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3 Ways SAP Can Help Meet Container Shipping Needs

Tue, 25 May 2021 11:00:36 GMT

This content was originally published on the SAP PRESS Blog written by Sean Fesko, a senior marketing coordinator at SAP PRESS. SAP PRESS is the world's leading SAP publisher, with books on ABAP, SAP S/4HANA, SAP CX, intelligent technologies, SAP Business Technology Platform, and more!

Despite the proliferation of air-based shipping in recent decades, the most cost-effective way for companies to dispatch product overseas is by sea.

With a little bit of thought, this shouldn’t be surprising. After all, shipping liners can measure up to 1,300 feet in length and carry over 10,000 metal containers (or “sea cans,” in shipping parlance). It may take more time to get product to its location, but the economies of scale that a ship provides means cheaper overall shipping costs for producers. For companies operating at or near their margin, this can be a big benefit.

Those running shipping logistics with SAP Transportation Management (SAP TM) are familiar with the benefits of the solution, such as procurement management, cargo management, and track and trace. When it comes time to send product overseas, however, it’s likely that these companies will rent a shipping container and space on an ocean freight liner rather than perform the journey themselves. For those companies, a specific add-on makes the most sense.

SAP TM Add-on for Container Shipping Liners

The SAP Transportation Management add-ons for container shipping liners for SAP S/4HANA logistics help integrate and automate container shipping processes for companies that are renting space out on a liner.

Currently available for the on-premise version of SAP S/4HANA, the add-ons include pricing management, export and import documentation assistance, and data consistency. These are all crucial to ensure that their ocean freight can get where it needs to go in a timely manner.

The SAP ocean freight webpage highlights a number of helpful functionalities that would assist container shipping liner firms, such as automatic formatting of quotations, surcharge calculations for different shipping durations, booking coordination for companies that don’t have their own fleets of ships, and ranking of proposed routes to see which ones make the most sense.

If and when a hiccup occurs during the shipping route (such as a storm or closed port), documentation is updated for all stakeholders so they know what happened and when to expect the shipment to arrive.

SAP Transportation Resource Planning

For companies providing ocean freight services, the SAP Transportation Resource Planning solution is an important tool. Created for companies with large fleets of delivery inventory, including vans, airplanes, and boats, it allows for pre-planned movement of these assets so they’ll be available when needed. This is perfect for companies with high seasonal demand—for example, holiday tree farms won’t need vehicles during the majority of the year, but come November they’ll need to begin rotating transportation into the area so they can deliver their trees to all those popup stores in parking lots which provide freshly cut trees.

In another timely example, the recent COVID-19 pandemic brought about a surge of online shopping at retailers like Amazon. Delivery couriers such as USPS, UPS, FedEx, and even Amazon’s own Prime delivery fleet were quickly inundated with deliveries, and many needed to add to their fleets in order to meet demand within a reasonable timeframe. A tool like SAP Transportation Resource Planning would allow these companies to determine which areas of the country were underserved and needed additional resources the most.

Our book Transportation Management with SAP: Embedded and Standalone TM lists this shortage/surplus inventory as one of the major features of SAP Transportation Resource Planning. Three other important features include:

Request and answer functionality for specific asset availability, such as shipping containers
Ingoing and outgoing asset stream registration for a complete look at what is actually available and what’s currently being used
Repositioning simulation to determine the best and most cost-effective way to make sure assets are where they need to be to meet demand

In terms of container shipping, the functionality of SAP Transportation Resource Planning can be used to track boat locations and see what types of liners are available and where they should be dispatched. If companies expect their supply chains to be interrupted due to events like the pandemic or a turbulent hurricane season, they can reposition assets ahead of time to stock up on inventory or weather storms.

SAP Yard Logistics

For those involved in running actual ports, the SAP Yard Logistics solution will be helpful. With this product, yard managers can gain insight into their processes in order to use space most efficiently, such as tracking how long offloading takes, determining whether container storage is being done optimally, and reducing idle time where nothing is happening. It can also help schedulers plan transport alongside carriers, and utilizes automation to streamline different scheduling processes.

While the solution provides benefits for all aspects of a yard (such as internal transport of goods), the application for shipping liners makes it an attractive option. Learn more about how SAP Yard Logistics serves as the “missing piece” between TM, extended warehouse management, and SAP ERP here .

Conclusion

Shipping product via water has long been a tried and true practice for logistics companies. Given its popularity and the potential for delays due to weather and other unforeseen circumstances, it’s important for companies involved in ocean freight to plan things ahead of time and have flexibility when things don’t go as expected. With the SAP TM add-ons for container shipping liners, SAP Transportation Resource Planning, and SAP Yard Logistics, those involved in every step of container shipping with SAP have options to complete their tasks with success.

Want to learn more about transportation management with SAP? Check out our list of books for both SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA systems here .

Transportation Management with SAP

Navigate the changing landscape of transportation management! With this comprehensive guide, learn how to configure and use TM functionality in both SAP TM 9.6 and SAP S/4HANA 1809. Start with the TM fundamentals: solution options, architecture, and master data. Then walk step by step through key TM processes such as transportation planning, subcontracting, and charge management. Using well-tread industry best practices, optimize TM for your business!

