Fixed Asset Migration in times of S/4 HANA

Fixed Assets Migration in times of S/4 HANA is way more easy and straight forward than what it used to be back with ECC 6.0 (or prior). This is all thanks to the re-structuring and simplification that SAP has done in Finance since the introduction of Simple Finance and subsequently S/4 HANA. Now the Fixed Asset module is completely integrated with the Universal Journal, same as AP and AR. 

Because of that we now have fewer steps, tweaks and reconciliations to do during the migration.

Transfer Date specifications

We will start by setting our conversion date to that last date of our last Fiscal Year in our Legacy System (this taking into consideration that my go-live date is the same as my new Fiscal year start, so no mid-year migration). 

In S/4 HANA 1610 version you still need to set the Transfer Date through the IMG and with a Transport that you will have to promote all the way up to Production as we used to do in ECC6.0.

Here you will specify the last date of your prior Fiscal Year. Ex Go-Live 2019-01-01, the you will enter 2018-12-31.

In S/4 HANA 1709 version, this IMG entry has been removed and replaced by Tcode FAA_CMP_LDT and has simplified it. Now this Tcode can be accessible and edited in any client / environment and you do not need a transport anymore to specify a date. 

Here you get to Specify the Transfer Date, the Transfer Status of your Company Code and also the FI Document Type that you will use when posting the Asset Values to the GL. There is also an interesting point where you can specify that the system will calculate the planned depreciation figures for each Asset already at the time of Migration. If not, you will have to subsequently run AFAR - Depreciation Calculation for that. In times of S/4 HANA and great performances, I do not see why we would not calculate it at creation. 

So once we specified the dates in our config, we are ready for our next step.

Fiscal Year change

If our go-live date is 2019-01-01, then I need to do the Fiscal Year balance carry forward so then the FY2018 will be considered closed in the system. This is a requisite to be able to load my Asset Values as of 2018-12-31. Without this step, I will get an error.

Execute FAGLGVTR to carry forward your balances. Even if you have no postings in FY2018, you still need to execute this step, as it is the one who will mark FY2018 as close in the system. (You can verify this once executed in Tcode OAAQ for your Company Code).

If you have more than one Ledger, you need to execute both Ledgers in FAGLGVTR.

If your FY did not change when you check it with OAAQ, then you might have to execute Tcode AJAB to close the FY and then re-execute FAGLGVTR.

Migration Options

The recommended approach by SAP for S/4 HANA is to use the new Migration Cockpit (Tcode LTMC) (as per OSS Note 2287723). For that SAP has delivered a standard migration object that can be used to Migrate your Fixed Assets Master data as well as the Fixed Assets Balances (Acquisition costs and Accumulated Depreciation). Behind the scenes, this standard migration object uses BAPI FIXEDASSET_CREATEINCLVALUES that takes cares of creating the Asset Master Data as well as the values.

This BAPI creates the IDOCs, but it is exactly the same as BAPI_FIXEDASSET_OVRTAKE_CREATE Business Object Method BUS1022 in LSMW. 

Before S/4 HANA and Simple Finance, in ECC we used to create the Asset Master Data with Tcode AS91/2 and from there we also had the option to enter the "Take over values". Now this last option for the values has been replaced by Tcode ABLDT that at the same time it posts the values to the Sub-ledger it also posts to the GL as well with an FI Document. In fact due to the whole set of changes that SAP has performed since Simple Finance, there is no more Sub-ledger and everything posts to the GL.

Because of this, there is no more need to tweak the setup of the Asset reconciliation accounts ON/OFF to Post a separate entry with the total value of the Migrated Assets. ABLDT does the posting directly to the GL. So, no more reconciliation between GL and sub-ledger too as we used to do in ECC.

The 2nd option that we have to migrate, is to continue using our old and beloved LSMW. There are several OSS Notes related to the subject where SAP does not recommend the use of LSMW anymore in S/4; but in some cases SAP has still not delivered a Migration Object either for certain pieces of Master or Transactional Data. In the case of Fixed Assets, we do have a Migration Object; but still has certain limitations that I will comment later on in this blog post.

Because of some of this limitations, I still continue to use LSMW for Fixed Assets Master Data and Values.

So my LSMW that I built over the years (even back in ECC6.0) still works as a charm and it is fully compatible with S/4 HANA and has zero side effects. Why ? Because I built an LSMW that uses BAPI FIXEDASSET_CREATEINCLVALUES that ends up triggering IDOCs. So this BAPI does still the same that the standard Migration Object that SAP built does. At the end, it is exactly the same. The only trick is that you really need to know how to and where to provide the right values in the right segments or structures, which could be challenge initially.

