Actuals report with WBS, Supplier, GL, Cost Center detail by period

[former_member95896]

I've been looking around in the standard delivered project and supplier reports and have not found one seem to cross over to have a complete data set that can be run for any period which contains info down to invoice level detail for analysis and project elements like WBS (at a minimum).

Our depts (cost centers) budget down to supplier and GL account and want to have the ability to review actuals at that level of granularity in spend associated with projects too.

Does anyone know of a standard report that can meet that need for actuals? I know that I can probably create a custom CDS view, create a custom analytical query based on it and a tile, assign it to a role, etc. but I was hoping that I wouldn't have to jump thru those hoops to get a report that has supplier, cost center and project wbs.

Thanks!

Ryan

[former_member95896 · Accepted solution]

riwamouawad ferasbasha3 ccsmith cassianolins I was using the Custom Fields and Logic app today to extend some fields to the Display Line Items in General Ledger app and I had an epiphany to look to see if any of the Project Reports could be extended. Good news that they can! I was able to take the standard Project - Actuals report as an example and basically add the fields I added in the custom query above from the journal entry line item cube. That seems at least right now to be the most straightforward way to get to the report I need without all of the hoops to make a custom query.

Semantic tags have been something I wanted to dive into as well to help improve our financial reporting, but I'm struggling with some of the documentation on how they work in concert with other elements like hierarchies for profit and cost centers, financial statement versions, etc.

[former_member94298 · Accepted solution]

rpmuller - great to hear that the extensibility works - I think that this is one of the most powerful features of S4HC!

As an aside - agree that semantic tags are interesting - but not sure how they could be used to meet this sort of requirement - but very exciting as a prospect for producing a proper P&L (including all the tricky subtotals like EBITDA) directly out of S4HC rather than relying on subsequent offline manipulation before publishing results.

[riwamouawad · Accepted solution]

Hi Ryan,

The help portal link that ferasbasha3 shared below should help. However, here is an example that might help - think of semantic tags as cost buckets. Let's say you want to report on 3 cost buckets - you can use semantic tags A, B, C as "buckets." You can map your G/L Accounts to these cost buckets / semantic tags, A,B,C. Then, you can create a hierarchy with the G/L Accounts, and the hierarchy can be pulled into reports, such as your plan / actual report. Once you pull in the hierarchy as a dimension, you will be able to split down into the G/L Account level and their costs by semantic tag. For instance, you would see A with GL Accounts 62005000, 65009000, 64005000 has a total of 1,000 in costs, and be able to compare it to B with GL Accounts 64002000, 66005000, 67005000 and a total cost of 2,000. This would tie back to your question of how does it work with other elements such as profit centers/cost centers. All cost GL Accounts are tied to a cost center. So overall, semantic tags are a level deeper into reporting. Hope this helps!

[rb2020 · Accepted solution]

Hi - I understand your example, but what I've always confused about is - How is that different from simply setting a GL heirarchy? Or can you give me an example of, if it's not really different, how it would be helpful?

So what I'm saying is, in your example, you state GL accounts 62005000, 65009000, 64005000 could be assigned to semantic tag A. Then semantic tag A shows you that the sum of those three accounts equals $1,000. However, I could simply create a new heirarchy, assign GL accounts 62005000, 65009000, 64005000 to a heirarchy node (for example employee costs) and it would achieve that same thing.

If I'm correct, I appreciate the example. I would like to understand possibly a more complex example or further information to clarify the additional value add of semantic tags, as I have to imagine there is something more to them?

[former_member132345]

Hello Ryan,

Complementing what Riwa says, regarding the only unavailable field to select, which is "supplier" I would like to inform that this functionality is currently not available.

We have launched an opportunity for S/4HANA Cloud customers to submit improvement requests: SAP Customer Influence enables customers to submit improvement requests and to openly vote on them. The voting shows us a trend of required product enhancements.

You can create your ideas in 16 S/4HANA Cloud sessions which are based on business and technology areas (e.g. Finance, Migration, etc.).