Understanding Demand Patterns with SAP IBP & Machine Learning

Tue, 25 May 2021 10:51:34 GMT

This content was originally published on the SAP PRESS Blog . SAP PRESS is the world's leading SAP publisher, with books on ABAP, SAP S/4HANA, SAP CX, intelligent technologies, SAP Business Technology Platform, and more!

Demand planning can be done for both long-, mid-, and short-term durations to make sure you have enough product to fulfill orders.

Ultimately, you’ll want a streamlined process to forecast demand across all three durations, typically by thinking in terms of telescoping time buckets—weekly in the near term, extending to monthly further out in the planning horizon.

But in the near term, you’ll still have to deal with market volatility, which could be caused by any number of factors. For example, a new product or promotion you introduced in the market could have been wildly successful, and your products are flying off the retail shelves, resulting in demand outstripping the planned supply (from your consensus demand plan).

Alternatively, a competitors’ product could be outselling yours due to raving customer reviews about it on social media, or unexpected weather conditions could negatively impact your planned sales in a particular region, thus resulting in your unsold products sitting at distribution centers and retail stores.

In such situations, you must quickly adjust inventory deployment across your regional distribution centers or, depending on the lead times, even adjust your production and packaging operations to ensure the right amount of stock in your channels.

Demand sensing using pattern recognition-based machine learning in SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP) for demand can help you address these situations by generating accurate, short-term forecasts for the next four to eight weeks, which you can use to adjust your inventory deployment plans, transportation plans, production and packaging sequences, and other purchasing and allocation decisions.

As shown in the figure below, demand sensing using pattern recognition-based machine learning augments the consensus demand planning process with short-term forecasts by considering various inputs.

The optional extra demand signals that demand sensing can consider may be internal like warehouse withdrawals as well as external from downstream sources like retailer point of sale (POS) data, social media, and weather. The figure below shows the inclusion of two downstream demand signals—point of sales (customer store sales quantity) and social sentiment. The point of sales data feeds, which first needs to be cleansed and harmonized, would come from SAP Demand Signal Management.

The next figure shows the results of demand sensing in the Microsoft Excel frontend of SAP IBP for demand. The left part of the screen shows the various demand signals, including point of sales data, considered in generating a sensed demand representing by the green bars.

Notice that the consensus demand indicated by the black line is much lower. The zoomed view to the right shows that the machine learning algorithm in demand sensing recognizes the demand patterns whereas the consensus demand underestimates the demand (open orders and forecast).

Note that pattern recognition-based machine learning can also be a useful addition to traditional consensus demand planning processes even without considering downstream demand signals. For example, often, many products in your portfolio may be underforecasted for several periods in a row due to the use of equal split or fixed quota mechanisms, or you may have other products and customers having cyclical ordering patterns, resulting in undersell and oversell patterns. In these situations, demand sensing can understand the underlying patterns and adjust future forecasts accordingly.

Improved short-term forecasts with demand sensing for fast-moving items help you drive timely deployment and transportation decisions, resulting in fewer stockouts and expedited shipments. The higher forecast accuracy not only leads to improved planner productivity but also leads to lower safety stocks and higher customer service levels, which ultimately leads to building a competitive edge and garnering market share.

Learn more about SAP's intelligent technologies in this overview.

Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the book SAP Leonardo: An Introduction to the Intelligent Enterprise by Pierre Erasmus, Vivek Vinayak Rao, Amit Sinha, and Ganesh Wadawadigi.

SAP Leonardo: An Introduction to the Intelligent Enterprise

Looking to innovate, transform processes, or just get more from your data? This guide to SAP Leonardo shows you how new technologies—from machine learning to blockchain—intersect with existing processes to transform your business. You’ll walk through practical examples of SAP Leonardo tools at work in manufacturing, product management, logistics, finance, and more. From using machine learning for smart manufacturing to leveraging IoT and big data for a connected fleet, you’ll get the hands-on introduction to SAP Leonardo you’ve been looking for!

Entry level understanding of ABAP Syntax

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 15:38:14 GMT

The source code of an ABAP program is simply a collection of various ABAP statements that are interpreted by the runtime environment to perform specific tasks.

You use declarative statements to define data objects, modularization statements to define processing blocks, and database statements to work with the data in the database.

In this post, we’ll look at the basic ABAP syntax rules that every programmer should know. We’ll then look at the use of chained statements and comment lines.

Basic ABAP Syntax Rules

There are certain basic syntax rules that need to be followed while writing ABAP statements:

Rule 1

An ABAP program is a collection of individual ABAP statements that exist within the program. Each ABAP statement is concluded with a period (.), and the first word of the statement is known as a keyword.

Rule 2

An ABAP statement consists of operands, operators, or additions to keywords (see figure below). The first word of an ABAP statement is an ABAP keyword; the remaining can be operands, operators, or additions. Operands are the data objects, data types, procedures, and so on.

Various operators are available, such as assignment operators that associate the source and target fields of an assignment (e.g., = or ?=), arithmetic operators that assign two or more numeric operands with an arithmetic expression (e.g., +, -, *), relational operators that associate two operands with a logical expression (e.g., =, <, >), and so on. Each ABAP keyword will have its own set of additions.

Rule 3

Each word in the statement must be separated by at least one space.

Rule 4

An ABAP statement ends with a period, and you can write a new statement on the same line or on a new line. A single ABAP statement can be extended over several lines.

Rule 5

ABAP code isn’t case-sensitive.

