Impacts of S/4 HANA on General Ledger Accounting and Asset Accounting

The below are the impacts of S/4 HANA on existing system. Even though there are many, I have put my brief understanding.

General Ledger Accounting:

1)     Earlier, SAP stored the GL, Customer, Vendor and their open items in various database tables. But now with the introduction of S/4 HANA, there is an only one central table “ACDOCA” which updates without storing the same data in multiple tables. Thus, ease of fetching the data into custom reports.

a.      ACDOCA will consist of 300+ fields from controlling, material ledger, COPA and asset accounting.

b.     In S/4 HANA, there are primarily 2 tables i.e. BKPF (Header Records) and ACDOCA (Line Items). The earlier FAGLFLEXA and FAGLFLEXT are now removed.

2)     Earlier, secondary cost elements will not be created as GL Accounts due to which the secondary cost elements would not be appearing in Financial Statements. With introduction of S/4 HANA, it is now possible to create secondary cost element as GL account and assign in the financial statements.

Asset Accounting:

1)     Same as general ledger tables, the asset accounting tables are also replaced by “ACDOCA”. The tables such as ANEK, ANEP and ANLC etc. which are used to store the planned values in asset accounting are now available in “ACDOCA”.

2)     The reconciliation between AA and GL which can be seen from “ABST2” earlier is now removed. Because the postings directly happens in “ACDOCA”, so there is no need for reconciliation separately which eases the period end activities in Asset Accounting.

3)     The periodic APC run (Transaction : ASKB) is now removed since the postings directly happens to Universal Journal (ACDOCA).

4)     There is a change in way assets are being uploaded in new S/4 HANA. Earlier, with the transaction code AS91, we used to upload master data and transactional data. It is now a three step process.

a.      Master data – Transaction: AS91

b.     Asset Values, Accu Depreciation etc. – Transaction: ABLDT

c.      Current Year Acquisitions – Transaction AB01

5)     In SAP S/4 HANA, the transaction for depreciation run (AFAB) is now simplified. There is no “Planned Posting, Repeat and Restart etc”. Everything is managed in a single run.

The points quoted above are based on my understanding. As my learning progresses, I would be happy to add more points to the subject.

If in case, there is any misinterpretation of information, please feel to correct me. Thank you in advance.