
We in SAP Product Engineering are pleased to announce
SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting 2008 release was made generally available on July 29, 2020. We're continuing our development focus on SAP's new strategic software for consolidation, and the 2008 release delivers on new features as well as function improvements to help you run the group reporting process.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting 2008 release provides the following key new and enhanced features:
- Integration of Intercompany Matching and Reconciliation (ICMR) with consolidation eliminations
- New Consolidation of Investment activities to help you handle vertical and horizontal mergers
- New "Define Consolidation Units" app, providing transparency on master data to the business end-users
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Integration of Intercompany Matching and Reconciliation (ICMR) with consolidation eliminations
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In SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting 2008 release, we further integrate our
Intercompany Matching and Reconciliation (ICMR) app in the consolidation process. ICMR is developed to help you to speed up your intercompany reconciliation process from company close to corporate close. By defining flexible matching and reconciliation rules, you can achieve high degrees of automation and continuous accounting. In addition, its in-app communication and workflow features eliminate the latencies very often seen in dealing with intercompany discrepancies, and, at the same time, improve visibility and transparency of your reconciliation process. With our 2008 release, we both enhance ICMR and integrate the app more tightly with the consolidation elimination in SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting.
Architecture
As depicted in the
architecture diagram above, ICMR contains 3 modules: Matching, Reconciliation, and Automatic Posting. Matching deals with transactional-level matching and Reconciliation presents an aggregation-level view. The two modules together can analyze, process, and present two sets of data on an aggregated and line item level. The last module Auto Posting provides an additional function for variance adjustment, accrual postings, or elimination postings. The Matching Engine was built for processing large data volumes efficiently and quickly. It can directly access any data source, like Universal Journal Entries. In the 2008 release we further integrate ICMR with our Group Reporting consolidation via new Elimination tasks, Elimination methods, Elimination posting API and Posting rule for elimination.
New ICMR-triggered elimination in SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting

In release 2008, a new two-sided I/C elimination task triggered by ICMR is now available in SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting. The matching and reconciliation in ICMR triggers the proper elimination in consolidation (see the screenshot above and below). With our new ICMR-triggered elimination, the detail level of elimination difference is now available, as well as the capability to drill through to reconciliation details.


When using the breakdown by difference category and reason code (see screenshot above) it's now easier for you to analyse the difference in I/C elimination posting. We provide 4 categories of line items that can be generated: Transaction difference, Currency translation caused difference, Clearing account settings and Other difference.
New "Define Posting Rules" app

Our new
“Define Posting Rules - Intercompany Matching and Reconciliation” app (see screenshot above) enables you to flexibly define ICMR-triggered rules as well as how the automatic postings should be generated for a specific posting scenario. With this app, you can decide on which party the difference should be posted.
The screenshot above illustrates a posting rule definition example. Once you've assigned the financial statements items' values, attributes, etc. to each item group, the posting rule definition determines posting of intercompany differences accordingly.
- (A) Totals difference: intercompany difference in group currency based on local currency amount * standard currency translation (closing rate in this case). It’s not shown here but calculated in the background upon intercompany elimination.
- (B) Transaction difference: intercompany difference in group currency based on transaction currency * currency conversion assigned to the reconciliation case for the intercompany close (closing rate in this case). The transaction difference flows from ICMR upon running elimination to trigger the difference split be it with or without a reason code.
- (C) Translation difference: intercompany difference in group currency based on local currency * currency conversion assigned to the reconciliation case for the intercompany close (closing rate in this case) – transaction difference.
- (D) Other difference: (A) - (B) - (C). This captures for example process / timing differences that result in different intercompany data being processed between ICMR and SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting.
- (E) Intercompany Offset: balances out the intercompany entities.
New "Manage Reconciliation Close" app
With the 2008 release, we deliver a new
"Manage Reconciliation Close" app (see the GIF above) to help you set reconciliation close status, view reconciliation differences by reason code, and generate reconciliation statement for your specified unit pairs and period. The app delivers on the following features:
- View overall reconciliation status between trading units
- Show reconciliation differences by reason code
- Add comment for any reconciliation differences
- Close or reopen the period reconciliation
- Download reconciliation close report as a PDF form
Other new and enhanced features
In the 2008 release the following other new and enhanced I/C related features are delivered:
- Enhanced ICMR-triggered accounting posting settings
- New matrix consolidation reconciliation case
- New on-the-fly currency conversion capability
- New feature for reconciliation by quantity
- Enhanced amount settings for reconciliation balance display
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New Consolidation of Investment activities to help you deal with vertical and horizontal mergers
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With SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting release 2008, new activities are available in the Consolidation of Investments to help you handle
mergers, both vertical and horizontal.