Once executed (any of the 2, Migration or LSMW), you will have all the Master Data and Values created and posted to the GL; so then you are left with just running an standard Fixed Asset report to verify the total amount of your Migrated Assets and reconciled them.

Limitations of the Migration Cockpit - Fixed Assets object

As per real life experience, I can say that I found certain limitations in the Fixed Asset Migration Cockpit object delivered by SAP. Then I ended up finding a couple of OSS Notes that talk about it (can't find them now).

#1 - For large volume of Assets, it is not recommended to use the Migration Cockpit as the performance is really inferior compared to the BAPI running in LSMW.

As an example, one of my latest clients had 21,000 Fixed Assets to Migrate. With the Migration Cockpit, the calculation was giving me something like 10 or more hours of execution for that amount of records.

With the LSMW using the same BAPI with IDOCs, it went down to 3 hours. This after the application off OSS 2616079 that also improves the performance. But still the LSMW option is still recommended.

There is also another OSS Note where SAP does not recommend the use of the Migration Cockpit for large volume of Assets and recommend instead LSMW, so it is contradicting the other Note.

If your client is an Asset intensive company (Ex. Mining, Oil & Gas or has large manufacturing Plants), chances are that you will easily have more than 10k Assets easily. 

I remember an old Mining company were I had 45k Assets.

#2 - The New Migration Cockpit in S/4 is not able to open XML files bigger than 100 MB. This is an standard limitation (also in another OSS Note). This could sound as a lot if you compared it with ASCII / TXT files, but not for XML based one.

The Migration Cockpit templates are based on XML files that you handle, manipulate and populate normally using Excel. XML files tend to have large file sizes. Normally several MBs. That is due to the large amount of characters that you will find inside them and the tons of tags that an XML file standard has. This ends up creating big file sizes. 

As an example for this client that had 21k Assets to be migrated, an XML file with all the 21k was around 450 MB. So a file containing around 5k records, was reaching and in some cases going over the 100 MB. So I would have needed to create 4 or 5 files of less than 100 MB each. Plus the significant loading loading time of Migration Cockpit vs. LSMW.

In this case, I guess that SAP still needs to improve the performance and handling of large data volumes in the Migration Cockpit.

Additional information

2537549 - Collective SAP Note and FAQ for SAP S/4HANA Migration cockpit (on premise)

If your Company and/or Project needs to implement this, or any of the functionalities described in my Blog, or advise about them, do not hesitate to reach out to me and I will be happy to provide you my services.

www.dnabusinessconsulting.com

ALE Chart of Accounts to other environments

One of the big challenges during an SAP FICO implemention is the creation of numerous GL accounts all along the project. Depending on the type of client, project we could start by an standard SAP chart of accounts a build on top of it; but no matter what, we will always have to create new GL accounts. In some projects I ended up creating up to 150 new GL accounts out of a Chart of account of 700 GL accounts, which gives us more than 20% of new accounts to create.
In those cases, you would end up creating some sort of migration program like an LSMW, or something else. But unfortunately, sometimes those accounts do not come all at once from your client as they are still deciding and have not come with a final list all at once. 
So every time a new series of accounts needs to be created, you need to create them in several environments (DEV, QA, Training and PROD). Except for Prod, all the rest will most likely have several clients each where you will also have to create the accounts. At the end you have at least a minimum of 8 if not more environments / clients to maintain if you want to have everything in sync, which could be quite a challenge and effort. This is highly recommended because if do not do it, then you will have inconsistencies and discrepancies all over the place. And in most of the cases you need to create them in your Golden DEV Config client as normally you need to update config for Document Splitting, Automatic Account determination or other config points as well.

So, How do you keep in sync all the environments without a lot of effort ? There are different ways of doing it that I will list here from more to less effort

#1 - Create all the accounts manually in each environment / client.
#2 - Create an LSMW and run it on every single environment / client.
#3 - Transport the entire Chart of Accounts (including the Co.Code portion of it, as I already mentioned in another post) 
#4 - ALE the Chart of Accounts from your Config Golden DEV Client to any other clients and environments (including Prod).

How do you ALE your Chart of Accounts across your SAP Landscape ?

#1 You will need to create what is called a "Distribution Model" that will allow you to do the setup for your ALE (Application Link Enabling (ALE) is a mechanism for the exchange of business data between loosely-coupled R/3 applications built by customers of SAP).

