Migration to SAP S/4 HANA from FI: what to check first?

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Many companies will soon be migrating to S4HANA as the end of support for some SAP ERP versions is announced for December 2025. To do so, it is necessary to prepare your SAP ERP, as a clear view is required as to which of the functionalities used in the current implementation are also supported in S4HANA and which must be modified. This also applies to add-ons and active business functions.

An assessment, such as the one we offer at Novis, has great advantages because it allows:

• To have a detailed diagnosis of the current situation regarding migration, to select possible strategies to be evaluated in greater detail. The “how”.
• Define a roadmap of projects to prepare for migration and adapt the roadmap of other projects to make them compatible with this change.
• To have a very good estimation of project costs and deadlines. The “how much.
• Plan the migration in the medium or long term, according to the company’s objectives, to provide the necessary budget. The “when”.
• Have an exhaustive analysis and a detailed plan to present to the company’s top management.

Regarding the SAP FI module, as part of the service, the accounting and fixed asset information is reviewed for consistency and migratability. The quality of client and supplier master data, which in S4HANA are managed as business partners, is also evaluated.

Our FI assessment delivers a plan that considers the review of the following aspects:

1. Financial data. In SAP S/4HANA the accounting information is stored in a single new structure known as Universal Journal, which contains the accounting information, unlike SAP ECC that uses several structures. Before the migration project, all inconsistencies that exist in these various structures must be removed so that your data can be migrated to the new one. This applies to the accounting documents of the financial module, general accounting, and the fixed assets module.

2. Master data. At the master data level, the most relevant is related to clients and suppliers that in S4HANA are business partners, better known as BP (Business Partner). Here also the structures where their data is stored change, which makes it necessary to eliminate all problems to ensure a successful migration.

3. Public management. There are financial modules that are functionally supported in SAP ERP but not in S4HANA. Thus, for example, the version of the public management module PSM-FBS is not supported in S4HANA, making it mandatory to replace it with PSM-BCS before the migration process.

4. Travel management. Another functionality to be taken into consideration is Travel Management, used for travel management and accountabilities, which although it is supported in S4HANA, SAP recommends migrating to Concur.

5. Joint Venture. As for the Joint Venture functionality, it can continue to operate in S4HANA with its own structures without having the obligation to migrate to the Universal Journal. However, SAP recommends moving to Joint Venture based on the Universal Journal in the S4HANA migration project so as not to postpone its digital transformation process.

6. Fixed Assets. It is necessary to review the asset configuration, in terms of the depreciation areas that they account for. Each depreciation area has a presentation rule that it posts, which must have a ledger assigned to it. If the same ledger is used for more than one presentation rule, separate accounting accounts must be used. This reconfiguration of the asset module is mandatory and must be performed prior to the S4HANA migration project.

For more information on this and our other services we invite you to contact us.

Feedback/discussion with the author Jorge Lengwenus, Assistant Manager SAP Finance Novis.