SAP FICO vs.

S4 HANA Finance

The following are covered in this post:

 What is SAP FICO?

 What is the use of SAP FICO?
 Sub-modules of SAP FI
 Sub-modules of SAP CO
 What is SAP S4 HANA?
 What is SAP S4 HANA Finance?
 Difference Between SAP FICO and S4 HANA Functionality
 SAP Migration from ECC to HANA
 Functions and Features of SAP S/4HANA (and S/4HANA Finance)
o SAP FIORI
o Ledgers
o Data Structure
o Change in Open & Close Posting Periods
o COPA Update
o Universal Journal | ACDOCA | Single Source Truth
o Vendors & Customers
o Line Item Reports
o Credit Management
o Material Ledger
o LSMW
o New Asset Accounting | Asset Posting | Clearing Account

Let’s start with what is SAP FICO and what is SAP S4 HANA Finance.

What is SAP FICO?

SAP FICO standards for FI (Financial Accounting and CO (Controlling). SAP FICO is an
important module in SAP ERP. It works on the ECC model. Both FI and CO modules
cover complete business processes related to Financial Accounting and Management
Accounting.

Know: Why to learn SAP FICO S4 HANA

What is the use of SAP FICO?

 SAP Finance (FI) is used for external reporting i.e. Balance sheets, Profit and Loss
statements.
 FICO integration with Material Management (MM)
 Also, FICO integration with Sales and Distribution (SD)
 Likewise, SAP FICO integrates with Production Planning (PP) and other modules too.
Sub Modules of SAP FI

1. General Ledger Accounting

2. Accounts Receivables
3. Accounts Payable
4. Asset Accounting
5. Bank Accounting

Sub-Modules of SAP CO

1. Cost Element Accounting

2. Cost Center Accounting
3. Profit Center Accounting
4. Internal Orders
5. Product Cost Controlling
6. Profitability Analysis

Related: Interview Questions on SAP FICO Profit Center Accounting

Now let us know about SAP S4 HANA, SAP Simple Finance, and SAP S4 HANA
Finance.

What is SAP S4 HANA?

SAP S4 HANA exists as the S/4 HANA cloud. This comes with a mandatory FIORI user
interface and quarterly releases. There is also the On-Premise S/4 HANA with greater
flexibility, freedom to customize as before, and optional FIORI and annual releases.

What is SAP S4 HANA Finance?

SAP Simple Finance was the first part of the Business suite to be rewritten to run on
SAP’s new superfast in-memory HANA database.

This new product is a combination of New GL with different category Extension Ledgers
and complete Management Accounting solutions. These are Overhead Management,
Product Cost Calculation, Account-Based Profitability Analysis with Cost of Goods
Splitting, Material Ledger New Asset Accounting, Cash management, etc.

Also Check: SAP S/4HANA Finance Online Training

Difference between SAP FICO and S4 HANA Functionality

The exact functionality of S/4HANA varies depending on its release. Although some of
the functionality may be available in the later enhancement packs of ECC 6. However, a
lot of the ECC 6 functionalities are still available in S/4 HANA in the GUI. Sometimes
you can enhance and recognize the transactions easily. Not only this but both the old
and new transactions co-exist also.
An Example

Transaction numbers FAGLL03 and FAGLL03H are sometimes redirected to new

functionality automatically. It may be like FK01->BP. Here it seems that where the letter
H is added at the end of the transaction, it tends to be a new S/4 HANA specific
transaction.

The letter N has often been added to new transactions anyway. It includes those
transactions also which are introduced with the SAP New GL. Furthermore, some are
already available in the later versions of ECC. The letter L at the end of some
transactions seems to allow posting to different ledgers e.g. FB01 and FB01L as well as
a lot of the new asset transactions.

However, please note that these are just guidelines, not strict rules.

SAP Migration from ECC to HANA

In Traditional ERP, there was a delay in Closing activities, which could not begin until
the period ended. Not just this, you have to do monthly closing for many operative
entities leading to high transaction volume at month-end.