Additional Information

In the figure below, the program shown consists of three ABAP statements written across three lines. The first word in each of these statements (REPORT, PARAMETERS, and WRITE) is a keyword. As you can see, each statement begins with a keyword and ends with a period. These contain a:

Keyword
Operand
Addition

In addition, each ABAP word is separated by a space.

You can write multiple statements on one line or one statement can extend over multiple lines. Therefore, if you want, you can rewrite the code above as shown:

REPORT ZCA_DEMO_PROGRAM. PARAMETERS p_input(10) TYPE c. WRITE
p_input RIGHTJUSTIFIED.

However, to keep the code legible, we recommend restricting your program to one statement per line. In some cases, it’s recommended to break a single statement across multiple lines, for example:

SELECT * FROM mara INTO TABLE it_mara WHERE matnr EQ p_matnr.

The preceding statement may be written as shown below to make it more legible.

SELECT * FROM mara

INTO TABLE it_mara

WHERE matnr EQ p_matnr.

Chained Statements

If more than one statement starts with the same keyword, you can use a colon (:) as a chain operator and separate each statement with a comma. These chained statements help you avoid repeating the same keyword on each line.

For example:

DATA v_name(20) TYPE c.

DATA v_age TYPE i.

can also be written as:

DATA : v_name(20) TYPE c,

v_age TYPE i.

End the last statement in the chain with a period. Chained statements aren’t limited to keywords; you can put any identical first part of a chain of statements before the colon and write the remaining parts of the individual statements separated by a comma, for example:

v_total = v_total + 1.

v_total = v_total + 2.

v_total = v_total + 3.

v_total = v_total + 4.

can be chained as:

v_total = v_total + : 1, 2, 3, 4.

As rule 5 stated, ABAP code isn’t case-sensitive, so you can use either uppercase or lowercase to write ABAP statements. We recommend writing keywords and their additions in uppercase and using lowercase for other words in the statement to make the code more legible.

Comment Lines

To make your source code easy to understand for other programmers, you can add comments to it (see below). Comment lines are ignored by the system when the program is generated, and they’re useful in many ways.

DATA f1 TYPE c LENGTH 2 VALUE 'T3'.

DATA f2 TYPE n LENGTH 2.

*This is a comment line

f2 = f1.

WRITE f2. "This is also a comment line

There are two ways to add comment lines in source code:

You can enter an asterisk (*) at the beginning of a line to make the entire line a comment.
You can enter a double quotation mark (") midline to make the part of the line after the quotation mark a comment (this is called an in-line comment ).

You can comment (i.e., set as a comment) on a block of lines at once (a multiline comment ) by selecting the lines to be commented on and pressing (Ctrl) + (<) on the keyboard. Similarly, to uncomment (i.e., set as normal code) a block of lines, you can select the lines and press (Ctrl) + (>).

Alternatively, you can also use the context menu to comment or uncomment code. To comment a line of code or a block lines, select the code, right-click, and select the appropriate option from the Format context menu. This helps you avoid the tedious job of adding asterisks manually at the beginning of each line.

Conclusion

This post provided a better understanding of basic ABAP syntax rules and chaining

ABAP statements. You’re now ready to focus on more advanced ABAP concepts, such as keywords used in ABAP.

Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the book Complete ABAP by Kiran Bandari.

Complete ABAP

Whether you're new to ABAP, or you’ve been developing for years, this is the resource for you. Build your foundation with basic programming concepts and tools, then take it to the next level with modifications and enhancements for your ABAP code. Design reports and screens, develop applications using dialog programming, create interfaces, and more. Your ultimate reference guide to the world of ABAP is here!

Tools for Migration from SAP WM ⇒ Embedded EWM in S/4HANA

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 16:09:59 GMT

Organizations requiring migration to SAP S/4HANA should first decide if they want to use standalone SAP EWM or embedded EWM. In this post, we’ll discuss tools for migration from WM to embedded EWM in SAP S/4HANA.

To help organizations with successful master data cutover from old to new systems, SAP has provided standard tools for migrating master data from WM to embedded EWM . The reports for such a migration can be accessed from SAP Easy Access path Logistics > SCM Extended Warehouse Management > Extended Warehouse Management > Interfaces > Migration from LE-WM .

The usual process for data migration from each of these reports consists of multiple steps:

Download data from the source WM warehouse in SAP ERP to a CSV file.
After the data is downloaded from the source system in a CSV file, the data is checked for data consistency and validation by the business data team.
Upload the CSV file to SAP S/4HANA via the Upload

Warning : For the migration tool to work, ensure that the source warehouse in SAP S/4HANA is mapped to the target embedded EWM warehouse; otherwise, the report will error out.

Migration of Warehouse Product Data

The warehouse product migration report is used to migrate not only warehouse-specific product data but also data such as fixed bin assignments, palletization, and more. This is the most important data migration report as it helps business teams migrate the most crucial and high-volume data from WM to embedded EWM.

The reports for such a migration can be accessed from SAP Easy Access path: Logistics > SCM Extended Warehouse Management > Extended Warehouse Management > Interfaces > Migration from LE-WM > Warehouse Product Migration . They can also be accessed from Transaction /SCWM/MIG_PRODUCT.

