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SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting - Release 2502.4 is generally available

Stephane_Neufcourt
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
Thursday
1,311

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We're happy to announce the release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting 2502.4, delivered on June 23, 2025.

Here's what's new:

  • Conversational search with Joule – our AI copilot now lets you ask questions in natural language and get clear, summarized answers from SAP Help Portal content.
  • A refreshed Post Group Journal Entries app – now with an accountant-friendly layout and intuitive debit/credit indicators.
  • A redesigned consolidation monitor – enjoy one-click actions and advanced scheduling to save time and reduce complexity.
  • Our first release of the new consolidation rule engine – offering flexible automation for unit-dependent postings.

These improvements are built to simplify your financial closing, improve user satisfaction, and accelerate your group reporting process.

Download our feature deck.

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Conversational search through Joule, our AI copilot

Joule is the AI copilot that truly understands your business. Joule revolutionizes how you interact with your SAP business systems, making every touch-point count and every task simpler. It enables the companion of the Intelligent Enterprise, guiding you through content discovery within the SAP Ecosystem, and giving a transparent role-based access to the relevant processes from everywhere. This is the one assistant experience, a unified and delightful user experience across SAP’s solution portfolio.

Joule offers conversational interactions between humans and computers to simplify access to information and automate business processes, thus improving both the employee and customer satisfaction. Joule can direct you to the right application to complete your tasks, help you to complete certain tasks, and find the information you're looking for quickly and easily.

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Available now, Joule’s informational capability (Conversational search) in Group Reporting helps you retrieve necessary information from the SAP Help Portal or documents uploaded to the Joule service if you've Set Up Document Grounding. 

Joule searches available documentation and its own knowledge base to find the answer to your query, summarizes the search results and provides the summarization as the answer to your question, along with the top three search results. The screenshots below show conversation examples around consolidation simulations, in multiple languages.

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For more information: 

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One-Click Consolidation in a New Consolidation Monitor

The consolidation monitor gives you a graphic overview of consolidation units and consolidation groups, along with tasks and task groups. You can use it as a central work environment where you're able to execute tasks for collecting, standardizing, and consolidating all reported financial data. At the same time, you can monitor the progress of these tasks for each individual consolidation unit or group.

Available now, we deliver a new version of the Consolidation Monitor. You can now work in a modern user interface powered by the latest Fiori technology, including features like filtering and sorting. To enhance your closing process experience, you're able to perform several actions with just one click – for example, you can carry out a full consolidation or open and close periods effortlessly. You can improve usability by switching from the existing app to this new version with its updated interface. You're able to increase efficiency by performing actions across multiple values, including tasks, groups, and periods. Additionally, you can streamline operations by opening or closing multiple periods, running full consolidations, and automating task processing through task scheduling.

With the new Consolidation Monitor, you're able to:

  • Filter by versions, multiple consolidation groups, periods, tasks, or statuses to quickly find what you need
  • View a list of tasks with detailed status information, such as the last execution time, who last changed it, the number of warnings or errors, the period status, and the data monitor status
  • Run a full consolidation, executing all automatic tasks
  • Process multiple consolidation groups
  • Process multiple fiscal periods by bundling them in a process period
  • Open/close periods for multiple consolidation groups and fiscal periods 
  • Define processing periods that allow you to handle multiple data-carrying periods within a single processing period periods) at once
  • Schedule a full consolidation in “Schedule Jobs for Consolidation Tasks”
  • Schedule remaining tasks, including custom tasks, to streamline your workflow
  • Schedule the entire monitor to automate and optimize further your consolidation process.
  • Perform multitask actions like running, blocking, and unblocking tasks
  • Carry out multiple period actions, including opening or closing periods

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To run a full consolidation, simply select “Run Full Consolidation” (screenshot below). The parameters are automatically carried over from the filters, and all predefined consolidation tasks will be executed. If the process involves multiple consolidation groups, they will be handled in alphabetical order. 

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You can also run tasks or update their status individually by selecting the task, clicking “Actions,” and choosing the appropriate option. In addition, you can select and run multiple automatic tasks together (screenshot below). To run a manual posting task, select a single manual task and click “Manual Run.”

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You can still use the "old" Consolidation Monitor as a fallback. However, we recommend getting familiar with the new Consolidation Monitor in a test environment first, and then fully transitioning to it at the beginning of a new process period.

For more information: 

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New Consolidation Rule Engine - Increased Flexibility in Automating Consolidation Unit Dependent Postings

As part of our roadmap acceleration program, we’re developing a new consolidation rule engine in Group Reporting. This engine is inspired by SAP Financial Consolidation and aims to offer the same level of power and flexibility valued by its users. The delivery will occur in three phases. With this release (2502.4) we’re introducing the automation of consolidation unit dependent postings. Moving forward in 2025, our plans include the automation of inter-company postings and the automation of consolidation group-dependent postings.