The migration of SAP FICO to SAP S4 HANA Finance has not only bound all processes
together but also gives a high level of personalized UX (User experience) using SAP
Fiori.

One other key advantage of SAP Finance on HANA is its high processing speed. This
speed results in faster reconciliation of accounts and finance processes such as period-
end closing, report analysis & more.

Related: SAP Brownfield Vs Greenfield Implementation in S/4HANA

What are the Functions of SAP S/4HANA that make the

major difference between SAP FICO and S4 HANA
Finance?
New features and functions of SAP S/4HANA Finance create a good difference
between SAP FICO and S4 HANA technology. These functions are more advanced,
provide great UX (user experience) and are in line with the latest technology.

Now let’s see them below one by one.

1. SAP Fiori

Described as the new User-Experienced, SAP Fiori replaces most of the SAP GUI
transactions resembling the more users friendly smart Device apps like Phone Tablets,
etc. Informative & Interactive apps are available so that we can see the number of
outstanding items or account balances in the Fiori apps.
2. Ledgers in S/4 HANA Finance

In SAP FICO we have Parallel Ledgers as part of New GL. While the in Ledgers in
S/4HANA Finance, we additionally have Extension ledgers, Simulation Ledgers &
Prediction Ledgers or Predictive Accounting (From 1809 onwards).

With an additional parallel ledger, postings are physically made to both the leading
ledger and the parallel ledger. You do the adjustments only to the parallel ledger.
Whereas you need to link the extension ledgers to a base ledger and only take delta
postings. As a result, when you run a report for the extension ledger it pulls in both the
base ledger and the extension ledger data.

However, you cannot use extension ledgers in asset accounting. There are now 8
additional freely definable currencies available.

This poses one of the major differences between SAP FICO and S4 HANA Finance.

Also Learn: What is SAP? Its Historical facts and Journey

3. Data Structure of S/4 HANA Finance

In S4 HANA Finance, the calculation is “On the Fly”.

It means you no longer require index tables along with aggregate tables Thus, these
have been removed. See the following table for example.

Index Tables Removed Aggregate Tables Removed

 BSIS GLTOFAGLEXT

BSAS KNC1

BSID KNC3

BSIK LFC3

BSAK COSS

FAGLBSIS COSP

FAGLBSAS

FAGLLEXA

However, if you have developed your Z tables, with the help of Compatibility views in
the same name, it will support the same old programs. So customers no need to worry
about their Z Reports.

Related Article: Important tables in SAP FICO

4. Change in Open and Close Posting Periods (OB52)

An additional column appears in Transaction OB52 (Opening and closing periods) for
postings from Controlling to Finance, although still, OKP1 is required at the CO area
level.

5. CO-PA Update – A major difference between SAP FICO and S4

HANA
One of the major changes that have happened in S/4HANA from ECC is in Controlling
Profitability Analysis i.e. CO-PA.

You must activate Account-based profitability analysis (CO-PA). Though, you still can
use costing based COPA in parallel. The Process flow in S/4HANA finance is much
simpler than the COPA Process Flow in SAP FICO.

In account-based COPA, we use a group of accounts rather than value fields or key
figures, an account model (account-based profitability Analysis and a key figure model
(costing-based profitability Analysis) represent two different ways of looking at the same
information.

In account-based profitability Analysis, we look at the values by account (in other words,
we use the same format as the income statement). While in costing based profitability
Analysis, you assign the values to key figures or value fields. Depending on the
definition, key figures (such as revenues or cost of goods sold) may be the same in the
accounting view. However, it is the transformation from accounts to key figures that
make reconciliation difficult.

Revenues

In general, revenue postings to account-based Profitability Analysis are easy because

the sales account already flows into the G/L. The only limitation is that statistical
postings such as freight calculation, do not generally flow into the G/L.

If you want to include freight and other calculations in your profitability reports then you
should continue to use costing-based profitability Analysis alongside the account-based
model for these items.

