Employee to Business Partner Synchronization during S/4HANA system conversion

SAP SuccessFactors, the next generation HCM suite in the public cloud, is the go-forward HCM solution for both cloud and on-premise editions of SAP S/4HANA. However, some SAP ERP customers who are converting to SAP S/4HANA on-premise may not be willing or able to move their existing SAP ERP HCM to SAP SuccessFactors in the near term and would like to continue to use SAP ERP HCM. Those customers can run their HCM in either a separate instance or a single instance with S/4HANA. The integration between HCM and S/4HANA on-premise will be available via ALE in case HCM is running on a separate instance. If HCM is running inside of S/4HANA on-premise, then the integration is automatically provided as part of the Compatibility Mode.

In SAP S/4HANA, Business Partner is the leading object, and customer and vendor master data will be assigned as roles to Business Partner. The new data model is based on Business Partner in S/4HANA. This is one of the major changes in S/4HANA, and therefore, it requires considerable effort to prepare the SAP ERP system for conversion to S/4HANA. In fact, Customer Vendor Integration (CVI) Synchronization executed in the SAP ERP system as a prerequisite is one of the major activities in an S/4HANA system conversion project. You may refer to my blog BP and CVI in SAP S/4HANA System Conversion for a step by step guide for CVI Synchronization. If an existing SAP ERP customer who is using SAP ERP HCM is planning to convert their ERP system to S/4HANA, there is an additional requirement to synchronize their employee data to Business Partner, and this is the topic I am going to discuss in this blog.

CVI Synchronization

CVI Synchronization – Employee Vendors

First of all, if employee vendors exist in the SAP ERP system, the employee vendors will have to be converted to BPs of category “Person” during CVI synchronization. To accomplish this, implement SAP Note 2539457 (CVI & employee vendors in wrong BP category) and ensure that BAdI implementation HCM_CVI_MAP_BP_CATEGORY (BAdI CVI_MAP_TITLE) is active. The BAdI implementation checks if LFB1-PERNR has an entry for any vendor and converts those vendors to BPs of category “Person” while running the CVI synchronization report MDS_LOAD_COCKPIT. If this note is not applied, the standard program will create BPs of category “Organization” for employee vendors. Additionally, the employee sync program that you will run in the converted S/4HANA system will create duplicate BPs of category “Person” for these employee vendors. That means you will end up having two BPs one in Organization category and another in Person category for a single employee.

There is a possibility that employee vendors and corresponding BPs already exist in the SAP ERP system for certain employee records. If this scenario exists, please consider using SAP Note 2542175 – CVI and reuse of existing employee business partner.

Number Range for employee BPs

Secondly, if you want to use the same number range for the employee vendor BPs created during CVI synchronization in ERP and employee BPs created during BP synchronization in S/4HANA, you need to do the following in ERP before running the CVI synchronization program.

While defining the number range for the BP grouping for employee vendors as part of CVI Synchronization, use a two-character BP Grouping as shown below (the system allows you to use up to four characters). This BP grouping will be used in HCM configuration as explained later in this blog.

Activities in S/4HANA

Once the system is converted from SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA, carry out the following activities. For more details, please check the installation guide here.

1. Set the following switches in the table T77S0 as below.

HRALX HRAC to ‘X’

HRALX PBPON to ‘ON’

2. Check if the following BP roles exist in the system. You may refer to Customizing “Define BP Roles.”

BUP003                Employee

BBP005                Service Agent

BBP010                Freelancer

FLVN00                Supplier (Fin Accounting)

FLVN01                Supplier

3. Check if the following BP Address Type is available in the system. If the value does not exist, add new BP Address Type using the Customizing “Define Address Types.”

HCM001              Employee Private Address

4. Check if the following Identification Types are available in the system. If the Identification Types are not available, create them using the Customizing “Define Identification Types.”

HCM001              Employee ID

HCM028              Internal Personnel Number

HCM030              Employee ID (Service Performer)

HCM031              Employee ID (Freelancer)

5. Check Reconciliation Accounting in the Customizing “Define Reconciliation Accounts for Employees in Role FI Supplier.”
6. Make the configuration settings using T Code OO_CENTRAL_PERSON as explained below.

Set HRALX PNUMB to “2” and assign the two-character BP Grouping to HRALX PSUBG as shown below. This will ensure that the same number range used for the employee vendor BPs created during CVI Synchronization in ERP is used for the BPs created during employee synchronization in S/4HANA. For this setting, the number range must be internal. For more details on number range assignment options, please refer to SAP Notes 2792166 and 2483440.

7. Run the report /SHCM/RH_SYNC_BUPA_EMPL_SINGLE. You can use this report only if the initial synchronization of BP has to be executed in parallel jobs due to large volume of employees or during testing cycles. This report will create BPs for all the employee records for which BP does not exist in the system. For the BPs created during CVI Synchronization for employee vendors, this report will add the employee role BUP003. An error log is written for the failed synchronization, and the error log can be reviewed in transaction SLG1 for object SHCM_EE_INTEGRATION, Sub-object: BUPA_SYNC.
8. After completing the initial synchronization of employees with Business Partner, set up a background job for the report /SHCM/RH_SYNC_BUPA_FROM_EMPL. This report will update employee BPs based on the changes made to the employee records and keep the employee and BP in sync. Secondly, this report will create new BPs for the future dated employees and new employees created in the system. An error log is written for the failed synchronization, and the error log can be reviewed in transaction SLG1 for object SHCM_EE_INTEGRATION, Sub-object: BUPA_SYNC.
9. Make sure the business process CVI_04 – Business Partner -> Vendor is active for component AP-MD (IMG Path: SPRO-> Cross-Application Components -> General Application Functions -> Postprocessing Office -> Business Processes->Activate Creation of Postprocessing Orders). This setting will enable the system to capture errors during vendor role creation for employee BPs.

Additional Info

1. HRALXSYNC (report) – You cannot use this sync report for employee synchronization in SAP S/4HANA. For any other (organizational unit) object synchronization, you can use this report.
2. Transaction PRAA – This transaction was used for employee vendor creation in the SAP ERP system for travel expenses. You cannot create employee vendors using this transaction, and it is no longer valid in the SAP S/4HANA system.
3. Table IEMPLOYEE provides info on the link between Employee and BP in S/4HANA.
4. Table /SHCM/D_BP_SYNC keeps track of the pending/failed employee records from previous/delta synchronization, which will then be picked up in the next run of the delta job.
5. SAP Note 2578294 – FAQ – Employee to Business Partner synchronization in S/4HANA OnPremise
6. SAP Note 2409229 – Employee Synchronization Report: FAQ

Source: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/09/02/employee-to-business-partner-synchronization-during-s4hana-system-conversion/