DOCUMENT SPLITTING CONFIGURATION IN S/4 HANA FINANCE

• SPRO path (Fig. 01):

Fig. 01. Path for Document splitting

Document splitting is activated on the client level in Customizing for general ledger
accounting. Document splitting can be activated simply with the flip of a switch in
a greenfield system without postings. If you want to activate document splitting for
existing systems, there is a functionality planned for the 1709 release of SAP
S/4HANA that will require a small separate project.

Fig. 02. Activate Document Splitting

The basic settings you indicate when activating document splitting for your client
are listed here:
• Document Splitting and Method This includes all splitting rules for the
business transactions and business transaction variants. You generally
should be able to use the default delivered by SAP.
• Inheritance indicator This assigns the account assignments defined as
splitting characteristics to all lines when the account assignment
combination is unique for the document. If you have, for example, an invoice
but with one expense line item, the system won’t use splitting rules to fill the
profit center and segment of the vendor and tax lines; it will use inheritance
to transfer them. When there are two or more account assignment
combinations, inheritance won’t be used.
• Standard A/C Assgnmt. and Constant Here you define a default account
assignment, such as a default profit center and segment, for line items for
which it’s not possible to enter or derive the correct account assignments
at the time of posting. As an example, say you receive a cash payment
from a customer but haven’t yet been invoiced by the customer. You
might post the transfer from cash to bank account initially, but because
no details about the nature of the revenue items are known or entered,
the system will use the defaults defined to fill the account assignment for
profit center and segment. When the invoice is posted and the payment
cleared, the account for the payment receipt will balance to zero, so the
accuracy of the initial account assignments posted isn’t significant. You
can define defaults on the splitting method level but also make them more
specific for item categories (general ledger account groupings). Because
splitting is activated on the client level, all company codes are affected by
default. In this step, you can define that splitting should not be performed
for certain company codes (you select the Inactive indicator). This
generally should be avoided, especially in an SAP S/4HANA system in
which line item reporting is a big advantage of the solution and having
more detail for the line item doesn’t slow reporting down. You shouldn’t
deactivate splitting for a productive company code because doing so will
lead to inconsistencies.
Fig. 03. Characteristic for Document splitting in General Ledgers

In Customizing, you select which account assignments will be used as splitting

characteristics. You can select fields based on the general ledger scenarios
assigned (in Figure 03 you can see that Profit Center and Segment are selected)
or custom fields you add to the Universal Journal through coding block
extensibility. You can define an account assignment as a zero-balance splitting
characteristic. In this case, the system will make sure that each document
balances per relevant account assignment characteristics. Finally, for each field,
you select whether it’s a mandatory characteristic. A mandatory field must be
filled for all line items posted to the general ledger. If a field marked as
mandatory can’t be entered or derived during posting, the system raises an
error. You would select both the Zero Balance and Mandatory Field checkboxes
if a field is required to report on the balance sheet level for the relevant account
assignment, as is the case for the Segment field when it’s used for segment
reporting.
Fig. 04. Deactivation per Company code

Different business transactions and accounts can be handled differently by the

system regarding document splitting. You configure the grouping of accounts
and the mapping of these to item categories in Customizing. Most accounts are
mapped with a specific type automatically by the system, but you need to assign
the category manually for revenue accounts, expense accounts, bank account/
cash accounts, and balance sheet accounts. You also assign document types to
business transactions and can further specify business transaction variants to
refine the splitting rules as shown in Figure 05.

Fig. 05. Range of Accounts and categories

Fig. 06. Document types/ transactions / Variants