With release 2502.4, you can now define flexible rules to automate consolidation unit dependent postings on non-consolidated data (posting levels 00, 0C, 01, 10). These rules can replace the existing tasks of annual net income and reclassifications. For example, you can calculate the net income based on the reported data and specify which additional or custom fields should be retained. You can also enrich the reported data by factoring in the G/L account and assigning a specific partner unit. Additionally, for selected consolidation units, you can reclassify Inventory of Finished Goods as Inventory of Semi-Finished Goods.

Our new rule definition framework provides you with improved usability, increased flexibility and robustness. You’re now able to:

  • Define source data flexibly
  • Assign multiple document types in a single task
  • Create multiple posting lines
  • Define target data flexibly, including inheritance from selected data and value calculation
  • Assign document types at the individual rule level
  • Include results from previous rule steps as an option
  • Assign rules to rule groups
  • Assign rule groups to tasks
  • Utilize a modern task log

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The key apps you can use to manage automatic postings are:

(1) Manage Rules for Automatic Postings - Use this app to create, change, copy and display posting rules and rule groups and activate them for the automatic posting of group journal entries.

(2) Assign Rule Groups for Automatic Postings - Use this app to assign rule groups to consolidation tasks. The consolidation task then carries out the rules included in the assigned rule group. 

(3) Import/Export Current Settings - Use this app to export your specified  posting rules or posting rule groups to a spreadsheet, or import any rules or rule groups exported from another system.

(4) Task Logs - Use this app to check the logs of each consolidation task along the consolidation process.

When you open the "Manage Rules for Automatic Postings" app, you can search and filter rule groups and rules using various criteria, including a search bar, editing status (such as All, Drafts, or Locked), status (Active or Inactive), chart of accounts, and the user who created or last changed the rule.

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Managing rules

To create a rule, just click on "Create". As shown in the screenshot below, in a rule, you define the source and target data, and the posting lines.

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(1) Source Data – You can define how to select the source data using a selection object, a period selection, and the fields to read. You're able to restrict the source data by selecting a range of master data, defining a period interval, and choosing specific fields to read, which improves rule performance and log readability.

(2) Target Data – You can choose to post on the original document type or a single document type that you select. You're able to select which measures must be posted by the rule, overriding the document type selection. This ensures accurate posting of values in the target data.

(3) Posting Lines – The overview summarizes the posting line definition, and clicking on a posting line displays its details. You can define the field values and calculate the amounts to post. You're able to edit details like field assignments and value calculations for each posting line. 

Managing rule groups

You can define Rule Groups to select and organize the rules that need to be executed when running an automatic postings task in the Data Monitor. For example, you're able to use the Rule Group NI_RCL to execute three rules: calculating net income (for both released and reported data), and reclassifying inventory of finished goods. You can assign the Rule Group to the task using the "Assign Rule Groups for Automatic Postings" app.

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From the overview page, open your rule group (1). The rule group page displays nodes (2) and rules (3). When clicking a rule, you can navigate to its definition. You can define that one rule depends on previous rules. This is needed when the source data of the current rule includes data posted by the previous rule.

Import / export settings

Additionally, you can export the rule groups, rules, rule group assignments, and selections from one system to import them in a different system. This is particularly useful when you want to export the validation or posting settings that are defined, activated, and tested in the system you use for testing and import them to your production system.

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For more information:

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Extending Usability in Creating Manual Journals Using a Debit/Credit Layout

With release 2502.4, we enhance the usability of the "Post Group Journal Entries" app. You can choose to enter manual group journals with a Debit/Credit indicator and sign-free amounts. When you activate this new layout, the manual journal entry is more accountant-oriented. This new feature changes only the display of the journals; it doesn’t change the way they're stored in the database. It's also applied to previously posted journals.

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(1) When you activate the Debit/Credit indicator in the Post Group Journal Entries app, you can now see a new column called “Debit/Credit”, which lets you choose between two values: “Debit” or “Credit.” 

(2) You're able to enter the amounts in local, group, or transaction currency, as well as the quantity, without needing to use a sign. 

(3) A new “Balance” section lets you view the balance by field type, currency/unit, and version (for extension versions). For local and group currency, you’ll see a green highlight when the entry is balanced (total is zero), and a red highlight when it’s not. The amounts in transaction currency and quantity don’t need to be balanced, so they aren’t color-coded.

For more information: 

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