Cost of Goods Sold

Organizations that manufacture the goods they sell typically use costing-based
Profitability Analysis. This is because it allows them to take into account the standard
costs for the goods sold. It determines which part of these costs we can consider raw
material costs, activity costs and so on.

S4 HANA Finance provides new options that allow organizations to break out their cost
of goods to these separate accounts. To do this, they extend their chart of accounts to
include new accounts for each cost component in their standard cost estimates and
thus gain transparency about the relative weight of each cost type in their product costs.
This allows them to see where they are potentially exposed to risks due to changing
commodity prices for their raw materials or changes in their wage structure.

Variance

Organizations manufacturing their products also typically calculated production variance

to determine the scrap, price variance, quantity variance, resource usage variances and
so on for each manufacturing order and assigned these to value fields in costing-based
Profitability Analysis.

S4 HANA Finance provides the same options for account-based Profitability Analysis
allowing the organization to break out their price difference into separate accounts
representing scrap, price variances, resources usage variance and so on. Adding new
variance and scrap accounts increase the transparency companies have in the
efficiency of their production processes.

Related Article: Production Order and Variance Calculation using Material Ledger
Allocation & settlement

There are no changes to the allocation and settlement functions as such. However, it
makes sense to revisit your chart of accounts to check the accounts you will use to
record the allocation of marketing costs, sales costs, administration costs and so on. It
provides sufficient detail for your reports and ensures that all these accounts are
included in the financial statement version for reporting. You will need to create
corresponding assignment cycles for account-based Profitability Analysis.

Quantities

In addition to reviewing the revenues and costs associated with their goods and
services many organizations also analyze the volume of goods sold. The quantities
captured in logistics flow into accounting, but they are often in units (for example boxes)
that make an aggregation across product lines impossible. Many organizations convert
these quantities into comparable units such as kilograms. Account-based COPA has
been extended to support this type of analysis.

6.1 Universal Journal

Universal Journal is an important section of SAP S/4HANA Finance. Its main function is
to analyze the major impact of SAP S/4 HANA Finance’s table architecture design on
General Ledger Accounting. Furthermore, Universal Journal also checks the impact of
business process transactions and configuration changes.

Whenever you post anything from any module, the system creates a universal Journal.
Each posting is seen as before using the displayed document, using transaction FB03.

You can still post documents using GUI transactions like FB50/FB50L (Ledger specific).
Also for this posting, you can use FIORI which is more user-friendly.

Universal Journal is known as the “Single Source of Truth” for Finance,

Management Accounting (CO), COPA, ML and Asset Accounting. This includes all cost
objects like Cost Centers, Internal Orders, and WBS elements.

When you post any new document from any other app like Logistics, Finance to
Controlling, the system generates a single document. This document is a part of the
Universal Journal and all other areas like CO Posting, COPA, Material Ledger will have
Cryptic Document.

However, if any document flows from CO to FI (Cost Reposting and Month End
allocation) then the CO document will have the original document. Subsequently, with a
reference to that document, you will get a new document in FI. Both documents will be
parts of the Universal Journal.
6.2 ACDOCA Table

ACDOCA is the Universal Journal Table. This table contains data for Leading Ledger,
Non-Leading Ledger, Simulation Ledger, Prediction Ledger, etc.
6.3 Single Source of Truth

Now, Finance and Controlling are merged to avoid data duplicity and the need for
reconciliation. The FI-CO integration also becomes obsolete and ACDOCA
stores controlling data in SAP. Furthermore, both the GL account and Cost Element are
merged. Cost element categories are now available in the GL account master. To
achieve this there are now four types of GL accounts instead of the previous two. An
example of this is the Balance sheet and Profit & Loss.
If you select Primary and Secondary Costs as GL account Types, then in the Control
Data tab you see CO Cost element categories. However, there is no change in cost
element categories for both primary and secondary cost elements.
When cost elements are migrated to the chart of accounts, all the required fields from
cost elements are also migrated to the chart of accounts, except the account
assignment. The Account assignment is moved from master data table CSKB to
customization table TKA3A. So now you can access the default assignment setting
through Transaction Code OKB9.

