SAP’s cloud service S/4HANA currently does not allow companies to work with a different currency than what their location suggests.

German software company SAP has admitted that its S/4HANA cloud service currently doesn’t allow companies to work with a different currency than what their location suggests.

The problem

In a recent blog post, SAP product expert Shakeel Ahmed cites Singapore as an example. The Asian country allows companies to use the US dollar instead of the Singapore dollar in their reporting.

However, SAP recently received complaints that this was no longer possible for users. The reason for this is the cloud service S/4HANA, which cannot handle different currencies. The system does not allow changing the currency linked to the local company code.

any solution

S/4HANA Cloud uses four currency variables: local, global, additional and functional.

Local currency is determined by company code (based on location), global is the same for a user everywhere and an additional option can be chosen in each system. The system selects a functional unit from these three.

In his example, Shakeel Ahmed proposes a solution that does not appear to be optimal. Singapore users can select USD as additional currency and pin functional currency to it. However, for reports that do not use these two units, the global currency needs to be set to USD, and here again lies the problem.

SAP updates its cloud systems twice a year. Anyone affected by this situation can hold on to it for a while.

We reported late last year that companies are not ready to move to S/4HANA. This message may not help. Perhaps the recently announced implementation of AI will save the day.