Tcode: SALE (in your Golden DEV Config client, DEV-200)

Create your Distribution Model

First you will create the Model (Like ALEDISTRIB in the image), then you will create a sub level which will be your source client (Ex S4DCLNT200). Always the 3 letters for the instance name, then the CLNT for client and last the Client #. 
After that you will create another level underneath S4DCLNT200 for your Target Client. In my case S4DCLNT211.

Then you will click in "Add Message Type" and this is where you will add your IDOC  / Message Type that we will be used to ALE our Chart of accounts.
We will add two different ones.

GLCORE: Chart of Accounts section / level
GLMAST : Chart of Account and Company Code level (recommended)

As you can see I have other set of Message Types in this Distribution Model which are used for other Master Data objects (like Profit Center, Cost Centers, etc.), which eventually will be covered by other Posts.

Now that you have created the Distribution Model and added your Message Types, you will need to create your Partner Profiles so then when the IDOCs are generated, the system will know what to do and where to send them. There is an automatic option that will do that for you.

After running this process your Outbound Partner profiles will be created in WE20 (see below the result).
** At this point you might receive some errors due to missing RFC connections from 200 to any other client. Raise a request to your Basis resource to create all of these missing RFCs and re-do the Generate Partner Profile step.

At this point your setup in your DEV Config Golden client has been completed. If you want to expand your Distribution Model so you can ALE your Chart of Accounts to other Target Clients or Environments, you need to create another sub-level hanging from S4DCLNT200 and create another one Ex. S4QCLNT400 for a QA 400 Client. And Create the Outbound Partner profiles as well

Create Inbound Partner Profile in your Target Client/s

Now for every Target client that you have defined in your Distribution Model, you need to go in individually and create your Inbound Partner profiles so the Target system can receive and process the IDOCs.

Tcode: WE20 (Ex in DEV-211 as my Target Client)

Once you create it, you will SAVE it.
After this you have finished your ALE Setup that will allow you to Distribute your Chart of Accounts Master Data from 200 into 211 client.

Send Chart of Accounts from 200 to 211 using ALE

Tcode: BD18

This Tcode is the one that will trigger the IDOC creation based on the selection criteria that we will enter. (Ex. Chart of Accounts, Company Code, GL #s).
Then you will specify your Logical Message GLMAST (to transfer Chart of accounts and company code data) and the receiving system.
Then execute and the system will start generating the IDOCs. The process might take a while to generate all the IDOCs, so be patient.

To monitor the progress of this you might want to open IDOC monitoring transactions like WE02 / WE05 on both clients (Sender and Receiver) so you can see the number of IDOC being process, sent, or in error.

WE02 in Sender Client 

WE02 in Receiver Client

In some cases and under unknown circumstances, the Sender system generates the IDOCs but does not process / sends them right away. For that you can execute BD87 to re-process them and they will get sent out.

In future Posts I will publish other Master Data Objects that can be transferred using ALE.

If your Company and/or Project needs to implement this, or any of the functionalities described in my Blog, or advise about them, do not hesitate to reach out to me and I will be happy to provide you my services.

www.dnabusinessconsulting.com

Regenerate ABAP code for Validations and Substitutions

When you have created Validations and/or Substitutions in SAP, behind the scenes when you save them; the system transforms them into real ABAP code so then when executed them ends up executing ABAP code.
When you transport them into any other environment, you will see that at the end of the transport import the system is regenerating code. But in most of the cases you will still need to regenerate that code for those Validations and Substitutions manually otherwise you could face certain issues (OSS Note 2512768 explains this). These are some of the issues you could face. Ex.

• When you try to post a Journal Entry with FB50, 60 or similar; it could be annoying that the system will tell you that it needs to run a regeneration program and you need to start over. This could happen twice. If a user receives this type of error he/she will probably freak out and end up raising an incident for something easy, quick to fix and that could have been prevented. Error GB073 - Generation successful, but you must call up the function again.
• Other type of postings attempts from other modules like MM, could directly fail as those interfaces do not try to trigger these regenerations.

So to avoid yourself any issues, any time you transport Validations and Substitutions; right after the transport went in, you should run program RGUGBR00 (with SE38) to regenerate the ABAP Code for them.

To play safe you should activate all "generate" options * on "Appl area" and "Callup".

This not only applies to FI type of Validations and Substitutions, it also apply to all other types that exists in other SAP Modules like PS, SL, EC-CS, etc. So, this recipe should also be followed for those as well.