Related Article: Universal Journal Concepts and Features

7. Vendors and Customers difference between SAP FICO and S4 HANA

You can now easily maintain Customers and vendors using the Business Partner
Functionality. With the BP functionality, the system will redirect all old transaction
codes to Transaction BP automatically. For e.g FK01, FK02, FK03 to create, edit or
display vendor and FD01, FD02, FD03 to create, edit or display a customer.
Also, along with all old screens, a lot more data is available and one Business Partner
may have different roles like MM, SD, and FI, employees, banks, etc.

Also Read: Key TCodes in SAP FICO

8. Line Item Reports

The old reports such as FBL1N, FBL5N, and FAGLL03 still exist along with FBL1H,
FBL3H & FBL5H.
9. Credit Management

FSCM replaces the previous Accounts Receivables credit management transactions

Example F.28/F.31/F.32/F.33 and sales transactions VKM3/VKM5. Thus making the AR
data management more feasible to work upon.

10. Material Ledger

The Material Ledger in S4 HANA is mandatory (although Actual Costing is still optional)
and there are also new tables for Material documents (MATDOC). The Material number
field extended from 18 to 40 characters and this includes in the Universal Journal
document and therefore in ACDOCA table.

Also read: Material ledger in SAP ECC

11. Legacy System Migration Workbench

Although the LSMW (Legacy System Migration Workbench) is still available in S/4
HANA, it is not a good option for migration. This is because it has not been amended for
the new data structure and some functionalities are not available. For example,
transaction recording cannot be possible through FIORI. The maintenance planner tool
can be used for system conversion.

12.1 New Asset Accounting

New Asset Accounting is SAP’s latest version of the Asset Accounting module and was
introduced in SAP ERP 6.0 Enhancement Pack 7 (EHP7). Since then, it has been
optimized for SAP S/4 HANA and S4 HANA Finance.

Thus, as a difference between SAP FICO and S4 HANA Finance here is, now you
don’t need to set up delta depreciation areas where you have additional
accounting principles.

However, you do need to have one to one match for each currency and ledger in
Finance with a depreciation area in Asset Accounting.

Furthermore, the transaction ASKB (to post additional depreciation areas

periodically to finance) has been removed. This is because now you can post all
depreciation areas to Finance in real-time. Subsequently, as all the postings are in real-
time, you can navigate and drill down to most of the financial documents.
 Related: Accounting vs. Ledger Approach in New Asset Accounting

12.2 Asset Postings too make here a Difference between SAP FICO and S4 HANA

As I already explained earlier, a lot of the tables are now converted as CDS views. For
instance, different Asset tables data are also now part of ACDOCA table. These are:

 ANEK
 ANEP
 ANEA
 ANLP
 ANLC

The depreciation run posting has been improved and the depreciation journal contains
asset information in like item detail.

12.3 Technical Clearing Account in Asset Accounting

You need a Technical Clearing account to post the other depreciation area (Other than
Book Depreciation areas) in real-time. This allows flexibility to post each asset as per
different accounting principles and with different standard ledgers.

Below images are examples of asset postings as per two accounting principles
i.e. IFRS and Local GAAP.
IFRS Accounting Principle
GAAP Accounting Principle

Related Video: SAP New Asset Accounting – Practical Overview

Conclusion
With the all-new features of S/4HANA SAP has leapt its ERP functionalities. It has
made its user’s experience ever best.

With the in-memory technology, the processing speed is increased. Likewise with the
Fiori APP cloud computing users can access their system from anywhere and anytime.

Consequently, the effect of S/4HANA has also impacted financial accounting too. Thus,
it has become more advanced than SAP FICO, which was ECC based. Still, it is
important to learn SAP FICO as well to get an edge on S/4HANA Finance.