As shown in the figure below, this tool provides a two-step process to migrate warehouse products from WM to embedded EWM in SAP S/4HANA. In the first step, data is downloaded in a CSV file from various material tables, such as tables MLGN, MLGT, MARA, and so on, from the SAP S/4HANA system on either the local desktop or on the application server. The same template is then used to upload data from the local desktop or application server to SAP S/4HANA from the same transaction screen but by using the Upload option.

The process is a bit different if we want to download the packaging and unit of measure (UoM) data. In this case, the data is downloaded from WM to a TXT file, and then this data is uploaded to embedded EWM using report /SCWM/IPU. The process to update data in embedded EWM from the source WM system is the same as for all the other objects. In each case, different source structures and fields are read from WM, and different fields in embedded EWM are populated as target fields based on how the objects are created in embedded EWM.

Now, let’s look at some important sections and fields required to understand the workings of this tool:

Direction

This section contains filters for whether you want to download data from WM or upload to embedded EWM. You can download product master data, fixed bin assignments, palletization, and WM UoM from WM. This data can then be updated to the embedded EWM application based on selections made in this setting.

Data Source

This field contains the business system of the SAP ERP system from which data is to be pulled into a CSV file for the target SAP S/4HANA system.

Data Selection

This section contains the selection screen for bins that need to be extracted into the source file. You can select all bins for a given warehouse or for select storage types at the warehouse level. You can also drill down to the names of the products that need to be extracted.

Conversion Rules

This section contains the name of the destination embedded EWM-specific warehouse that has been created to map the warehouse in SAP S/4HANA to which the data is to be uploaded.

File Destination

The source file can be downloaded on the local system or application server from WM, or it can be uploaded from the local system or application server to SAP S/4HANA depending on the selection here.

Display Control

The selections in this section control the display of logs for downloaded data and errors if needed.

Storage Bin Migration

The next data object that can be migrated from WM to embedded EWM is storage bin data. As shown below, storage bins can be downloaded from a source SAP ERP system along with bin master and/or sortation data in a CSV file; as a second step, they can be uploaded to the embedded EWM system.

The reports for such a migration can be accessed from SAP Easy Access path Logistics > SCM Extended Warehouse Management > Extended Warehouse Management > Interfaces > Migration from LE-WM > Storage Bin Migration ; they also can be accessed from Transaction /SCWM/MIG_BIN.

Stock Migration

The next data object that can be migrated from WM to embedded EWM is stock data. As shown in the next figure, stock data can be downloaded from the source SAP ERP system in a CSV file and then can be uploaded to the SAP S/4HANA system.

The stock migration report is /SCWM/MIG_STOCK, which can be accessed from SAP Easy Access path Logistics > SCM Extended Warehouse Management > Extended Warehouse Management > Interfaces > Migration from LE-WM > Stock Migration .

Physical Inventory Completeness

The next data object that can be migrated from WM to embedded EWM is physical inventory completeness. When you migrate the stock from WM to embedded EWM, although the stock of a product is migrated, there are inventory documents that are created but not completed. As such, the physical inventory completeness needs to be migrated to SAP S/4HANA as well. As shown below, physical inventory completeness data can be downloaded from the source SAP ERP system in a CSV file and then uploaded in the embedded EWM system.

The migrating physical inventory completeness report is /SCWM/MIG_PI_COMPL, which can be accessed from SAP Easy Access path Logistics > SCM Extended Warehouse Management > Extended Warehouse Management > Interfaces > Migration from LE-WM > Physical Inventory Completeness Migration .

There are certain prerequisites you must ensure are in place in embedded EWM before physical inventory completeness data is migrated:

The physical inventory area is defined.
Activity areas are defined.
The physical inventory area is mapped to the activity area.
In the physical inventory settings in the embedded EWM warehouse, physical inventory is set to always occur at the complete warehouse level rather than at a single activity area level.

Conclusion

This post took a look at migrating from SAP WM to embedded EWM in SAP S/4HANA logistics , including the important steps to make sure you are set up to run your next-generation warehousing in the new suite.

Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the book Warehouse Management with SAP S/4HANA by Namita Sachan and Aman Jain.

Warehouse Management with SAP S/4HANA

Are you ready for warehouse management in SAP S/4HANA? With this implementation guide to EWM in SAP S/4HANA, lay the foundation by setting up organizational and warehouse structures. Then configure your master data and cross-process settings with step-by-step instructions. Finally, customize your core processes, from inbound and outbound deliveries to value-added services and cartonization. SAP S/4HANA is now ready for you!

Margin vs. Profitability Analysis in SAP S/4HANA Finance

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 11:18:21 GMT

Organizations have different requirements now as they face a more competitive and innovative market. As a result, there is a high demand for real-time information analysis and flexibility in profitability reporting, and that demand only continues to increase.

Profitability analysis is a subcomponent of controlling with SAP S/4HANA and is used to support managers during their decision-making process. The data used in profitability analysis is enriched with characteristics derived from the value flow of predecessor documents, and therefore can be displayed and analyzed from various angles.

SAP S/4HANA Finance is modernizing key finance and analytics functionalities, and in this blog post, we’ll review a major difference between profitability analysis in SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA.

Profitability Analysis: SAP S/4HANA vs. SAP ERP

In SAP ERP, there are two types of profitability analysis (shortened to CO-PA): account-based and costing-based. In SAP S/4HANA, you’ll find costing-based profitability analysis and “margin analysis,” the new name for account-based CO-PA.

