How to synchronize Set Controlling Hierarchies in SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA

[gianluca_taccone]

This blog post is valid for SAP S/4HANA On Premise and Private Cloud Customers only.

Hierarchies in SAP S/4 HANA are an argument frequently debated and some blog posts have already been written.

Here I would like to use this blog post to reply to questions coming from Controlling Business Users and Process Owners on how to reproduce, synchronize and use Set Controlling Hierarchies (Cost Centers, Profit Centers, Internal Orders Activity Types, Statistical Key Figures) in SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA.

SAP S/4HANA Master Data Hierarchies are manageable in two different ways:

1. Some Customers would like to create (and import) their Hierarchies in SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA and to manage them only there. These Customers use only SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA for their reporting.


2. Some other Customers would like to manage Hierarchies in SAPGUI and in SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA and keep them aligned. These customers usually have different motivations, and it is not the subject of this post to clarify them.

No matter what kind of category of SAP S/4HANA Customers you belong to (or you are involved to),  I strongly suggest to study and experiment new Hierarchies functionalities in SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA.

Manage Global Hierarchy and Manage Flexible Hierarchies tiles are there for you to learn. Flexible hierarchies functionalities are explained with videos in this help.

Personal Opinion: I think SAP covered in SAP S/4HANA most of the ECC customers requirements about Hierarchies, among others:

• Integration of Spreadsheets Import and Export.


• Creation of Hierarchies from standard and Custom Master data fields. e.g creating Cost Center Hierarchy by standard Field Responsible Person or Profit Center Hierarchy by custom Field Market.


• Automatic Generation of Hierarchies when master fields are changed.


• Relevancy by date.

As said, if you are interested in these apps, many different blog posts have already been written, some examples:

https://sapinsider.org/blogs/using-flexible-hierarchies-in-sap-s-4hana-1709/

https://blogs.sap.com/2022/04/12/manage-your-hierarchies-in-fiori..-2-3/

https://blogs.sap.com/2022/04/23/manage-your-hierarchies-in-fiori-3-3/

 

Instead, if you are among customers of "category 2" and you want to continue to create and use your Set hierarchies in SAPGUI while having these hierarchies synchronized in SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA, please go ahead in reading this blog post.

Please have a look to the example I have created  without using the mentioned Global and Flexible Hierarchies Fiori Apps.

I have started with a simple creation of a Cost Center Group (please be aware that for the peculiar context of this blog post, I used SAPGUI but these functionalities are available in SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA as well).

Change Cost Center Group

Then I used Transaction Code HRY_REPRELEV (Set Report Relevancy for Set Based Hierarchies) to transform the Set as "report relevant" and automatically replicable.

Please be aware this Transaction Code and the next one are available in this customizing path too

Customizing Path

Set Report Relevancy for Set based Hierarchies

Set Report Relevancy for Set based Hierarchies

 

This Functionality is available for the following financial hierarchies:

0101      Cost Center Group

0102      Cost Element Group

0103      Order Group

0104      Statistical Key Figure Group

0105      Activity Type Group

0106      Profit Center Group

0109      Account Group

0110      WBS Element Group

As you can see in this example I used Cost Center Groups Set (0101).

Even if in SAP S/4HANA (due to the unification of concept of Cost Elements and General Ledger Accounts) some sets (e.g 0102) may not make much sense anymore, I believe the example can be extended to other set classes (e.g. Profit Centers Groups)

Then I used HRRP_REP tcode to replicate the set (please be aware I used this transaction only after the Set Creation and not every time the set changes).

Manually Replicate Runtime Hierarchy

                                                          Information

Please be aware that both functionalities have also corresponding Fiori Tiles.

APP ID (valid as of SAP S/4HANA 2021):

• F5295


• HRY_REPRELEV

 

After this step I can use the SET in SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA.

Profit Centers Actuals

 

Please find further documentation here.

Please be aware that for some specific master data (Cost Centers, Profit Centers and Accounts) SAP has released a specific OSS note on how to synchronize Set Hierarchies with the Global Hierarchies app.

This is my experience with Set Hierarchies in SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA;  if you have had different experiences and want to share them, please write them down in the comments section.

Brought to you by the SAP S/4HANA RIG

Gianluca Taccone

Product Expert SAP S/4HANA Regional Implementation Group

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[anthonysc]

Hi,

thanks for the blog.

You mentionned "please be aware I used this transaction (HRRP_REP) only after the Set Creation and not every time the set changes".

If the group of cost centers changes (new nodes or new cost centers), if we don't replicate with transaction HRRP_REP, values are not available in reports .

Thanks

[gianluca_taccone]

Hi, 

have you tried the autoreplicate flag in transaction HRY_REPRELEV? 

From the help of the field: 
Changes to group are auto replicated to HRRP

The Auto Replicate flag determines if changes to a set-based group is
automatically synchronized to Hierarchy Runtime Representation (HRRP)
tables.

Use

When a set-based group is set to Report Relevant, an initial version of
runtime hierarchy needs to be generated manually by using the Replicate
Runtime Hierarchy transaction (HRRP_REP). If any further changes are
made to the group later on, you can select one of the following options
to synchronize the changes to the runtime hierarchy:

o In transaction HRY_REPRELEV (Set Report Relevancy), select Auto
Replicate to update the runtime hierarchy each time when the group
is changed and saved.

o In transaction HRRP_REP, re-generate the runtime hierarchy

Thanks 

Best 

GIanluca 

[anthonysc]

Hello Gianluca,

Thanks for your answer.

unfortunately, for Funds Management object, we don't have this option (funds, funds center and commitment item)

Best regards

[riwe]

Thanks for the blog,

Currently we are investigating for the controlling department how to handle all the options, we use your Option 2 at the moment but manually because the automatic replication is not capable to handle timedependancies right. If you have a solution for it let me know we need time slices according to each fiscal year L1 for each hierachy. 

In general we have several problems, time dependancies, semantic tags, complex reports done with BW-Queries and resuable nodes / groups.  I identified several options in S/4 onPrem:

1. Manual Replication (SA38 FINS_REPLICATION_HIER_N)

2. Automatic Replication (which you have shown)

3. Creating directly Fiori hierarchies or importing them in Manage Global Hierarchies

4.Synchronizing (which you mentioned via Snote)

5 Migration, which worked once in a while on prem, and then was removed for cloud and do not work anymore

None of them fits to your requirement, 

1. Has a problem when we will merge in the future so that EVERY report with BW Queries has to be rebuild completly new, if you have 30 reports this will take a while. According to this, it is not possible to use semantic tags at all when you replicate hierarchies.

2. same as point 1 but has one problem more that time dependancies does not work at all.

3 only applicable when we know if we really can dismiss the old stuff which might be done via Z-programms allocation etc., which we are completly unsure, so this would be my favorite but for sure not for the business during the merge to S/4 Hana. We tried the compatible mode for running Allocations in the backend it should work, but other dependencies are very unclear.

4. This tool is laggy,

• not working with time dependancies in fiori, because it deletes every time slice
• not working with hierarchy types 0102
• not usable for special topics like
  • set semantic tags or
  • resuable hierarchies in Fiori. Everything will be just gone. 

5. could get intresting when you stay whith 1 or 2 and then hope that this step can make the merge. 

It seems that we really have many options, but and the end I am afraid that none of them is fully tought out. I think if you somehow stay with 2 then the synchronizing could be an good option, but it should solve the mentioned issues, like doing just delta updates without losing the resuable nodes in other hierarchies or semantic tags.