Other info on Validations / Subtitutions
842318 - Frequently asked questions about validations and substitutions

If your Company and/or Project needs to implement this, or any of the functionalities described in my Blog, or advise about them, do not hesitate to reach out to me and I will be happy to provide you my services.

www.dnabusinessconsulting.com

How to turn off the new S/4 HANA Bank account creation workflow

Within all the changes that SAP has done on the Banking area within S/4 HANA, SAP has introduced a workflow that gets triggered every time that a new Bank Account has been created. This is meant for people to approve the Bank Account before it becomes active and ready to be used in the configuration.

Personally I do not see a usage for this functionality for small or medium companies. Maybe there is something that could be useful for really large companies that could have accounts created on a constant basis, but still after that if you want to fully manage that account and issue payments with it; you still need to do quite some configuration to have it working.

In this step we will deactivate the Bank creation workflow that comes now as a new functionality in S/4 that every time you create a new bank account it triggers a workflow that will go for approval before you are able to continue your config for the new bank account.

*** This is a one time setup and it is not needed to be re-done in the future ***

Deactivate “Linkage Activated”

This way when a new Bank Account is created in the Manage Bank Account NWBC App, the workflow will not get triggered. If you do not do that, once you create accounts they will go through a workflow and most likely you will not know who or where it is to be approved. You will have to end up going as WF Admin and force the approval.

If your Company and/or Project needs to implement this, or any of the functionalities described in my Blog, or advise about them, do not hesitate to reach out to me and I will be happy to provide you my services.

www.dnabusinessconsulting.com

S/4 HANA Banking configuration / Bank Account creation

Now in S/4 HANA there has been a whole change in the way Banking configuration needs to be done in the system. 
House Banks are not created anymore within Transaction FI12 or accessible through the Payment Program config (FBZP). FI12 has been deprecated. Now you need to use Tcode FI12_HBANK. This can still be transported.

But you can no longer create the Bannk Account IDs or Bank Account numbers through the Payment Program anymore. In S/4 HANA you need to create the Account IDs through "Manage Bank Accounts" with the SAP Netweaver Business Client.
For this, you will need to have assigned in your configuration client to your user the SAP standard role SAP_SFIN_CASH_MANAGER. This will give you access to Bank Account Management.
Once assigned you will trigger it with Tcode NWBC.

*NWBC services might not be active in your environment. For this Basis needs to activate the service in SICF.

You will click in "Manage Bank Accounts"

Then you will click in "New Bank Account" 

Fill in all the required information (*). Same as before S/4 the Bank Key needs to have been previously created in FI01 with all the branch address and data.

Here we put the Co.Code, Name of the Account Holder, Bank country, Bank Key (transit created previously), Account #, account description and account type.

<Save as Active>
<Edit>
<Connectivity Path>
<Add>

CAD is the Account ID that we have assigned to the Account that we are creating.

Also we need to assign the MAIN BANK GL ACCOUNT (The one that normally finishes with 00).

<Save as active>

Then we will see the newly created account in the list of Accounts.

This step needs to be done in your Config Client (Ex DEV-200), but it is not a transportable step. So it needs to be redone in every single environment. For that SAP has an EXPORT process that will generate an XML file with the list of Bank Accounts IDs created that will have to be imported in DEV-210 and in the future in QA and PROD.

It is important to keep that XML file and do not modify it internally. If necessary the XML can be generated again going back to the DEV-200 and repeating the EXPORT process that is coming in the next steps.

Here we will EXPORT and generate the XML file that contains the accounts.

Import Bank Accounts in DEV-210 (also applicable for QA and PROD once we will do that)

Log in DEV-210 and Execute NWBC (make sure you close the other NWBC Explorer window as you can easily get confused between the two environments). Remember that you will need to have assigned in your configuration client to your user the SAP standard role SAP_SFIN_CASH_MANAGER in DEV-210.

You will <Select File> and always play safe by doing "Import with Test Run". This way it will not import but it will check the data and tell you if there are any errors.

If you do not have errors within your newly created Bank Accounts, then import with the “overwrite” option activated. There might be some errors within other accounts that come standard, ignore those errors.

Then you will get results like this after the IMPORT.

Once you have finished your XML IMPORT, your Bank Account ID will be created. To verify this you can check the newly created entries in Table T012K.

** Remember that this XML Import process need to be repeated in every client and environment, therefore you should include this as part of your cut-over / client preparation manual activities.

If your Company and/or Project needs to implement this, or any of the functionalities described in my Blog, or advise about them, do not hesitate to reach out to me and I will be happy to provide you my services.

www.dnabusinessconsulting.com