Costing-based CO-PA is used the most in the SAP ERP environment. No changes have been made to the data model, setup, and usage of costing-based profitability analysis in SAP S/4HANA. SAP will no longer invest in further development, but it’s still supported for usage and implementation in on-premise SAP S/4HANA. (You cannot use it in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.)

Account-based CO-PA wasn’t used that much in SAP ERP, as it lacked a lot of functionality compared to its costing-based sibling. Profitability analysis in SAP S/4HANA has been revolutionized with margin analysis so that it gives users a snapshot of their management reporting not only in the past and present, but also in the future, in addition to improved analytical capabilities.

Margin analysis is fully integrated in the Universal Journal . Therefore, it’s reconciled by design. The internal and external views in accounting are harmonized and allow comprehensive reporting with drilldown functionality in P&L statements and balance sheets. The objective for the future is to completely separate margin analysis and costing-based profitability analysis and to deliver a margin analysis without operating concern based on the field catalogue of the Universal Journal.

We published Profitability Analysis with SAP S/4HANA to help you better understand and use the new functions to improve your analytics capabilities and make faster and better-informed business decisions.

Inside the Profitability Analysis with SAP S/4HANA Book

Begin with an overview of SAP S/4HANA and profitability analysis. Learn more about the latest changes and develop an understanding about your different options. Walk through a detailed description of the organizational structure settings and master data necessary for setting up costing-based CO-PA and margin analysis.

Explore the value flow and configuration settings of margin analysis. You’ll learn about end-to-end processes and how they are transferred to CO-PA, along with necessary configuration to display them correctly. Then focus on the end-to-end processes and how they are transferred to costing-based analysis. Configuration settings and an example of how to test settings are explained.

Finish the book with planning and reporting features. Understand SAP’s planning strategy within SAP S/4HANA and the traditional planning methods for costing-based CO-PA. Then turn to the reporting functionalities to gain insight into traditional reports for costing-based CO-PA and new reporting options with SAP S/4HANA for margin analysis.

Who Is This Book For?

This title can also be useful for those working with the SAP S/4HANA FP&A module and know how to set up the configuration for account based and/or costing-based profitability analysis.

About the Author

Kathrin Schmalzing is a director at one of the “big four” consulting firms. Before she transitioned to consulting, Kathrin first worked in the automotive industry in the controlling department, giving her a clear view of the challenges faced by end users and the daily tasks in controlling. Kathrin has been working with SAP solutions since 2002 and has been involved in multiple end-to-end implementations of SAP S/4HANA solutions at an international level. Her current focus is on process simplification and modernization with analytics in SAP S/4HANA financials and FP&A, as well as on their integration with logistics.

How to Purchase

If you’re interested in Profitability Analysis with SAP S/4HANA, follow this link and choose the format that works best for you: e-book, print edition, or bundle (both e-book and print).

If you want to continue learning about profitability analysis, or if you want information on other upcoming books or special offers, make sure to sign up for our FICO topic newsletter or our weekly blog recap .

Need some more background? Learn more about profitability analysis with SAP S/4HANA Finance here .

Recommendation

Profitability Analysis with SAP S/4HANA

W hether you’re running account-based or costing-based CO-PA, this is your one-stop shop for profitability analysis with SAP S/4HANA! Get the step-by-step instructions you need for configuring master data, operating concerns, value flows, and setting up your system. From planning to reporting, this guide has the key to each step of your profitability operations. With this guide to CO-PA, you’re ready for SAP S/4HANA!

Costing with SAP S/4HANA's Material Ledger

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 13:08:16 GMT

Material ledger accounting refers to the ability to generate financial transactions at a material level, providing granular detail of inventory movement.

Although many call the location of this material level detail in SAP the Material Ledger, it is actually stored as part of the Universal Journal in SAP S/4HANA Finance .

Actual costing is an optional feature that can be activated as part of the Material Ledger to revalue materials at their actual cost as part of period-end close. It is important to understand that actual costing is an element of the Material Ledger, but requires additional transaction processing to calculate and revalue inventory based on actual costs.

SAP Material Ledger

One of the major changes in SAP S/4HANA in regard to management accounting (inventory valuation, to be specific) is that the Material Ledger is now obligatory in SAP S/4HANA.

In other words, the Material Ledger and finance in SAP S/4HANA provide inventory valuation, rather than Material Ledger and materials management, as was the case with prior versions. Material valuation is now stored in Material Ledger tables rather than materials management tables.

This change enables dynamic Material Ledger reporting, which is a powerful capability, given the technical advancements of SAP HANA data. Additionally, the Material Ledger supports ad-hoc reporting capabilities with SAP Fiori, as well as with other analytics tools. Now, inventory valuation is brought into the Universal Journal, serving as a single source of truth.

Actual Costing

While the Material Ledger is required in SAP S/4HANA, activating actual costing is still optional. SAP has made it mandatory for Material Ledger to be active, but the specific use of Material Ledger can still be customized to suit your business’s needs. This requirement also does not prevent you from using either standard or moving average prices to value your inventory. In short, price control remains unchanged.

Implications of Material Ledger in SAP S/4HANA

The fact that Material Ledger is now obligatory in SAP S/4HANA does not mean an additional effort on your part in terms of implementation, period-end close, or reporting. Rather, this activation of Material Ledger in SAP S/4HANA enables inventory valuation reporting as part of the Universal Journal. Advanced reporting capabilities are just one of the benefits.