The following are covered in this post:

 What is SAP FICO?

 What is the use of SAP FICO?
 Sub-modules of SAP FI
 Sub-modules of SAP CO
 What is SAP S4 HANA?
 What is SAP S4 HANA Finance?
  Difference Between SAP FICO and S4 HANA Functionality
 SAP Migration from ECC to HANA
 Functions and Features of SAP S/4HANA (and S/4HANA Finance)
o SAP FIORI
o Ledgers
o Data Structure
o Change in Open & Close Posting Periods
o COPA Update
o Universal Journal | ACDOCA | Single Source Truth
o Vendors & Customers
o Line Item Reports
o Credit Management
o Material Ledger
o LSMW
o New Asset Accounting | Asset Posting | Clearing Account

Let’s start with what is SAP FICO and what is SAP S4 HANA Finance.

What is SAP FICO?

SAP FICO standards for FI (Financial Accounting and CO (Controlling). SAP FICO is an
important module in SAP ERP. It works on the ECC model. Both FI and CO modules
cover complete business processes related to Financial Accounting and Management
Accounting.

Know: Why to learn SAP FICO S4 HANA

What is the use of SAP FICO?

 SAP Finance (FI) is used for external reporting i.e. Balance sheets, Profit and Loss
statements.
 FICO integration with Material Management (MM)
 Also, FICO integration with Sales and Distribution (SD)
 Likewise, SAP FICO integrates with Production Planning (PP) and other modules too.

Sub Modules of SAP FI

1. General Ledger Accounting

2. Accounts Receivables
3. Accounts Payable
4. Asset Accounting
5. Bank Accounting

Sub-Modules of SAP CO

1. Cost Element Accounting

2. Cost Center Accounting
3. Profit Center Accounting
4. Internal Orders
 5. Product Cost Controlling
6. Profitability Analysis

Related: Interview Questions on SAP FICO Profit Center Accounting

Now let us know about SAP S4 HANA, SAP Simple Finance, and SAP S4 HANA
Finance.

What is SAP S4 HANA?

SAP S4 HANA exists as the S/4 HANA cloud. This comes with a mandatory FIORI user
interface and quarterly releases. There is also the On-Premise S/4 HANA with greater
flexibility, freedom to customize as before, and optional FIORI and annual releases.

What is SAP S4 HANA Finance?

SAP Simple Finance was the first part of the Business suite to be rewritten to run on
SAP’s new superfast in-memory HANA database.

This new product is a combination of New GL with different category Extension Ledgers
and complete Management Accounting solutions. These are Overhead Management,
Product Cost Calculation, Account-Based Profitability Analysis with Cost of Goods
Splitting, Material Ledger New Asset Accounting, Cash management, etc.

Also Check: SAP S/4HANA Finance Online Training

Difference between SAP FICO and S4 HANA Functionality

The exact functionality of S/4HANA varies depending on its release. Although some of
the functionality may be available in the later enhancement packs of ECC 6. However, a
lot of the ECC 6 functionalities are still available in S/4 HANA in the GUI. Sometimes
you can enhance and recognize the transactions easily. Not only this but both the old
and new transactions co-exist also.
An Example

Transaction numbers FAGLL03 and FAGLL03H are sometimes redirected to new

functionality automatically. It may be like FK01->BP. Here it seems that where the letter
H is added at the end of the transaction, it tends to be a new S/4 HANA specific
transaction.

The letter N has often been added to new transactions anyway. It includes those
transactions also which are introduced with the SAP New GL. Furthermore, some are
already available in the later versions of ECC. The letter L at the end of some
transactions seems to allow posting to different ledgers e.g. FB01 and FB01L as well as
a lot of the new asset transactions.

However, please note that these are just guidelines, not strict rules.
SAP Migration from ECC to HANA

In Traditional ERP, there was a delay in Closing activities, which could not begin until
the period ended. Not just this, you have to do monthly closing for many operative
entities leading to high transaction volume at month-end.

