In the professional services industry, customer projects are frequently staffed by consultants and employees from multiple organizational units, each belonging to a different profit center. The profit center that is contractually responsible for a project (the responsible profit center) can be assigned at the project header (default) or on billing element level. However, the employees who deliver the work may belong to entirely different profit centers, referred to as contributing profit centers.
To address the reporting requirement of tracking project margin not only at the level of the responsible profit center but also at the level of each contributing profit center, SAP S/4HANA Cloud introduces a dedicated Universal Journal attribute: the Origin Profit Center.
The Origin Profit Center is a new field stored in the Universal Journal (ACDOCA). It identifies the profit center to which an employee who posted a transaction belongs. That is, the employee's “home” profit center as derived from their assigned cost center. It is distinct from the responsible profit center, which is determined by the customer project.
This attribute allows financial line items posted to a professional services (CPM) projects (customer or internal project) or a cost center to carry information about the organizational origin of the person who performed the work, enabling a dimension of reporting that crosses project ownership boundaries.
The origin profit center is derived for
- time confirmations
- expense postings
- revenue recognition entries
- billing postings
There is no configuration needed to activate this functionality. The origin profit center is always derived if the following pre-requisites are applicable:
- postings to professional services (CPM) projects (customer or internal project) or cost centers
- employment ID (Employee ID) available
- employee is assigned to a cost center and the cost center has a profit center assigned
Employee ID
→ Employee Master
→ Assigned Cost Center
→ Profit Center assigned to that Cost Center = Origin Profit Center
3.1 Use case 1: Time Confirmation
employee confirms time against a customer project, including event-based revenue recognition
- employee 50010186 is assigned to cost center 10101322/ profit center YB102 = origin profit center
- Project (including WBS element BO06.1.1) is assigned to profit center YB101
related revenue recognition posting (origin profit center also derived from assigned employee, this is only supported for T&E projects)
3.2 Use case 2: Travel Expense Postings
travel expense postings via supplier invoice, the same logic will apply for travel cost postings via Concur
- employee 50010186 is assigned to cost center 10101322/ profit center YB102 = origin profit center
- WBS element BO06.1.1 is assigned to profit center YB101
Financial Documents
- travel expenses are posted to the employee´s cost center
- travel expenses are reposted from the cost center to the project
> cost center posting: line 1 shows the debit to the cost center, line 2 shows the reposting from the cost center to the project
> project postings (journal entry 2300005943 shows the travel cost posting, journal entry 100554038 is the revenue recognition posting)
3.3 Use Case 3: Billing
create T&E billing for time and/ or expense postings
> project postings (journal entry 9400079386 is the billing, 100554128 the related revenue recognition posting)
3.4 Fallback Derivation
When no employee information is available for a posting, the Origin Profit Center cannot be derived from an individual. In this case, it falls back to the responsible profit center of the project or billing element. This applies in the following situations:
- Billing and revenue recognition postings on fixed price projects (no single employee reference exists in POC-based calculation)
- Goods issues
- Any other posting where no employee ID is present in the line item
