SAP is a highly integrated system that manages data from various areas of the business, such as accounting, sales, purchasing, production, and so on.
This integration comes with a certain degree of complexity, which results in the data being stored in many different tables. Thus, sometimes, even for experienced consultants, finding the best way to find and retrieve the relevant data can be a challenge.
In the area of finance, traditionally, financial accounting and controlling (management accounting) were separate applications in SAP, which was a design mainly driven from traditions in the German-language world. However, in today’s globalized world, a strong case exists for the integration of processes and applications and the simplification of systems. SAP’s answer to this need is the excellent SAP S/4HANA Finance solution, which provides full integration of the financial accounting and controlling applications, both from a process point of view and a database point of view.
We’ll discuss in detail the two key elements of the new finance data model in SAP S/4HANA: the Universal Journal and real-time integration between financial accounting and controlling.
The Universal Journal provides a solution for a seemingly simple but, until SAP S/4HANA, elusive goal: bringing together and fully integrating all financial information in one single line-item table that has all financial accounting, controlling, and material valuation information. Previously, for many reasons, multiple financial accounting and controlling tables stored data that now, with SAP S/4HANA, is stored in the Universal Journal. Some tables were based on business processes on the presumption that financial accounting and controlling should be separate applications, which isn’t the case in the current business world. Some reasons were technical: only the amazing speed and columnar design of SAP S/4HANA makes it technically feasible to have such a vast amount of data in a single table.
The Universal Journal is a new table in SAP S/4HANA, called table ACDOCA. This line-item table brings together information from the general ledger, controlling (management accounting), asset accounting, and material ledger, as shown in this figure.
As shown, table ACDOCA, the Universal Journal table, combines fields that previously were stored in the tables of various financial accounting and controlling functionalities. Once a financial document is posted in table ACDOCA, fields such as cost center, asset number, profitability segment fields, and so on are also recorded. Thus, a whole lot of tables from controlling, fixed assets, and the material ledger have been made redundant because the information is now integrated in the Universal Journal.
For compatibility reasons, these tables still exist as core data services (CDS) views so that they can still be referenced in custom programs, which is important for companies pursuing brownfield implementations of SAP S/4HANA.
The table below shows the main financial accounting tables that are now obsolete in SAP S/4HANA because their data is part of table ACDOCA.
Tables BSIS, BSAS, BSID, BSAD, BSIK, and BSAK are index tables containing open and cleared items for general ledger accounts, customers, and vendors, which are now all in table ACDOCA. Tables GLT0 and FAGLFLEXT are totals tables (table FAGLFLEXT was introduced with the new general ledger), which are now also obsolete because SAP S/4HANA calculates totals on the fly. The next table shows other important controlling, fixed assets, and material ledger tables that are now obsolete due to the Universal Journal.
As you can see, now in SAP S/4HANA, the Universal Journal combines the key tables of all the financial applications into a single table, which is commonly referred to as the single source of truth. Now, you have all the information you need to present the financials of your company in one place, which is an enormous advantage compared to previous SAP releases and to other enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
The real-time integration of financial accounting with controlling follows logically from the integration design of the Universal Journal as discussed earlier. Indeed, because controlling-relevant data now is brought together with financial accounting data in the Universal Journal, no technical obstacles prevent the system from providing real-time integration between any financial accounting and controlling documents.
In the past, the reconciliation ledger had to be configured to ensure that financial accounting and controlling were always in sync. This configuration is no longer required because, with the real-time integration with financial accounting, such reconciliation is obsolete. In addition, secondary cost elements are created as general ledger accounts to ensure this integration.
In SAP S/4HANA, controlling documents are still generated along with financial accounting document numbers. However, even internal controlling movements, such as the reallocation of costs from one controlling object to another, also generate financial accounting document numbers, thus ensuring real-time integration, which wasn’t the case in SAP ERP. In terms of configuration, document types that are used for posting in controlling are defined to post to general ledger accounts as well. These document types are linked to the controlling internal business transactions and generate financial accounting postings as well as controlling postings.
Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the book Configuring SAP S/4HANA Finance by Stoil Jotev. Stoil is an SAP S/4HANA FI/CO solution architect with more than 25 years of consulting, implementation, training, and project management experience. He is an accomplished digital transformation leader in finance. Stoil has delivered many complex SAP financial projects in the United States and Europe in various business sectors, such as manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, chemicals, medical devices, financial services, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), IT, public sector, automotive parts, commodity trading, and retail.
This post was originally published 3/2025.