Time & expense customer project Invoice displays Resource Cost in Billed Value (instead of Service Price maintained)

[former_member26725]

Hello Folks!

We are a global IT services organization implementing S4HC PS 1805.

We deliver projects with different billing types and Time & Expense happens to be one of them.

We have resources across multiple technologies, career streams, locations, & levels (positions). Example: SAP/Functional/LosAngeles/SeniorConsultant whose billing rate is $100/HR and SAP/Functional/Bangalore/SeniorConsultant whose billing rate is $50/HR.

We assign / staff resources from multiple locations on the same customer project.

Each one of this combination has a different T&E billing rate, leading to over 800+ combinations, thereby 800+ different billing rates.

We have defined each combination as a separate activity type & separate custom material (of the type service) and have maintained the cost & service price (condition type PSP0) to these respectively.

We are able to see that the Project displays the correct Cost & Service Price per resource, but when we create the Debit memo Request and proceed for creation of the Billing Document, the Billing Document (Invoice) displays the Resource Costs (actual cost - condition type PC01) instead of condition type PSP0 in the Pricing Conditions. And the billing line item displays a standard SAP delivered material called T999 (Miscellaneous Services) instead of our custom service material.

The Pricing Procedure assigned to the Document Type and the Organization combination is the standard pricing procedure A17J01 (for US).

We are not clear why this is happening and are hopeful that one of you experts can suggest any recommendations based on the experiences that you may have had.

I would certainly appreciate your responses on this.

Note: This issue is not occurring when we try to invoice fixed bid projects.

Regards,

Nitin Fatnani

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Nitin,

regarding your pricing question, the standard pricing procedure for services in US is A17001 (not A17J01). Can you please verify that you are using the standard pricing procedure A17001? Did you make any changes to that pricing procedure or are you using it as it came pre-delivered in standard?

If you are indeed using the standard pricing procedure A17001, it could be that some condition type (sales price) is not correctly maintained. In order to find out which condition record is missing, I recommend to follow the steps in the attached document.

As to the fact that the invoice shows material T999 instead of your custom service material, I would like to make sure I understand your example. When you say that you are using custom service materials. Do you mean for the billing item (under "product sold")? Because for Time and expense, the material determination is done based on the activity type and cost element group (which is fixed for T&E). Meaning that: If you record an hour using activity type T010 for example, Material T010 will be determined. And even though you are able to add custom activity types and custom T&E material, the determination cannot be changed. Meaning: for time and expense scenarios, you are limited to the activity types and materials pre-delivered in S4HC. So my question is: with which activity type are you recording the hours in your example? Was it T999?

Regards

Nadine

[Anna_Rafter · Accepted solution]

Hi Nitin,

As mentioned by Nadine you should analyze with further detail the requirements of your client. Check where the limitions come from. If it is multiple costs you need, or multiple service prices.

Once this is clear, you most bear in mind the restriction we are facing in S/4HANA Cloud, as we can only use 20 activity types (T001 - T020). This restriction is detailed in note 2621065 - SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1805: Release Restriction Note:

"Prof. Services

Material determination configuration within the DIP (Dynamic Item Processor) is not possible at the moment. Therefore, additional material/ activity types T* should not be created. Please take the existing 20 T* materials and rename them."

Best Regards,

Anna

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Nitin,

I think that we must differentiate very clearly between costs and prices.

You can differentiate the PRICES for your 20 service materials by maintaing different prices for the different criteria in condition types PSP0 and PCP0:

https://help.sap.com/viewer/a376cd9ea00d476b96f18dea1247e6a5/1805.500/en-US/ed1b3c9ef6474ff089c9020a...

A typical example used by customers in PSP0 is: PSP0-Price based on workitem where they will have 2 different work items per work package in their project: one is for remote work and one for on-site. Then they would maintain a different price for the work items depending on the consultants delivery location.

Regarding the COSTS, you have a similar access sequence in which you can define your prices based on:

- The receiving company

- Cost Center

- Activity Type

- Service Cost Level

- Employee name

- Work item ID

- WBS Element

https://help.sap.com/viewer/085edb30fb3d413da552832f3d5c01c0/1805.500/en-US/eca13063f2584d26869af54d...