The migration of SAP FICO to SAP S4 HANA Finance has not only bound all processes
together but also gives a high level of personalized UX (User experience) using SAP
Fiori.

One other key advantage of SAP Finance on HANA is its high processing speed. This
speed results in faster reconciliation of accounts and finance processes such as period-
end closing, report analysis & more.

Related: SAP Brownfield Vs Greenfield Implementation in S/4HANA

What are the Functions of SAP S/4HANA that make the

major difference between SAP FICO and S4 HANA
Finance?
New features and functions of SAP S/4HANA Finance create a good difference
between SAP FICO and S4 HANA technology. These functions are more advanced,
provide great UX (user experience) and are in line with the latest technology.

Now let’s see them below one by one.

1. SAP Fiori

Described as the new User-Experienced, SAP Fiori replaces most of the SAP GUI
transactions resembling the more users friendly smart Device apps like Phone Tablets,
etc. Informative & Interactive apps are available so that we can see the number of
outstanding items or account balances in the Fiori apps.
2. Ledgers in S/4 HANA Finance

In SAP FICO we have Parallel Ledgers as part of New GL. While the in Ledgers in
S/4HANA Finance, we additionally have Extension ledgers, Simulation Ledgers &
Prediction Ledgers or Predictive Accounting (From 1809 onwards).

With an additional parallel ledger, postings are physically made to both the leading
ledger and the parallel ledger. You do the adjustments only to the parallel ledger.
Whereas you need to link the extension ledgers to a base ledger and only take delta
postings. As a result, when you run a report for the extension ledger it pulls in both the
base ledger and the extension ledger data.

However, you cannot use extension ledgers in asset accounting. There are now 8
additional freely definable currencies available.

This poses one of the major differences between SAP FICO and S4 HANA Finance.

Also Learn: What is SAP? Its Historical facts and Journey

3. Data Structure of S/4 HANA Finance

In S4 HANA Finance, the calculation is “On the Fly”.

It means you no longer require index tables along with aggregate tables Thus, these
have been removed. See the following table for example.

Index Tables Removed Aggregate Tables Removed

 BSIS GLTOFAGLEXT

BSAS KNC1

BSID KNC3

BSIK LFC3

BSAK COSS

FAGLBSIS COSP

FAGLBSAS

FAGLLEXA

However, if you have developed your Z tables, with the help of Compatibility views in
the same name, it will support the same old programs. So customers no need to worry
about their Z Reports.

Related Article: Important tables in SAP FICO

4. Change in Open and Close Posting Periods (OB52)

An additional column appears in Transaction OB52 (Opening and closing periods) for
postings from Controlling to Finance, although still, OKP1 is required at the CO area
level.

5. CO-PA Update – A major difference between SAP FICO and S4

HANA
One of the major changes that have happened in S/4HANA from ECC is in Controlling
Profitability Analysis i.e. CO-PA.

You must activate Account-based profitability analysis (CO-PA). Though, you still can
use costing based COPA in parallel. The Process flow in S/4HANA finance is much
simpler than the COPA Process Flow in SAP FICO.

In account-based COPA, we use a group of accounts rather than value fields or key
figures, an account model (account-based profitability Analysis and a key figure model
(costing-based profitability Analysis) represent two different ways of looking at the same
information.

In account-based profitability Analysis, we look at the values by account (in other words,
we use the same format as the income statement). While in costing based profitability
Analysis, you assign the values to key figures or value fields. Depending on the
definition, key figures (such as revenues or cost of goods sold) may be the same in the
accounting view. However, it is the transformation from accounts to key figures that
make reconciliation difficult.

Revenues

In general, revenue postings to account-based Profitability Analysis are easy because

the sales account already flows into the G/L. The only limitation is that statistical
postings such as freight calculation, do not generally flow into the G/L.

If you want to include freight and other calculations in your profitability reports then you
should continue to use costing-based profitability Analysis alongside the account-based
model for these items.

