S/4HANA New Asset Accounting (Part 5): Technical Changes

We’ve covered quite a lot of history regarding SAP’s New Asset Accounting solution.  Now is the time to cover the technical items and answer some key questions.

Blog Series:
S/4HANA New Asset Accounting (Part 1): Introduction
S/4HANA New Asset Accounting (Part 2): History of Parallel Valuation
S/4HANA New Asset Accounting (Part 3): SAP’s Asset Parallel Valuation Solution FIN_AA_PARALLEL_VAL
S/4HANA New Asset Accounting (Part 4): Functional Improvements
S/4HANA New Asset Accounting (Part 5): Technical Changes
S/4HANA New Asset Accounting (Part 6): Should you Migrate in ECC?
 

ECC or S/4HANA?

As was discussed earlier, New Asset Accounting can be implemented in ECC but it’s certainly not required to do so.  Every customer can choose if they want to remain on Classic FI-AA or migrate to the New Asset Accounting solution.  If you want to move forward with New Asset Accounting then you must activate the business function FIN_AA_PARALLEL_VAL and address all of its prerequisites (noted below).  Note, that New Asset Accounting can be activated at the client level in this scenario because the activation of the business function is client specific.

As of S/4HANA, only New Asset Accounting is available.  Once you’ve crossed over to S/4HANA, Classic FI-AA is no longer an option and no longer exists.  This is true for the entire system and is not client specific.

Prerequisites

On ECC, in order to activate New Asset Accounting, the following prerequisites have to be dealt with.

• You must be on ECC 6.0, EhP7 SP02.  The support level is quite important.  You should not activate the FIN_AA_PARALLEL_VAL function in ECC until you’ve applied SP02.  If you activate it while you are on SP00 or SP01, you’ll get a series of errors because the functionality was not fully delivered until SP02.
• The NewDCP must be active.  SAP delivered the NewDCP in the EA-FIN add-on which can be checked at [SFW5].  We have a 4 part blog series on the NewDCP, its benefits, reasons to upgrade to it, and more.  It was released in ~2006 so it’s not really new anymore… it’s a completely stable solution and the de-facto one going forward.  SAP has it as a prerequisite for most of their asset related solutions so if you’re not on it now, you need to come up with a plan for it soon.
• The NewGL using the Ledger Approach must be active.  New Asset Accounting is not compatible with the older Classic GL at all.  If you are on the NewGL, the Account Approach is not supported either but this only applies to ECC.  Once you implement/migrate to S/4HANA, either approach will work with the SAP General Ledger and New Asset Accounting.  But in ECC the Ledger Approach on the NewGL is the one-and-only option.

There is also a list of other items that New Asset Accounting does not support.  I’m referring mostly to integration issues that the other modules have with the New Asset Accounting solution that prevents them from being used if New Asset Accounting is active.  If you are using any of the items listed below, you’ll have to account for it prior to migrating to New Asset Accounting.  If these aren’t in scope for your usage of SAP, then you can ignore them and just activate New Asset Accounting.

• Lease Accounting Engine (LAE)
• Joint Venture Accounting (JVA) in IS-Oil.
• Real Estate Classic
• Public Sector Management – Funds Management (PSM-FM)
• ALE for Asset Transfers
• GL Classic or NewGL using the Account Approach

Business Functions and Enterprise Add-Ons

Since the focus of this blog is a technical one, let’s dive into the related business functions that are related to New Asset Accounting for both ECC and S/4HANA.

EA-FIN

As mentioned earlier, the EA-FIN add-on was used in ECC to deliver the New Depreciation Engine (NewDCP).  It is a prerequisite for New Asset Accounting in ECC but in S/4HANA the add-on is no longer required.  Why?  Because the NewDCP has now become the one-and-only calculation engine delivered for fixed assets.  It is delivered separately from the add-on.  There is no Old vs. New in S/4HANA, only the NewDCP is delivered.  Consequently, EA-FIN is no longer required to be activated and it’s activation status is irrelevant.

FIN_AA_PARALLEL_VAL

This function delivers the parallel valuation posting kernel in FI-AA in ECC.  As covered earlier, to get on New Asset Accounting in ECC you have to activate this function.  But, similar to EA-FIN above, it is now the one-and-only posting process delivered in S/4HANA so the activation status of the function is now irrelevant.

