Here we will try to cover end to end scenario from setting up Postman to connecting it with SAP. Postman is widely used tool by developers. It helps in testing the interface without bothering or involving third parties.

SAP connects to multiple systems through various interfaces, to exchange different kinds of data. So in order to develop these interfaces between third party and SAP, lot of testing and integration undergoes. Developing / Building interface is a complex and tedious task. It requires lot of testing to verify numerous scenarios.

While building the interface many times developer has to test the interface to check whether the development is in right direction or not. And it is not easy task to reach out and coordinate with third parties to carry out such testing. This is where Postman comes in. It acts as third party and helps developer to test the interface.

Through postman we can trigger the same data that we are supposed to receive from third party system. so without any further adieu, lets get started with setting up of postman.

Download Postman App 

Search the same heading on google. Go into first website and download Postman application.

Open the downloaded file and it will self-install in less than a minute.

Enter your email ID to create free account:

Click on create new account

And there you go..

Once postman is launched, you can take overview tutorial to take quick look at screens and how to navigate through postman.

On the Postman screen you can anytime press Ctrl + T and start new request. You can also create collection of requests and store it in folders.

If you press Ctrl + T, new request screen will open.

In this you can create request for these many options. (Get, Post, Put, Patch and so on)

Mainly we will be using Get and Post request only.

All right, rest of the Postman we will explore while testing a scenario.

In SAP, ABAP Proxy is a tool which works very similar to API. It enables web services within SAP to connect directly to the third party systems.

So here we will take one example of web service enabled proxy interface. Hope you have little bit understanding on proxy interfaces, if not you can go over google or YouTube to gain some knowledge.

If you notice the postman request header, it is asking for an URL to reach while sending request. So whatever interface we are planning to test here, we need to get an URL for that interface from SAP.

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Now, where to find interface web service URL? So proxy configuration is done in SPROXY transaction code. Lets open the SPROXY Tcode:

You can click on the open object button and search for the proxy object or web service definition. Usually both object names contain some kind of interface details. so if you know the interface ID in your system, you can try to search for that interface using asterisk * as suffix and prefix e.g. *INTERFACE*

Once you get the proxy object open it.

Here you can navigate through Internal view tab and external view tab to understand the data structure of inbound and outbound messages.

Go over to WSDL tab

And here you will get the URL to reach out, in order to trigger this proxy in SAP.

So we will copy this URL and paste it in postman header.

As soon as you paste the URL and press enter, Postman fills certain fields and tabs automatically based on URL:

So above we can see from URL, Postman has picked the client as 900

Notice that we are using ‘Post’ request here since our interface is a inbound interface in SAP. So we will just send data to SAP by using POST request.

Read blogpost: Functioning of CO-PA in make to order scenario

Now go to authorization tab

Here you need to select Basic Auth

And then enter the SAP Logon user ID and Password. You can enter your own user ID and Password.

Header tab is filled automatically.

Lets jump over to the body tab

Here you will enter the information you want to send to SAP.

Here we need to select data type as ‘raw’ and then we have multiple options for data format like text, JSON, HTML & XML. In our case its XML so we will select XML and then in the body we will paste the data which we want to send to SAP.

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Here we have randomly posted some data, which obviously going to fail in SAP but our purpose here is to test the connection.

So lets hit ‘Send’

As soon as you hit send within seconds Postman will give response. Status 200 means our data successful reached to SAP.

On the lower side of Postman application you can find the response and connection details.

You can further check this in SAP in SXMB_MONI transaction.

So this was a very basic usage of Postman and even the interface testing. Consider this as starting point to explore more into this area. You can even use Postman for IDOC testing, for synchronous and asynchronous interface testing and lot more.

Well let’s understand it from SAP’s point of view first, what does SAP market S4HANA Cloud as? It goes like this – S4HANA Cloud will shift the perspective of every user from operations towards the insights and predictive analytics. So if we put it into a list or pointers it will be like below:

• Focus on real time insights and predictive analytics from operations
• Single point of entry for everything
• New user experience with future ready interface
• Role based dashboards with cutting edge insights
• Intelligent automations – easy access to bots
• Efficiency through reducing repetitive tasks
• A lot of Machine learning and use of AI
• Easier connectivity with lot of outside applications

Sounds huge!