Each session has a minimum number of votes. Once an improvement request reaches this voting threshold, SAP will review and evaluate your submitted improvement request and will maintain a status on SAP Customer Influence.

1. Get started by opening SAP Customer Influence (http://influence.sap.com/saps4hanacloud)

2. Register and accept the Terms of Use

3. Choose a session of your interest

4. Create and submit your improvement request

5. Take a look at existing improvement requests and start voting and commenting

Best Regards,

Cassiano Lins

[former_member95896]

Hi Cassiano,

Thanks for your message on the influence site. I agree it is a useful tool to socialize improvements that we'd like SAP to make. I've placed several influence requests out there already and have already seen some positive results in the past releases. The one disappointing thing recently I've found with some of the areas like Finance is the barrier to get influence items at least reviewed keeps getting raised. I'd rather not constantly stump for people to vote for ideas here (the requests should stand on their merits not who has the most contacts), but there are few other ways to draw people's attention on the influence site.

Best Regards,

Ryan

[former_member94298]

One slightly alternative approach which we did consider for this type of reporting (but didn't get as far as implementing) would be to use extensibility (via a substitution) to get the supplier populated on the P&L line item so that you can still use the standard reports.

Probably overkill, and perhaps a bit of a clunky solution - but a bit of lateral thinking?

[former_member95896]

ccsmith Thanks Clare, poking at some form of extensibility is next on my list to see what is available. There are lots of reports that seem to have 3/4 or 4/5 of elements we'd like to see or have different destination fields based on where the source info is coming from (like Supplier vs Offsetting Account). I'd love to just use the standard reports or standard project reports out of the box...

[Feras_Al-Basha]

Hi rpmuller ,

In parallel to the great comments of our colleagues,

Have you checked out configuring financial semantic tags?

https://help.sap.com/viewer/0fa84c9d9c634132b7c4abb9ffdd8f06/1811.500/en-US/0652186231414216a044d175...

For one customer after some configurations I remember us being able to reflect the points you mentioned in the out-of-the-box 'project profitability' report. However, as riwamouawad elaborated there are some technical limitations preventing form consuming all information at once. Regardless with some configurations and multiple variants created the information resided in the above mentioned report.

Thank you,

Feras

[riwamouawad]

Great idea ferasbasha3 ! Semantic Tags could be used in this case for reporting.

[riwamouawad]

One more note: The Project Costs report will allow you to view WBS, GL Account, and Cost Center by fiscal period - so it will cover 3/4 things you are looking for. The only unavailable field to select is supplier.

[riwamouawad]

Hi Ryan,

There is not a standard report that includes all 4 elements - supplier, cost center, GL account, and project WBS. The 2 common cost reports that are most commonly used are 1. Project Costs & 2. Plan / Actual Projects. The Project Costs report will allow you to view costs for the Project WBS Project ID, as well as drill into the cost details for the project, viewing the GL Accounts associated with the costs. The Plan / Actual report also has several fields that can be used for reporting, but in order to view supplier, cost center, and project WBS, you would have to create a custom analytical query.

Best,

Riwa

[former_member95896]

riwamouawad I've made a custom analytical query based off the iJournalEntryItemCube to at least get us kicked off. What I've found is a couple things:

1. The journal entry item cube seems to be the only place to track what I mentioned above for actuals natively. The actual plan journal entry cube doesn't have the same fields required for supplier reporting. That's ok for now as we're only after actuals but once we want to put a budget or plan in we're going to have to re-evaluate how to report that.

2. Where the supplier information appears isn't uniform. If it comes from a Supplier Invoice that didn't reference a PO the Supplier Name and Supplier Number appear in the Offsetting Account and Name fields; if it references a PO it populates the Supplier Name field. We're going to have a mix based on our OpEx and CapEx spend, so reporting the supplier info is gonna be ugly and take some manual offline cleanup to start.

Thanks,

Ryan