The new solution enables inventory values to be stored in multiple currencies and, if you choose to activate multiple valuation views, according to several parallel accounting standards. Technical benefits include the elimination of redundant data, since local currency inventory value is stored in both material master and Material Ledger tables.

Additionally, this offers improved scalability through optimization of the locking mechanism when material documents are created.

There are two new Material Ledger document tables in SAP S/4HANA: MLDOC and MLDOCCCS. These tables replace the following periodic tables: MLHD, MLIT, MLPP, MLPPF, MLCR, MLCRF, MLKEPH, CKMLPP, CKMLCR, MLCD, CKMLMV003, CKMLMV004, CKMLPPWIP, and CKMLKEPH.

Transfer Pricing and Multiple Valuation Approaches

Transfer prices allow organizations to value goods and services exchanged between different organizational units within the corporation. By valuing the exchange of goods and services using transfer prices, you can significantly influence the actual success of your corporate divisions or profit centers.

For example, when company code A sells raw materials to company code B, company B pays company A a transfer price. This transfer price may be based on company code A’s cost plus a markup, or based on a market price. The transfer price provides company code A with a profit that aligns with legal reporting requirements and is represented in financial reporting.

At a corporate level, the intercompany profit on company code A and intercompany cost on company code B are eliminated to represent a consolidated corporate financial report. The transfer pricing and multiple valuation approach functionality in SAP S/4HANA enables reporting on both of these views.

As in financial accounting, parallel valuation can be implemented in controlling to attribute valuation approaches to a particular ledger in the general ledger. You can manage up to three valuation approaches, or valuation views, in parallel to support transfer pricing: legal valuation view, group valuation view, and profit center valuation view.

The following valuation views are available:

The legal valuation view provides a view of company codes as separate legal entities with transfer pricing between companies within the corporation. Aligned with the accounting principles of the leading ledger within the general ledger.
The group valuation view provides a view of the organization as a group reporting entity rather than many legal entities (company codes). This view can be used to provide a reporting view without intercompany transfer pricing for decision making at a corporate (group) level.
The profit center valuation view enables reporting on profit centers when profit centers represent divisions within an organization and drive transfer pricing with different profits and profit margins.

Activating Valuation Views

Often legal and group valuation are required for reporting, but profit center valuation is not. In this case, it is recommended to only activate the valuation views that are required or will be required in the future. Activating profit center valuation requires maintenance of additional configuration to map transfer prices at a profit center level. If not required, this additional configuration creates unnecessary additional system processing time and ongoing maintenance.

For your valuation views, you can either use separate ledgers, or map multiple valuation views within a ledger as follows:

Parallel single-valuation refers to the assignment of valuation approaches each to a single ledger (i.e., legal valuation assigned to leading ledger). Parallel single-valuation includes: Valuation assigned to ledger, option for new implementations, simpler authorization concept, separate close processing required by valuation view.
Multi-valuation ledger refers to the assignment of one ledger to all currency types and valuation views. The multi-valuation ledger includes: currency types of all valuation views can be used in that ledger, no separate close required by valuation view, optimized memory, valuation view specified in reporting.

You can select per each ledger whether you want to enable a parallel single-valuation or multi-valuation approach. The leading ledger can be used either with the legal valuation view or without restriction to one valuation view. However, it cannot be configured exclusively with only group or profit center valuation views.

Multiple Valuation Views

If you want to use multiple valuation views within a ledger, do not assign a valuation view to that ledger. This enables all currency types to be available for reporting within that ledger. The following depicts how you can design your ledgers to coincide with valuation views.

Parallel Valuation Functionality in SAP S/4HANA 1809

Parallel valuation is enhanced in SAP S/4HANA 1809 to allow multiple currencies in journal entries, allocations (assessments and distributions), and asset capitalization and depreciation.

Actual Costing Runs

The actual costing cockpit provides a way to perform the various steps included in actual costing runs. These steps include production and process order closure, overhead cost calculation, allocations, actual cost split, actual activity rate calculation, and actual costing itself.

Changes within the actual costing run functionality in SAP S/4HANA include the following:

A change of standard price for materials and activities within the period is now supported
If a material is reprocessed by settlement, the system now automatically recognizes the dependent materials on higher costing levels need to be reprocessed
Consumption price differences are now considered
A new two-dimensional distribution logic avoids rounding errors
Price limiter logic is accurate on the cost component split level

Similar to costing run execution, the actual costing cockpit requires that you create a costing run and enter parameters for execution. Prior to SAP S/4HANA, you would perform the following eight steps to process the actual costing run:

Selection
Determine sequence
Single-level price determination
Multi-level price determination
Revaluation of consumption
WIP revaluation
Post closing
Mark material prices

The processing steps previously performed in Transaction CKMLCP (single level price determination, multilevel price determination, revaluation of consumption, and WIP revaluation) are replaced in SAP S/4HANA by a single settlement step. The settlement step performs cost allocations and actual price calculations. The sequence of reduced steps in the Material Ledger Actual Costing Cockpit app are as follows:

Selection
Determine sequence
Settlement
Post closing
Mark material prices
Other Changes to Actual Costing

There are several other changes to the Material Ledger’s actual costing cockpit (Transactions CKMLCP and CKMLCPAVR):

A new parameter Application makes it possible to process alternative valuation runs via Transaction CKMLCP, and actual costing runs via Transaction CKMLCPAVR.
In the toolbar of Transactions CKMLCP and CKMLCPAVR, there is a new button next to Display <-> Change to switch the application from Costing Run to Run Reference and vice versa.
It is no longer possible to use delta posting runs in the actual costing cockpit.