Now lets understand it from a common man’s (Consultants) point of view

I believe to understand S4HANA Cloud, the fastest way would be to know how it differs from S4HANA (On Prem)

Lets just quickly brush up on the difference between OnPrem and Cloud. When you say I will run S4HANA on Premises then you mean I will own and manage the Storage, I will manage and own the Servers, I will manage and own the Networks, I will manage and own the O/S, Middleware, Data everything and just take a software for SAP and place it on my infrastructure.

Whereas in Cloud you say I will not own a single thing, I will just buy a laptop and use S4HANA through a website in my browser and that’s S4HANA on cloud for you.

Okay that’s the difference between these two from the system point of view or in the backend. Then what’s the difference in front end for end users or consultants.

Then biggest change would be of the user interface, in premise users will have option to use software through GUI as well as FIORI. But in Cloud you can only login through FIORI.

Next big change will be for consultants since in Premise version you can configure software through SPRO. But in cloud it will be through self service config UIs / through expert config FIORI Apps

The upgrades in cloud will be quarterly whereas in on premise it will be yearly basis. So cloud customers will have access to new age innovations faster than on premise customers.

System landscape will be bit different in cloud than on premise. On premise preferred way is to have 3 systems Dev, QA, and Prod whereas in cloud limited systems will be available. It will be coined differently and treated project wise.

S4HANA On Premise	S4HANA On Cloud
GUI & FIORI	FIORI
SPRO for Config	FIORI Apps for super users
Yearly Update (on an avg)	Quarterly update
Dev, QA, and Prod System	Coined differently and more of project dependent

Lets dig dipper in S4HANA Cloud as it has two products – one is Public Cloud and other one is Private Cloud

Private Cloud is something that can be configured and customized on a larger scale, basically it is a flexible option for the companies which have complex processes and requires lot of customization.

Customer could choose their own cloud partner like AWS, Google, Microsoft Azure etc and who should provide support for it.

Whereas public cloud is a offering of SAP as part of SAAS (software as a Service). It is for the companies which have the very common processes and aligns with the industry. It can be implemented very fast (as fast as 4 weeks).

There is no option to customer to choose cloud platform as SAP will only provide and support it.

It will have very frequent upgrades which will be rolled out by SAP so with public cloud customers will have hands on a latest innovations immediately.

This blogpost is a humble attempt to present the scope of Profit Center in SAP Organization Structure. Since it can be used for various purposes and to represent various parts of business, it makes it hard to put a definition around Profit Center. In this blogpost we will try to clear some of the doubts about PCA one might have:

What we will not discuss? – Configuration of PC & PC Group. Creation of PC and PC Hierarchy.

What we will discuss?

• What is the need of PC in a business?
• How can profit center generate complete financial statements?
• What is Segment / Segment Reporting?
• What is difference between PC and Segment?

What is the need of PC in business?

First let’s talk about the concepts of cost center and profit center with an example. Say a company PepsiCo have a line of businesses from where they earn revenue. They operate in Beverages, Fast Food items and Drinking water. So these are the lines of areas which generates revenue and can have their own profitability. But in PepsiCo there are other departments which don’t generate revenue, but it is required to run the business. Departments like Admin, Sales, Production & Finance. So these are considered as Cost centers of a business.

And hence the need of profit center and cost center arises.

Now if we talk specifically about profit centers, then we have heard multiple times that Profit center accounting is used to derive the complete financial statements apart from company code level.

So, we also know that profit center is an independent organization object from a company code. A single profit center can have transactional data from multiple company codes from multiple regions. This ability of PC itself gives an advantage or a scope for fulfilling the limitations of a company code. What cannot be reported on a company code level can be covered by or under profit center accounting.

As mentioned, PC is independent unit from company code so it can be leveraged to do internal reporting for various areas of an organization. It can be associated with specific business units such as product line, division, region etc.