FIN_AA_CI_1

This function delivered a few improvements to support parallel valuation and with the usage of ledgers in the GL.  In this function SAP made a change to the depreciation posting program (and log) so that it could be executed by ledger group.  Without FIN_AA_CI_1 the programs could only be run by company code(s).  Secondly, it enhanced how we can assign alternative fiscal year variants (FYV) within the subledger.  There were some related smaller changes that impacted the Asset Explorer (AW01N) and how posted depreciation is displayed.  But the big change was the alternative FYV and how it interacted with the ledger group definition in the GL.

Similar to the above functions, the activation status of FIN_AA_CI_1 at [SFW5] is now irrelevant because the functionality that was previously delivered via the function is now in the standard S/4HANA solution.  For these three, SAP isn’t delivering the functionality via add-on or business function anymore.

FIN_GL_REORG_1 and FIN_GL_REORG_SEG

Both of these functions are used by the Profit Center and Segment Reorganization Tools.  This is an extremely useful piece of functionality that lets you reassign all related objects in SAP based on a change in the profit center or segment structures. This includes cost centers, materials, orders, projects, assets, and other items that are assigned to a profit center or segment.  For fixed assets, the FIN_GL_REORG_1 function (finally!) let us assign assets directly to a profit center and segment.  This had very positive reporting implications since we could run asset reports by these objects and do so based on the correct time-dependent assignment of the asset to the profit center / segment.  This wasn’t possible previously and required some custom BW work or custom ABAP to meet the requirement.

As of S/4HANA, neither of these functions are supported.  They can not be activated in S/4HANA.

What are the implications for New Asset Accounting?  SAP was able to carve our the asset specific functionality (i.e., direct assignment to a PRCTR and SEGMENT) from the FIN_GL_REORG_1 function and deliver it separately in a new function called FIN_AA_SEGMENT_REPORTING.  This function is new in S/4HANA and is delivered active.

FIN_CO_COGM

This function delivers new functionality that lets customers automatically manage their inventories in multiple valuations.  For fixed assets, there is integration between the different depreciation areas and the CO versions that we can transfer data too.  This was delivered with EhP5 for ECC 6.0 and is still supported in S/4HANA.

LOG_MM_CI_3

This function delivered functionality specific to capital purchase orders for low value assets (LVA).  This was delivered with EhP5 for ECC 6.0 and is still supported in S/4HANA.

Table Architecture (S/4HANA only)

With the introduction of the Universal Journal (ACDOCA) SAP came full circle by moving away from their dual ledger solution of FI and CO.  They were able to arrive at a new singular accounting line item table.  This was meant to unify the posting process and reporting for all types of financial areas.  Luckily, fixed assets was one of the first modules to be incorporated into ACDOCA which has caused a major change to the underlying tables used to track asset values.  To be clear, this only impacts S/4HANA because the universal journal is only delivered in S/4HANA.  If you are on New Asset Accounting in ECC, you’ll keep posting to the current tables (shown on the left).

The below image covers the changes in the fixed asset posting data model.  Key points to consider:

• The tables on the left will no longer be updated.  Going forward, the new tables on the right are used to track asset values.
• Looking at the left side by table…
  • The document header information that was posted to ANEK is now posted to BKPF and ACDOCA.
  • The line items, both ANEP and ANEA, are now posted to ACDOCA.  This applies only to areas that post to the GL.  Other areas store there line items in FAAT_DOC_IT.
  • ANLP and ANLC are summary/aggregate tables used for reporting purposes.  Therefore, there is no specific translation or 1:1 mapping to the new architecture.  For instance, the Asset Balances report previously read from ANLC.  Now, it can get the same data directly from the original line items stored in ACDOCA which renders ANLC (and ANLP) irrelevant.  That said, some of this data is stored on the new FAAT_PLAN_VALUES and FAAT_DOC_IT tables, but some of it is stored on ACDOCA as well.
• Looking at the right side…
  • FAAT_PLAN_VALUES stores all planned depreciation and does so per asset, area and fiscal period.  This is a big change from the single annual figure we had previously in ANLC.  It is also easier to scan if there is any unposted depreciation for a given company or asset at year-end.  There is also some data previously stored on ANLP that is now stored in this table.
  • FAAT_DOC_IT is a line item table but is used for any asset postings to areas that are not financially relevant.  Only the areas that post to the GL are stored in ACDOCA, other non-posting areas store their line items here.
  • FAAT_YDDA is a new master data table.  In the past, SAP had to store some year dependent data on ANLC because it was the most prominent reporting table that happened to have year in its key.  SAP has now removed these master data fields from a transactional/value reporting table and given them their own home on FAAT_YDDA.