabled:

2497666 – S/4 HANA Finance: Attributed profitability segments for service and maintenance orders.