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How can profit center generate complete financial statements?

So, in order to have complete set of financial statements, profit center have to have complete transactional data posted to one or another PC. And each profit center needs to have complete set of accounting entry posted (nothing but equal side of debit and credit for any transaction). And it will made sure by document splitting. Now document splitting is in itself a separate topic to discuss. You can study documents splitting and how it works to understand more about it.

Now the next big question is how the profit center will get all the postings? So profit center will be derived in all accounting documents through various derivation rules. On a broad level we can say PC will get data or get derived by below ways:

Expenses à Cost Center (inside CC a PC will be assigned which will depict all the cost posted on CC)

Revenue à Automatic Account Assignment (Revenue accounts can be directly assigned to PC)

Balance sheet à Business Area (via Business Area)

If you want to go more specifics of PC determination, then you can give a read to blogpost – https://blogs.sap.com/2014/09/08/profit-center-derivation-in-different-scenarios/

After activating document splitting and maintaining derivation of PC you should be able to draw complete financial statements on profit center level

Transaction codes can be used to fetch financial statements – S_PL0_86000028, S_PL0_86000029 and S_PL0_86000030

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What is Segment / Segment Reporting?

The concept of segment is although a very important aspect of business however many businesses do segment reporting due to a legal compliance specially in US region.

Many businesses operates in segments, its nothing but a divisions of business. We can term it as the divisions of business which are contributing to the sales or revenue directly.

To understand it in more better way lets again talk about PepsiCo company, so this company’s revenue comes from Beverages, Fast Food & Snacks. As per US legal compliance the company is liable to do reporting in all segments of business, means the company has to publish their P&L statement in segment wise.

They have to show the breakup of Revenue and profitability by each segment.

Hence the segment in SAP comes into picture. It helps businesses to report the P&L in each segment.

To understand segment reporting concept in more detail, you can watch the below video:

What is the difference between Segment & Profit Center?

So, there is a very thin line between Segment and Profit Center, because both are used for same purpose i.e. to analyze financial data for different aspects of business.

However, the biggest differentiator between segment and Profit center is their purpose of use. PC is used for internal reporting and Segment is purely introduced by the SAP to do external reporting.

Considering it business has to align segments according to the divisions of business which contributes to revenue.

And then Profit center can be used for any of the organizational object to track its profitability.

If group currency is different than company code currency then a separate depreciation area is required to be created under chart of depreciation.

The parallel currencies can be checked in OB22 transaction. If a company code using group currency as parallel currency which differs from the company code currency then we should create a separate depreciation area.

Until and unless we have a dedicated area for group currency valuation system will not allow us to assign chart of depreciation to company code.

So in order to configure additional depreciation area below steps needs to be followed:

Define depreciation areas

Path: SPRO – Financial Accounting (New) – Asset Accounting – Valuation – Depreciation Areas – Define Depreciation Areas

While defining new depreciation area, always remember to copy it from book depreciation or the depreciation area from which the values will be taken over to group currency dep area.

It should not post to GL.

Specify Area Type

Transaction code: OADC

Path: SPRO – Financial Accounting (New) – Asset Accounting – Valuation – Depreciation Areas – Define Depreciation Areas

On the same path double click on second row – Specify area type

On this screen one has to the depreciation area type from below available options. For group depreciation area it is necessary to select 06 group valuation area type.

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01	Valuation for trade bal. sheet
02	Special dep. reserves (special tax depreciation)
03	Valuation for tax bal. sheet (diff. from trade bal. sheet)
04	Net worth valuation
05	Insurance valuation
06	Group valuation
07	Cost-acc. valuation
08	Investment support
09	Manual Revaluation
10	US: Federal tax ACRS / MACRS
11	US: SMACRS – State modified MACRS
12	US: ALTMIN – Alternative minimum tax
13	US: ACE – Adjusted Current Earnings
14	US: E&P – Earnings & Profits
15	Austria:  investment incentive
16	Stock indicator for real estate management of insurances
17	Depreciation area for handling inflation (hard currency)
18	Balance sheet according to other guidelines (e.g. IAS)
19	Property Tax (Russia)
20	Transport Tax (Russia)
21	Area Posts Net Book Value for Retirement

Specify Transfer of APC Values

Transaction code: OABC

Path: SPRO – Financial Accounting (New) – Asset Accounting – Valuation – Depreciation Areas – Specify Transfer of APC Values

This node will decide from which depreciation area APC (Acquisition and Production cost) values will be taken over for group currency area.

