Group Reporting- Data Migration & Cutover Approach

[massarrat_unwala]

Hi Experts,

We are on a S4HANA Cloud journey with Group Reporting. I was looking for some best industry practice for a Data Migration and Cutover. As we are going to use 3 different ledgers from S4HANA with different Fiscal years,  The Go-live is expected to be April 2026. The fiscal periods are 1)July-June, 2)October- September, 3)April-March, which have 3 different versions in group reporting.

We are on S4HANA 202502 Cloud with No GRDC. All entities in S4HANA. 

We were thinking of 2 approaches: 

1) No re-run of consolidation

Load the Mar 2026 consolidated YTD balance in local and group currency in group reporting via a flat file for all the versions. Then the release universal journal will execute from April 2026. And the subsequent first time consolidation can use data as balance carry forward. 

2) Re-run consolidation

Load Periodic balances of complete fiscal year for all the versions and re -run consolidation tasks. This will be used for first time balance carry forward.

We wanted to know any suggested approach.

Hope to hear some advice,

Thanks

SAP S/4HANA Finance for group reporting SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Data Migration 

[stta]

Hi massarrat_unwala,

there is no easy answer to it.
With option 2 you can test the conso process and if everything works as planned and you would be able to compare the results against the previous close - especially when no reporting will happen in the old conso tool in April 26.

Option 1 could be quicker,

depending on granularity by doc.typs, you need to consider if doc.types should be reversed or not

- auto. doc.types can not be easily used for Upload so you need to make sure to align it to the migration process (Monitor settings/doc type settings (re-using Auto. Docs or create separate migration docs.), etc.) and changing settings between migration and go live could be tricky (especially, when you are not finished in time with the migration) and could have a negative impact, if you miss something to set back in time.

From my pov the safest way is option 2

I hope this helps

Stephan

[massarrat_unwala]

Thank you Stephan

[FlorianRoll]

It depends on when you started with accounting  and what data you want to have in GR analytics.
You need to have a starting point in GR for the entire BS including the opening balances. If accounting activation was quite recent this could be achieved by your option 2 provided you take over all (!) available periods from accounting. Note you will need to run consolidation for all periods. Advantage is that you have all data in GR in all periods available for analytics eg comparison prior year etc.

Lower effort can be expected with option 1  also considering that meanwhile data release offers a YTD mode if you run it from the „schedule tasks for consolidation“ app.

The options may also depend on when you activated GRPL, group reporting preparation ledgers. Precondition for using the data release task is that GR fields are filled in accounting. Either from the start of accounting or after activation of GRPL in accounting balance carry forward.

Hope this helps.

[massarrat_unwala]

Thank you Florian