Cost of Goods Sold

Organizations that manufacture the goods they sell typically use costing-based
Profitability Analysis. This is because it allows them to take into account the standard
costs for the goods sold. It determines which part of these costs we can consider raw
material costs, activity costs and so on.

S4 HANA Finance provides new options that allow organizations to break out their cost
of goods to these separate accounts. To do this, they extend their chart of accounts to
include new accounts for each cost component in their standard cost estimates and
thus gain transparency about the relative weight of each cost type in their product costs.
This allows them to see where they are potentially exposed to risks due to changing
commodity prices for their raw materials or changes in their wage structure.

Variance

Organizations manufacturing their products also typically calculated production variance

to determine the scrap, price variance, quantity variance, resource usage variances and
so on for each manufacturing order and assigned these to value fields in costing-based
Profitability Analysis.

S4 HANA Finance provides the same options for account-based Profitability Analysis
allowing the organization to break out their price difference into separate accounts
representing scrap, price variances, resources usage variance and so on. Adding new
variance and scrap accounts increase the transparency companies have in the
efficiency of their production processes.

Related Article: Production Order and Variance Calculation using Material Ledger
Allocation & settlement

There are no changes to the allocation and settlement functions as such. However, it
makes sense to revisit your chart of accounts to check the accounts you will use to
record the allocation of marketing costs, sales costs, administration costs and so on. It
provides sufficient detail for your reports and ensures that all these accounts are
included in the financial statement version for reporting. You will need to create
corresponding assignment cycles for account-based Profitability Analysis.

Quantities

In addition to reviewing the revenues and costs associated with their goods and
services many organizations also analyze the volume of goods sold. The quantities
captured in logistics flow into accounting, but they are often in units (for example boxes)
that make an aggregation across product lines impossible. Many organizations convert
these quantities into comparable units such as kilograms. Account-based COPA has
been extended to support this type of analysis.

6.1 Universal Journal

Universal Journal is an important section of SAP S/4HANA Finance. Its main function is
to analyze the major impact of SAP S/4 HANA Finance’s table architecture design on
General Ledger Accounting. Furthermore, Universal Journal also checks the impact of
business process transactions and configuration changes.

Whenever you post anything from any module, the system creates a universal Journal.
Each posting is seen as before using the displayed document, using transaction FB03.

You can still post documents using GUI transactions like FB50/FB50L (Ledger specific).
Also for this posting, you can use FIORI which is more user-friendly.

Universal Journal is known as the “Single Source of Truth” for Finance,

Management Accounting (CO), COPA, ML and Asset Accounting. This includes all cost
objects like Cost Centers, Internal Orders, and WBS elements.

When you post any new document from any other app like Logistics, Finance to
Controlling, the system generates a single document. This document is a part of the
Universal Journal and all other areas like CO Posting, COPA, Material Ledger will have
Cryptic Document.

However, if any document flows from CO to FI (Cost Reposting and Month End
allocation) then the CO document will have the original document. Subsequently, with a
reference to that document, you will get a new document in FI. Both documents will be
parts of the Universal Journal.
6.2 ACDOCA Table

ACDOCA is the Universal Journal Table. This table contains data for Leading Ledger,
Non-Leading Ledger, Simulation Ledger, Prediction Ledger, etc.
6.3 Single Source of Truth

Now, Finance and Controlling are merged to avoid data duplicity and the need for
reconciliation. The FI-CO integration also becomes obsolete and ACDOCA
stores controlling data in SAP. Furthermore, both the GL account and Cost Element are
merged. Cost element categories are now available in the GL account master. To
achieve this there are now four types of GL accounts instead of the previous two. An
example of this is the Balance sheet and Profit & Loss.
If you select Primary and Secondary Costs as GL account Types, then in the Control
Data tab you see CO Cost element categories. However, there is no change in cost
element categories for both primary and secondary cost elements.
When cost elements are migrated to the chart of accounts, all the required fields from
cost elements are also migrated to the chart of accounts, except the account
assignment. The Account assignment is moved from master data table CSKB to
customization table TKA3A. So now you can access the default assignment setting
through Transaction Code OKB9.