In a
vertical merger (see the diagram above), the balance sheet for the ceding consolidation unit is transferred to one of its direct investors. Before the merger, consolidation unit A is a direct investor of consolidation unit C. After the merger, the entire balance sheet for the ceding consolidation unit C is transferred to the absorbing consolidation unit A.

In a
horizontal merger (see the diagram above), the ceding consolidation unit and absorbing consolidation unit have the same direct investor. Before the merger, consolidation units A and C have the same direct investor P. After the merger, the entire balance sheet for the ceding consolidation unit C is transferred to the absorbing consolidation unit A (see the diagram below).
Ceding company
The following is valid for both vertical and horizontal mergers. First, select the ceding consolidation unit in the "Manage Consolidation Group Structure" app. You can specify the year and period of the merger as the point in time of the total divestiture for the ceding company, as shown in the GIF below.

Absorbing company
For a vertical merger:
- Enter the equity for subsequent consolidation of the absorbing company using activity "24 Updating of Retained Earnings Merger"
- Record the update of retained earnings that you report for this activity in the special Annual Net Income for Merger item (not in the Annual Net Income, B/S item)
For a horizontal merger:
- Enter the equity for subsequent consolidation of the absorbing company using activity "16 Horizontal Merger"
- In addition, enter the investment book value of the direct investor on the ceding company again as an investment book value on the absorbing company (without changing the percentage of ownership)
- Last, enter the eliminated equity of the ceding company that results from the first consolidation and from increases and reductions in capitalization again for the absorbing company
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New "Define Consolidation Units" app, providing transparency on master data to the business end-users
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In SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting release 2008 we deliver a new app to
define consolidation units. There are three reasons for the changes in consolidation unit master data. First, we replace the legacy web GUI based app with a new redeveloped SAP Fiori app “Define Consolidation Units”. This UI technology change follows SAP's overall strategy. Second, with our new app, we provide transparency on master data dependencies to end users. In the old app, master data dependencies were not visible to the end user. Today, the new Fiori app makes the dependencies of attributes transparent and shows context of attributes where applicable. And third, we harmonize dependencies. With the 2008 new consolidation unit master data persistence, the number of dependency types is reduced to 3 (compared to 7 previously).
Redesigned Consolidation Unit list
With our redesigned list (see the screenshot above), you can manage all your consolidation units. The list displays the consolidation units and their assigned attribute values. We introduce two mandatory single value filters for Consolidation Version and Fiscal Year and Period (at the top of the screen). Both are prefilled with the global parameters of the user, but may be overwritten at any time. You can also use more filters to reduce the number of displayed consolidation units. Time and version dependent attribute values are automatically shown.
From the list you can create, update, copy, export to / import from Excel and delete one or several consolidation units. When deleting, a "Check Where Used" is performed and only consolidation units that are not used anymore are deleted. In case at least one of the selected consolidation unit could not be deleted, a popup with further information is shown.
Transparent Consolidation Unit master data management
From the list you can go to the "Consolidation Unit Details" to see and manage its comprehensive information and attributes, as displayed in the screenshots below.
For more transparency, our new Fiori app has separate sections for all dependency types. All attributes within a section follow the same dependency type, which is also made transparent in the section header (see "1" in the screenshot above).
When our old app shows a time- and version-context without making transparent for which attributes this context is relevant, our new Fiori app shows the context information only for the attributes this context is relevant for (see"2" Time- and Version-Dependent Attributes in the screenshot above, and see the GIF below).
Also, short and medium description of a consolidation unit are language dependent. This is not visible in the old web GUI based app. The new Fiori app has a section which shows descriptions in all maintained languages (see "3" Language-Dependent Texts in the screenshot above).

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Other change in the 2008 release
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The following other change is also available in the 2008 release:
Removal of consolidation ledger.
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More information
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For more information on our S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting 2008 release, you can refer to the following:
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