Conclusion

This blog on the SAP Material Ledger/actual costing provided an overview of the key changes in SAP S/4HANA Finance to the Material Ledger, actual costing, and transfer pricing. Several new SAP Fiori apps were described which provide enhanced capabilities including actual costing runs and actual costing cockpit.

Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the book SAP S/4HANA Finance: An Introduction by Maunil Mehta, Usman Aijaz, Tanya Duncan, and Sam Parikh.

Short Term Demand Sensing with SAP

Wed, 30 Sep 2020 12:08:08 GMT

Demand planning can be done for both long-, mid-, and short-term durations to make sure you have enough product to fulfill orders.

As shown in the figure below, demand sensing using pattern recognition-based machine learning augments the consensus demand planning process with short-term forecasts by considering various inputs.

Learn more about SAP's intelligent technologies in this overview.

ABAP Debugging and Memory Usage

Wed, 22 Jul 2020 13:56:38 GMT

Like SQL statements, one of the most-notorious causes of ABAP performance problems is internal tables with many entries. Large internal tables consume massive amounts of memory and CPU, for example, during copy, sort, or search operations.

You can use the ABAP debugger to create an overview of all internal tables of a program. The ABAP debugger is a tool for performing functional troubleshooting in programs. You can find more detailed descriptions of the debugger in SAP literature under ABAP programming. You’ll find information on main memory usage both in the classic and the new debugger. You can set the debugger in the ABAP Editor (Transaction SE38) via Utilities > Settings > Debugging .

Performance analysis using the ABAP debugger isn’t a standard procedure and is best performed by an ABAP developer.

Rules When Debugging

Take the following advice into account when working with the ABAP debugger. During the debugging process, the ABAP program may terminate and display the error message Invalid interruption of a database selection , or the system may automatically trigger a database commit.

In either case, an SAP Logical Unit of Work (LUW) has been interrupted, and this may lead to inconsistencies in the application tables. Therefore, you should only debug on a test system or in the presence of someone who is very familiar with the program being analyzed and who can manually correct inconsistencies in the database tables if necessary. See “Debugging Programs in the Production Client” in SAP Online Help for the ABAP debugger.

You perform a performance analysis with the debugger as follows:

Start the program to be analyzed. Then open a second session. Here you can monitor the program to be analyzed in the work process overview (Transaction SM50). Enter the debugger from the work process overview by selecting the Debugging function. By using the debugger several times in succession, you can identify the parts of the program that cause high CPU consumption. Often, these sections consist of LOOP ... ENDLOOP statements that affect large internal tables.
To display the current memory requirements (in the “classic” debugger), select Goto > Other Screens > Memory Use .
Check for cases of unnecessary memory consumption that may have been caused by a nonoptimal program or inefficient use of a program. As a guideline, bear in mind that a program being used by several users in dialog mode should not allocate more than 100MB.
As of SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP 6.20, you can use the classic debugger to create a list of program objects located in the memory by selecting Goto > Status Display > Memory Use . Under Memory Consumption , the Ranking Lists tab contains a list of objects and their memory consumption.

In SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP versions 4.6 und 6.10, you can obtain a memory consumption list by choosing Goto > System > System Areas . Enter “ITAB-TOP25” in the Area field. This way, you’ll obtain a list of the 25 largest internal tables.
In the “new” debugger, you first display the memory analysis tool by clicking the button for the new tool and then selecting Memory Analysis from the tools on offer in the Memory Management folder. The initial screen then displays how much memory is allocated or used by the analyzed internal session. Click the Memory Objects button to go to the list of the largest memory objects, which can be the internal tables, objects, anonymous data objects, or strings.

Memory Extracts

Moreover, you can create and then analyze a memory extract, that is, an overview of the objects that occupy memory space. You can create a memory extract in any transaction by selecting System > Utilities > Memory Analysis> Create Memory Extract or simply enter function code “/HMUSA”. The third option is to create a memory extract from program coding. Refer to SAP Help for a description of the system class CL_ABAP_MEMORY_UTILITIES.

To evaluate the memory extract, start the Memory Inspector by selecting System _ Utilities > Memory Analysis > Compare Memory Extracts in any transaction or via Transaction S_MEMORY_INSPECTOR. The Memory Inspector lists all memory extracts in the upper part of the screen. In the lower part of the screen, you can find details about the individual memory extract.

Here, a distinction is made among the object types, programs, classes, dynamic memory request of a class, table bodies, strings, and types of anonymous data objects. You’re provided with different ranking lists, according to which you can sort the objects. For each memory object, you’re provided with the values of bound allocated, bound used, referenced allocated, and referenced used memories. You can find a detailed description of the ranking lists and the displayed values in SAP Help.

Memory Inspector

The Memory Inspector is particularly useful for examining transactions over a long period of time, as is the case in a customer interaction center. Here, users frequently enter a transaction at the beginning of their workday and exit it when they go home. In these “long-term” transactions, data often remains, and therefore memory consumption continuously increases.

