Co-Authored by Ying Shi and Grace Zou

SAP S/4HANA intercompany documents matching and reconciliation (ICMR) helps companies reconcile intercompany relevant transactions in a flexible way. In this blog, we would like to share a few things you need to consider when defining a reconciliation case.

Before we go into the details, let’s have a look at the main concepts used in ICMR and their relationships:

Transaction data table: Transaction data is stored in the database tables. Depending on the functional area, the data can be stored in the universal journal table (ACDOCA), the consolidation table (ACDOCU), etc.

CDS view: Virtual data model based on the transaction data tables. SAP delivers best practices CDS views, which you can reference when creating your own CDS views.

Data Source: Defines a specific IC scenario, the business context, and the fields used. For example, you can define two data sources, one for company code dimension reconciliation, and the other for profit center dimension reconciliation.

Matching method: Defines which transaction data are selected and how they are matched automatically by the defined matching rules, etc.

Reconciliation case: on top of the matching method, the reconciliation case is to specify the reconciliation rules, i.e., which accounts balance should be compared with that of the partner side.

With the understanding of the main concepts of the ICMR, let’s look into the three main steps of deciding how reconciliation cases should be defined.

Step 1: Decide on the CDS view to be used as the reconciliation data model. It depends on which data you want to use for reconciliation and who is responsible for the reconciliation. If the reconciliation is done by G/L accountants, the accounting data model is usually used. By contrast, if reconciliation is done by consolidation accountants, the consolidation model is used. In general, there are four options:

• Read from the accounting universal journal table ACDOCA.
• Read from classic accounting document tables (BKPF, BSEG).
• Read from consolidation group journal table ACDOCU and accounting table ACDOCA united.
• Read from consolidation table ACDOCU.

You can refer to SAP Help for more details. Additionally, no matter which CDS view you use, the transaction data outside of the S/4HANA system can be uploaded or replicated into ICMR.

Step 2: Set up the data source that is relevant to the business context used for data matching and reconciliation. Business context provides information such as organization dimension, fiscal year and period parameters, and data version to allow the system to further filter the data according to specific business needs. For the details, you can check SAP Help.

Note that you normally need to use different data sources for B/S accounts reconciliation and P&L accounts reconciliation, as they have different fiscal year period parameter settings. You can refer to the detailed settings for the two cases in the Example part.

Step 3: Once you’ve set up the data source, you need to decide how to split the accounts into matching methods and reconciliation cases. The reconciliation status and the documents selected for matching are divided by reconciliation case, therefore, you need to decide how to split the paired accounts. You also need to consider who can see what kind of documents. For example, you split the accounts into two reconciliation cases: AR with AP and AP with AR, then the person who has access to the reconciliation case AR with AP can only see the companies’ AR documents and the AR documents corresponding to partner companies’ AP documents. Likewise, the person who has authorization for reconciliation case AP with AR can see the companies’ AP documents and the AP documents corresponding to partner companies’ AR documents.

Now you know the main concepts of ICMR and the three steps to decide how to define a reconciliation case. Let’s have a look at two examples.

Example A: Company A is a global company that has over 100 subsidiaries. It requires all intercompany data to be reconciled locally by a shared service center. The shared service center has two groups of people, one focuses on intercompany transactions, and the other focuses on investment and equity accounts. Therefore, the company designed the following settings:

Example B: Company B is a global company that has a consolidation department focusing on collecting data from subsidiaries, reconciling data, and doing elimination. All non-S/4 data are collected to the group reporting data table ACDOCU by using the API (Reported Financial Data for Group Reporting – Bulk Import). The company needs to reconcile two groups of accounts:

• AR with AP based on consolidation unit dimension.
• IC sales with cost based on profit center dimension. Therefore, the company designed the following:

Please be aware that document matching and reconciliation status are managed by matching method and reconciliation case, therefore, the same documents might be used in different cases for various purposes.

We hope with this blog you can better understand how to define reconciliation cases in S/4HANA ICMR.

For more information, please read:

ICMR online help for S/4HANA 2023 release

2815304 – FAQ About SAP S/4HANA Intercompany Matching and Reconciliation (On Premise)

2916087 – ICMR Configuration Guide (On Premise)

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