If I understood your question correctly, you are interested in the costs, not the prices. And for the example you have given, the master data maintenance in S4HC could be as follows (just a suggestion as I don't know how you have set up your data):

- Resource base-Country = Company Code - Here you are able to differentiate the costs based on the receiving company (Intercompany Process 16T). Example: A US resource delivering in US will cost 75 USD per hour, wherease a US resource delivering in Germany will cost 90 USD per hour

- Resource City (If US - as costs vary based on the city tiering): You could define one cost center per city and then differentiate the costs based on the cost centers. Or: Use work items

- Technology: Here you could use again cost centers, work items or WBS elements

- Career Stream (Functional, Technical, Management): Skill level of the employee (can be maintained in the employee master record)

- Resource Level (Junior Consultant, Senior Consultant, etc.): Activity Type

- Employee: You can even maintain costs based on specific employees. so in that case, without staffing the employee the cost could be 100 USD per hour, but once the employee John Smith is staffed, the cost will go up to 110 USD per hour.

I hope this makes the S4HC-logic somewhat clear. If not, feel free to revert back to me.

Regards

Nadine

[former_member26725 · Accepted solution]

Many thanks Nadine for explaining it so clearly!

Understood.

However, it would be great if you could share a recommendation on how we can cater our requirement of 800+ different T&E billing rates with just 20 Service Materials. Is there any other field in the condition type master which we can combine with these 20 pre-delivered materials to arrive at the same?

Our planning costs & prices are dependent on the below combinations:

Resource base-Country

Resource City (If US - as costs vary based on the city tiering)

Technology

Career Stream (Functional, Technical, Management)

Resource Level (Junior Consultant, Senior Consultant, etc.)

Example of the above:

US/NY/SAP/Tech/JCon

When the named resource is staffed to the work item in the project, the actual cost must get updated against the original planned cost maintained on above combination.

This actual cost will be available by maintaining the cost at the Personnel No. Level along with the above combination.

Example:

Before the resource is allocated - the activity cost will be picked up from the value maintained against US/NY/SAP/Tech/JCon

Once the named resource is allocated - the activity cost will be picked up from the value maintained against the combination US/NY/SAP/Tech/JCon/Emp001

Appreciate if you could give us some direction on this as well.

Note: While staffing a resource to a work package / work item, there are options to select only the activity type & service org (delivery org).

Regards,

Nitin

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Nitin,

thanks for your prompt reply.

I believe the issue you are having is related to the fact that you are using custom activity types and service materials for T&E projects. In S4HC standard, you are limited to the standard activity types/service materials for T&E (T001 - T020). The same principle is valid for usage based billing scenarios where you are limited to the standard activity types/materials (U001 - U010). The reason behind this is related to the material determination in DIP profile which cannot be influenced in S4HC.

Example of S4HC standard behaviour for T&E scenarios:

- You plan the project with 10 hours of activity type T010

- Time recording occurs in MyTimesheet for 1 hour of activity Type T010

- When creating the debit memo request, DIP profile in the backend determines 1 hour of material T010 in the debit memo request. This determination of material T010 from activity type T010 is fixed in the DIP profile and cannot be changed.

This means, that even though you have created your custom activity types and service materials, lets say for example you have created activity type Z010 and corresponding material Z010, the determination of material Z010 out of activity type Z010 will never happen because you cannot influence the DIP profile. That is the reason why S4HC transforms your activity type Z010 to T999 in the release billing proposal app and you are getting a debit memo request with material T999.

My recommendation: please use the pre-delivered activity types and service materials (T001 - T020) for your T&E projects.

I hope this helps.

Regards

Nadine

[former_member26725 · Accepted solution]

Hi Nadine,

Thanks for your response.

We are not using the pre-delivered activity types & materials. We have created our own and maintained the costs against the activity types and the service prices (condition type PSP0) against the same activity types created also as service materials. The Project displays the cost & price correctly with the right activity type. However, the billing proposal shows T999 and displays the actual cost (condition type PC01) instead of the service price (condition type PSP0).

And yes - to answer the other question, the standard pricing procedure attached to our professional services was A17J01, we havent changed that.

Regards,

Nitin