Source-to-Pay is part of the SAP S/4HANA intelligent enterprise and integrated with other processes:

• SAP Signavio S/4HANA Business Transformation
• S/4HANA Accounting Business Process Integration
• SAP S/4HANA Digital Supply Chain
• S/4HANA Digital Supply Chain Warehouse Management

SAP S/4HANA Source-to-Pay Cloud Intelligent Enterprise

Source to Pay (S2P) extends the Procurement to Pay (P2P) process with strategic sourcing, available with the Ariba cloud solution.

S/4HANA Intelligent ERP Innovations

This sections provides an overview of innovation examples, introduced by the Source-to-Pay Roadmap, with selected Best Practice scope items and Fiori apps.

• Prediction of Delivery Date for Purchase Order Items (3FY)

  • Configure the Consumption of Predictive Models

• Predictive Analytics for Contract Consumption in Procurement (1QR)

  • Quantity Contract Consumption to identify the consumption percentage of quantity type contracts

• Propose Resolution for Invoice Payment Block (2XX)

  • Supplier Invoices List (Version 2)
  • Manage Supplier Invoices
    • the system predicts whether goods receipts are expected to be in time in relation to the cash discount due date

Procurement RPA Use Cases

• supplier invoices upload (4HZ) sent as email attachments in different formats
• imports from Excel like Purchase Info Records (4w3), Purchase Requisitions (48M), Source Lists as combined material vendor information (4TK), catalog items (529)
• create purchasing documents Excel based like purchase requisitions, orders, confirmations, inbound deliveries, goods receipts

Embedded SAP Analytics Cloud

Buyers can analyze and monitor insights of purchasing spend details with the Purchasing Spend Dasboard app (requires activated scope item 1JI).

Organizational Elements

• Purchasing Organization
  • level where negotiated terms with vendors are stored
  • can be assigned on client level
    • for different company codes
    • to one company code
    • on plant level
• Purchasing Group
  • operating level
    • responsible for negotiating terms
    • day-to-day business
    • people or groups within the purchasing organization corresponding to certain buyers, materials or services

Material Valuation

Material Ledger is the obligatory inventory subledger. Materials get valuated in multiple languages according to General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). This ledger calculates actual costing with actual prices (periodic unit price) for each material and particular periods.

Master Data

Client, plant, storage locations and purchasing groups are purchasing specific material master. This data is relevant input data for external procurement processes.

Vendor business partner master records offer client, company code and purchasing organization information. Assigned supplier roles provide purchasing data, valid for multiple assigned purchase organizations. Purchasing data includes transaction currency, payment method, contacts and reconciliation account.

Info records are not required for purchase order creation. They provide information about vendor and material on plant and purchase organization level. Info records vendor prices are conditions to determine prices in purchasing document.

S/4HANA Locking Strategies

Locking strategies for goods movements are customized with Transaction OMJI.

• Exclusive block
  • locks tables MARC and MBEW during goods movement from first read until final posting
  • mandatory for statistical price control moving average
• Late exclusive block
  • locking directly before posting with actual data read from enqueue server
  • waiting time specifies the retry time after failed locking

With the new S/4HANA locking concept, exclusive locking is not needed for materials with standard price control. Deactivating the statistical moving average price is irreversible and avoids exclusive locks during goods movements.

S/4HANA Purchasing Basics

• Purchasing lead time

  • delay between ordering and arrival at factory

• Lot size

  • multiples of certain quantities

• Movement types

  • control how goods are moved and accounts are determined

• Stock types

  • determine the availability, unrestricted for MRP or with no withdrawal (quality inspection, blocked)

Purchasing Document Flow

• Purchase requisitions

  • are documents to procure materials or services
  • can be created manually or automatically by MRP, orders (production or maintenance) and via Ariba network
  • data can be overtaken to successor documents like purchase orders, requests for quotations (RFQ) and outline agreements
  • accounting objects have to be assigned when purchasing a service or goods for a cost center.

• RFQ

  • Request for Quotation to supplier for the purchase of goods or services

• Commitments

  • are liabilities arising from purchase order prices
  • which get reduced with goods receipts.

• Purchase orders

  • are formal requests to vendors to supply materials or services
  • can be created with reference to other documents (requisitions, quotations, contracts, purchase orders) or without reference

• posting Goods Movements generate material documents

  • for receipt goods of purchase orders
    • checks of right material, amount and shelf life time for perishable goods have to be performed
    • for valuated stock materials a financial accounting document gets created.

• Invoice documents

  • get created during invoice verification process
  • discrepancies between the amount of ordered and receipt goods get checked against tolerances
  • posting invoices
    • creates accounting documents
    • updates the purchase order history
    • clears the initial GR/IR clearing accounts
  • line items of accounting documents contain the general ledger account numbers with amounts
  • one open item is posted to the vendor's account in financial accounting
  • with document splitting, vendor invoices can be charged to different cost objects.

• Payment runs

  • post payment documents
  • clear open items
  • prepare data for printing or exchange (EDI, file transfer).

Integration points

• Inventory management material document and stock updates
• Accounting documents for inventory valuation relevant movements, with affect to general ledger
• Warehouse management transfer requirements
• Quality management inspection lots
• Management accounting posting of actual costs and clearing of commitments
• Material ledger moving average price

Accounting

• Accounting Objects

  • like cost centers or orders
  • have to be assigned on purchase document item level for
    • materials without master data (e.g. pure consumption)
    • services or materials, which are not subject to value based inventory management.

• Accounts Payable

  • manages accounts for supplier line items.

• Account Assignment Categories

  • represent the general type of assignable cost objects e.g. order, asset, cost center, project
  • have to be assigned to procure consumable materials