Related Article: Universal Journal Concepts and Features

7. Vendors and Customers difference between SAP FICO and S4 HANA

You can now easily maintain Customers and vendors using the Business Partner
Functionality. With the BP functionality, the system will redirect all old transaction
codes to Transaction BP automatically. For e.g FK01, FK02, FK03 to create, edit or
display vendor and FD01, FD02, FD03 to create, edit or display a customer.
Also, along with all old screens, a lot more data is available and one Business Partner
may have different roles like MM, SD, and FI, employees, banks, etc.

Also Read: Key TCodes in SAP FICO

8. Line Item Reports

The old reports such as FBL1N, FBL5N, and FAGLL03 still exist along with FBL1H,
FBL3H & FBL5H.
9. Credit Management

FSCM replaces the previous Accounts Receivables credit management transactions

Example F.28/F.31/F.32/F.33 and sales transactions VKM3/VKM5. Thus making the AR
data management more feasible to work upon.

10. Material Ledger

The Material Ledger in S4 HANA is mandatory (although Actual Costing is still optional)
and there are also new tables for Material documents (MATDOC). The Material number
field extended from 18 to 40 characters and this includes in the Universal Journal
document and therefore in ACDOCA table.

Also read: Material ledger in SAP ECC

11. Legacy System Migration Workbench

Although the LSMW (Legacy System Migration Workbench) is still available in S/4
HANA, it is not a good option for migration. This is because it has not been amended for
the new data structure and some functionalities are not available. For example,
transaction recording cannot be possible through FIORI. The maintenance planner tool
can be used for system conversion.

12.1 New Asset Accounting

New Asset Accounting is SAP’s latest version of the Asset Accounting module and was
introduced in SAP ERP 6.0 Enhancement Pack 7 (EHP7). Since then, it has been
optimized for SAP S/4 HANA and S4 HANA Finance.

Thus, as a difference between SAP FICO and S4 HANA Finance here is, now you
don’t need to set up delta depreciation areas where you have additional
accounting principles.

However, you do need to have one to one match for each currency and ledger in
Finance with a depreciation area in Asset Accounting.

Furthermore, the transaction ASKB (to post additional depreciation areas

periodically to finance) has been removed. This is because now you can post all
depreciation areas to Finance in real-time. Subsequently, as all the postings are in real-
time, you can navigate and drill down to most of the financial documents.
 Related: Accounting vs. Ledger Approach in New Asset Accounting

12.2 Asset Postings too make here a Difference between SAP FICO and S4 HANA

As I already explained earlier, a lot of the tables are now converted as CDS views. For
instance, different Asset tables data are also now part of ACDOCA table. These are:

 ANEK
 ANEP
 ANEA
 ANLP
 ANLC

The depreciation run posting has been improved and the depreciation journal contains
asset information in like item detail.

12.3 Technical Clearing Account in Asset Accounting

You need a Technical Clearing account to post the other depreciation area (Other than
Book Depreciation areas) in real-time. This allows flexibility to post each asset as per
different accounting principles and with different standard ledgers.

Below images are examples of asset postings as per two accounting principles
i.e. IFRS and Local GAAP.
IFRS Accounting Principle
GAAP Accounting Principle

Related Video: SAP New Asset Accounting – Practical Overview

Conclusion
With the all-new features of S/4HANA SAP has leapt its ERP functionalities. It has
made its user’s experience ever best.

With the in-memory technology, the processing speed is increased. Likewise with the
Fiori APP cloud computing users can access their system from anywhere and anytime.

Consequently, the effect of S/4HANA has also impacted financial accounting too. Thus,
it has become more advanced than SAP FICO, which was ECC based. Still, it is
important to learn SAP FICO as well to get an edge on S/4HANA Finance.