Specify Transfer of Depreciation Terms

Transaction code: OABD

Path: SPRO – Financial Accounting (New) – Asset Accounting – Valuation – Depreciation Areas – Specify Transfer of Depreciation Terms

This screen will decide the takeover of depreciation terms from which area to which area.

Identical tick mark will make sure values cannot be entered manually and should always be taken over from area 01

Define Depreciation Area for foreign Currency

Path: SPRO – Financial Accounting (New) – Asset Accounting – Valuation – Currencies – Define Depreciation Areas for Foreign Currencies

In this config we will assign the currencies to depreciation area in which it should be posted.

Specify the Use of Parallel Currencies

Path – SPRO – Financial Accounting (New) – Asset Accounting – Valuation – Currencies – Specify the Use of Parallel Currencies

Select the group currency for group valuation area.

Now system should allow us to assign chart of depreciation to company code

Assign Chart of Depreciation to Company Code

Path: SPRO – Asset Accounting – Asset Accounting (Lean Implementation) – Organizational Structures – Assign Chart of Depreciation to Company Code

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In SAP it is possible to do budgeting in more than one currency. For multinational projects it is very common case where expenses will occure in multiple currencies.

First it is necessary to understand below types of currencies

1. Controlling Area Currency

This is the currency of your controlling area. All budget lines will be updated/converted into this currency by default.

• Object Currency

Object could be WBS (Or any cost object) which can have its own independent currency. If you enter a currency in object master data (WBS Master data) then budget will be updated in Object currency.

• Transaction Currency

Other than object currency and controlling area currency you will be having option to enter budget in transaction currency, where you can select any currency and update budget in it

Now how this different currency budget will be converted into other currencies (mainly, controlling area currency and Object currency.

The calculation of exchange rate is done using value date of budget line and exchange rate type maintained in budget profile. This is for total values and for annual values exchange rate type will be maintained in plan version 0.

Total values and annual values are translated individually.

Budget Profile:

You can notice in above budget profile; exchange rate type is maintained as P and budgeting currency is selected as controlling area currency.

Availability control in object currency will make sure the budget is available in object currency as well.

It is also necessary to know if budget is entered on abc date at xyz rate and in future if exchange rate changes and you do return or transfer it will be causing difference in the system and it will be very hard to track down the change of values.

So its wise to not change exchange rate frequently for exchange rate type Maintained for Projects (mostly it is P)

For more info on it you can checkout below link:

http://saphelp.ucc.ovgu.de/NW750/EN/7c/11d553088f4308e10000000a174cb4/content.htm

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How to adjust exchange rate difference for WBS budget between controlling area currency and Object currency?

So far we discussed about how difference could arise between the CO area currency and Object area currency, now we will see how to adjust it.

SAP has provided a standard transaction to adjust budget from one currency to another.

Transaction code – IMCRC3 – Currency Recalculation of Plan/Budget for Projects

Here you can recalculate budget for any of the currency, comparing another one.

For eg in processing options, you can see two radio buttons with the option to calculate and adjust budget for CO area currency from object currency and other one is to adjust budget in object currency from CO area currency.

For e.g. CO area currency is USD and Object area currency is INR and if you select the first radio button, then system will change the budget value of USD to match it with INR as per current / latest exchange rate entered in system.

Note: Once this program is ran and budget is adjusted there is no way to reverse it. Since budget is adjusted in only one currency and if we try to do anything in normal transaction code it will update both the currencies.

However if something goes wrong and you need to reverse the budget document, then you can raise a ticket to SAP and they can provide you with a utility program which you can implement in your system and run it to reverse WBS budget document.

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