4. 4
Real-time Access
(No data replication)
Accounting Data
(Universal Journal)
Master Data
Virtualized SAP BW
Modeling, Aggregation and Reporting
SAP BPC Embedded
Consolidation Rules, Business Process Flow and Monitor
SAP S/4HANA Platform
Pre-consolidation
Rules
Consolidation
Entries
SAP S/4HANA
5. Instant Insight to Action on
Live Data
SAP Real-Time Consolidation
Reduced Time to Close
• One integrated environment that radically
reduces data loading and reconciliation
• Pre-consolidation activities performed at source
• Level at which data is consolidated no longer
subject to performance limitations
Real-time Data Access
• Limited or no replication of data
• Data available any time, not just at period end
• In-memory calculation logic within HANA,
consolidation "on-the-fly"
One Single Source of Truth
• S/4HANA Universal Journal as the foundation
• Ability to correct at source: fully consistent
data across the entire finance function
• Shared master data, rules and security
9. Instant Insight to Action on
Live Data
SAP Real-Time Consolidation
Reduced Time to Close
• One integrated environment that radically
reduces data loading and reconciliation
• Pre-consolidation activities performed at source
• Level at which data is consolidated no longer
subject to performance limitations
Real-time Data Access
• Limited or no replication of data
• Data available any time, not just at period end
• In-memory calculation logic within HANA,
consolidation "on-the-fly"
One Single Source of Truth
• S/4HANA Universal Journal as the foundation
• Ability to correct at source: fully consistent
data across the entire finance function
• Shared master data, rules and security
10. A new Paradigm
SAP announced availability of SAP
S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting
1809 in September 2018 as their
strategic consolidation solution for the
SAP S/4HANA suite. As a result, further
developments on Real-Time
Consolidation (RTC) have been stopped
with maintenance to continue until year
2022. Although the product road-map
and direction from SAP are clear it’s
interesting to see that a lot of
customers are still looking to
complement their in-flight SAP
S/4HANA 1709 initiatives with RTC for a
fast and more accurate close.
What is Real-Time Consolidation?
RTC is a solution that is based on deep
integration between SAP S/4HANA and BPC
utilizing the powerful capabilities of the
Embedded BW. One of the unique features
of RTC is that it allows direct access to
master and transactional data from SAP
S/4HANA, processed real time in BPC for
consolidation. This eliminates the need for
traditional extract, transformation and load
(ETL) to a dedicated consolidation
application and thanks to virtualization
capabilities of BW and HANA, we realize the
dream of real-time reporting.
The following diagram presents the high-
level design and development components
for RTC
Instant Insight to Action on Live Data
SAP Real-Time Consolidation
Key Benefits
• From an accounting perspective the
starting point of on any consolidation
process is the trial balance providing
actual data. This is where ACODCA, the
universal journal table in SAP S/4HANA
comes in to picture. It contains the
transactional dat arequired for
consolidation. It is a unified, persistent
source of actual data for all
entities/company codes that are
operational on SAP S/4HANA.
• Foundation view is a HANA calculation
view/HDI container view* or CDS view
that acts as the basis for consolidation
views to be built on. It is mainly used to
project fields from the ACDOCA/P
tables.
• RTC Virtual provider is used to access
live actual data from the RTC auto-
generated union view. The virtual
provider also serves to write the data
back to the consolidation journal
(ACDOCC) via the assignment of the
write back class,
CL_RTC_ACDOCC_IPOV_WRITABLE
11. Instant Insight to Action on Live Data
SAP Real-Time Consolidation
The Ownership and Rates cube provide the group/entity
structure for consolidation and exchange rates information
to support currency translations in BPC. They are
referenced later to create the respective BPC
RTC entails 3-tier modelling across SAP S/4HANA, BW
and BPC. One of the last steps in that modelling process is
to activate the RTC model to reinforce the alignment
between the various components and objects. This
activation also generates a BRF+ application which is
basically a container of rule relevant context and artifacts
(e.g. rule objects) and is utilized by RTC for development
of validation rules to ensure financial integrity of your data.
Validation rules can be created using the Define Validation
Rules Fiori app.
As part of BPC modelling the consolidation, ownership and
rates models are created by referencing their respective
info-providers from Embedded BW. This is followed by a
mapping of the dimensions and attributes to their
underlying fields from HANA views, so that each info-
provider in the model is processed. The core consolidation
logic including methods, multipliers and business rules
(eliminations, currency translations & balance carry forward
etc) are also defined in the BPC application. Although the
business rules concept in RTC is like BPC (Standard
version) it is important to note that as RTC is based on
BPC Embedded technology it has been configured to deal
with periodic data.
ACDOCC is the consolidation journal which has a similar
set of fields and append structure as ACDCOA, but its
purpose being to persist the consolidated data from BPC
and to be the repository for non- SAP S/4HANA data
loaded via the flexible upload program. Also, journal entries
and consolidation monitor tasks (such as balance carry
forward, currency translation, eliminations etc) write back to
the ACDOCC table.
The RTC composite provider only has one underlying info-
provider which is the virtual provider and includes all its
fields. It provides the flexibility to join data from other BW
cubes, for e.g. historical or legacy data.
RTC aggregation level is the structure that forms the base
for all consolidation functions and provides the write-back
capability of BW planning functions (we can create
planning functions to execute some consolidation tasks). It
is created even if the underlying mapping to the provider is
1:1 and used for the development of BW queries and
reporting for RTC. For e.g. rates aggregation level is used
to create input-enabled BW query for exchange rates
submission.