The figure below shows an example of a memory extract. The dominator tree shows the hierarchical program structure and the memory used by the program parts. With a size of 494MB, table LT_MEM is conspicuous. The next largest object is the CL_GUI_ALV_GRID class with a size of 250 KB. Below this class, 130 KB are used by table MT_ATA.

Conclusion

In order to find potential performance bottlenecks, it’s important to take a look at historical culprits such as SQL and ABAP code. With tools such as the ABAP debugger and Memory Inspector, analyzing the memory usage in your program becomes quite easy.

Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the book SAP Performance Optimization Guide: Analyzing and Tuning SAP Systems by Thomas Schneider.

An Introduction to the ABAP Editor

Wed, 22 Jul 2020 11:37:14 GMT

ABAP coding can be done in a special tool called the ABAP Editor, which has three different modes to work within.

They are the Front-End Editor (used for source code mode—new), the Front-End Editor (used for plain text mode—old), and the Back-End Editor (used for line-based mode).

The three editors are fully compatible and interchangeable. The source code created in one editor can be viewed by all other modes.

The choice of the editor is based on the user-specific settings made in the ABAP Workbench. The editor can be configured within the ABAP Editor via the menu path Utilities > Settings > ABAP Editor .

The Front-End Editor (New) option provides the latest editor and comes with SAP GUI for Windows 7.0. The new editor is an ActiveX control and is fully integrated into the SAP NetWeaver 7.0 environment.

The new editor has all of the modern code editing features:

The left margin of the main screen of the editor displays any bookmarks and breakpoints. Breakpoints are displayed with a red stop sign, and bookmarks are displayed as a blue flag in the editor margin. You can set up to nine numbered bookmarks and an unlimited number of bookmarks that are not numbered on the editor for fast navigation within the code.
The editor has a line number margin next to the editor margin, where the line number is displayed.
The code changes are marked with a red triangle against the line number.
The status bar displays the current status of the code.
The vertical scroll tip provides information about the current scroll position within the code, current function, class, or method.
You can split the code editor screen horizontally by double-clicking on the splitter line on the vertical scroll bar. You can also just drag the splitter line to split the editor screen horizontally.
You can collapse or expand blocks of code such as IF-ENDIF or CASE-ENDCASE .
The status bar of the editor displays the current status of ( CapsLock ) and ( NumLock ) and the line number of the cursor position. ( CapsLock ) and ( NumLock ) can be changed by double-clicking on them. Double-clicking on the line number displays the Go to Line dialog.
The Front-End Editor has two types of context menu; the context menu options depend on the area selected for the context. The margin context menu is displayed by right-clicking on the left margin and has the option to set breakpoints, delete breakpoints, set bookmarks, clear bookmarks, or navigate to a bookmark (see the following figure).

The context menu in the editing area displays the menu options for the ABAP code. The editing area context menu has various formatting, editing, and navigation options, as shown in the figure below.

The editor provides code hints at runtime as you type by suggesting keyword hints, block templates, and so on. You can accept the code hint by pressing the ( Tab ) key or insert a block template by pressing ( Ctrl ) + ( Enter ). Furthermore, the editor supports WYSIWYG export functionality and exports to HTML, PDF, and RTF formats.

The new ABAP Editor is a fully integrated development environment (IDE) for ABAP programming. It supports syntax highlighting, outlining language structures, real-time code hints, and auto-completion of language structures.
With the new code editor you can customize the highlighting for the keyword, strings, and comments. You can customize the font, color, and size for ABAP keywords and comments. Similarly, you can customize font, color, and size for strings, breakpoints, and other display items in the code editor (see the figure below).

You can customize the display settings of your editor. The next figure shows the display customization screen. The display and the word wrap options can be switched on or off according to your preference.

Code completion has been added to new the ABAP Front-End edition in SAP NetWeaver 7.0 EHP 2. The tool proposes appropriate ABAP words and operands for where you are in your code. To insert the proposed text, press ( Ctrl ) + ( Space ).
The other feature that’s new in SAP NetWeaver 7.0 EHP 2 is that with the new code-based view in the ABAP Editor, you can toggle between the classic form-based view in Class Builder and the new code-based view. This new view allows you to see a global class’s whole code, such as a program in the ABAP Editor, and you can edit the code. When you save, the modified source code is then split among the corresponding include programs.
Finally, you can customize the code completion options for the editor. This option allows you to complete the available keyword from the dictionary or complete the class, method, or variable name within the scope of the visibility.

The ABAP Editor is one of the most commonly used ABAP Workbench development tools. Especially helpful are the three interchangeable modes; which one do you typically code in?

Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the book ABAP 7.5 Certification Guide: Development Associate Exam by Puneet Asthana and David Haslam.

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Transfer Pricing and Multiple Valuation Approaches

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Actual Costing Runs

Conclusion

Short Term Demand Sensing with SAP

Demand planning can be done for both long-, mid-, and short-term durations to make sure you have enough product to fulfill orders.

ABAP Debugging and Memory Usage

Like SQL statements, one of the most-notorious causes of ABAP performance problems is internal tables with many entries. Large internal tables consume massive amounts of memory and CPU, for example, during copy, sort, or search operations.

Rules When Debugging

Memory Extracts

Memory Inspector

Conclusion

An Introduction to the ABAP Editor

ABAP coding can be done in a special tool called the ABAP Editor, which has three different modes to work within.

Migration of Warehouse Product Data

Storage Bin Migration

Stock Migration

Physical Inventory Completeness

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