What is SAP ICMR?
Companies that belong to a group maintain business relationships with each other. These accounting transactions must match to produce a financial report at group level. In reality, this elimination process does not always run smoothly, coordination is very labour-intensive, discrepancies often occur, and a lot of communication is necessary.
ICMR, therefore, enables the periodic control of documents and open items. Movements without ETL processes (extraction, transformation and loading processes) are compared, and financial data is coordinated in real-time. Flexible matching and reconciliation rules are defined that provide a high degree of automation and enable continuous accounting. The general visibility and transparency of the coordination processes are improved.
An ICR function already exists in SAP ERP ECC. However, as soon as discrepancies occur, an accountant must manually figure out the reasons and solutions.
What does SAP ICMR stand for?
ICMR stands for Intercompany Matching and Reconciliation. SAP has delivered the solution as standard since the SAP S/4HANA On-Premise 1909 and SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1908 releases. The new ICMR solution in SAP S/4HANA enables real-time synchronization of constantly changing data sources. In the meantime, it allows snapshots, i.e., if you want a stable data status, simply record a timestamp. You no longer have to wait until the time period approaches to see the voting balances, but you can check them at any time.
The process is usually the same:
- First, you start with data collection. This is done either directly by reading from the respective databases or coming from external files.
- After that, documents are compared with each other based on the assigned rules (matching methods). From the results of the previous step, discrepancies can now be solved.
- Finally, the voting reports are checked.
What functions does SAP ICMR offer?
SAP ICMR reconciles the documents of the respective subsidiaries using flexible intercompany matching and reconciliation rules. The simplified process is as follow:
- Defining the Matching Method
- Perform a matching run
- Analyze results
Defining the Matching Method
The Matching Method is a Collection of matching rules that match the positions of two records. Each matching rule restricts the data source to two data slices via filters. In the matching run, the system first reads the data based on the filters set for data slices and then applies the matching rule expressions to the filtered data. If the items meet the requirements defined in a matching rule, they then are grouped under a matching assignment number and excluded from the processing of subsequent matching rules. Data that has not yet been mapped will be processed by the next matching rule of the matching method. If no matching rule applies, the positions remain unassigned.
Perform a matching run
To perform the matching run you have 2 possibilities:
- Single run (ad-hoc)
- Background
There are 3 different apps to start a matching run, but they all lead to the same result.
Analyze results
After defining the matching methods and performing the matching run, you can analyze. On the top of the screen, you will find the unassigned positions of the leading unit and the partner unit. At the bottom of the screen, you will find the assignments (the items that belong to the same transaction are grouped under an assignment number) and the assigned Items.
From the app, the assignment details can be displayed directly. The fields that were queried in the matching rule are highlighted in colour:
- Green = Field with the operator ‘Equal to ́ or ‘Opposite ́
- Yellow = Other operators
What are the advantages of SAP ICMR?
SAP ICMR offers some advantages for organizations:
- Clear Overview of intercompany transactions
- Easy to use by the user
- One app for everything (with the “old” ICR tool, there were 3 processes/transactions)
- Real-time reconciliation
- Reconciliation can also be realized outside the month-end closing
- Less work at the month-end closing
How to migrate from ERP ICR to S/4HANA ICMR?
If you are already using the SAP ERP ICR solution and want to migrate your data to SAP S/4HANA ICMR you need to do two things:
- The historically matched and reconciled data needs to be first exported from the tables (for example, FBICRC001A) of your ERP system
- This data will need to be imported to the table ICADOCM of SAP S/4HANA
How PIKON can help you?
ICMR is an out-of-the-box solution integrated with SAP S/4HANA. No license is required, and there are no additional license costs. If you want to see how it’s done in the SAP system, please contact us and learn how SAP ICMR streamlines and automates your intercompany reconciliation processes. We dive into our SAP S/4HANA system and show you a system demo of all functionalities of SAP ICMR. Furthermore, we share our project experiences and explain this with an ICMR process between two affiliated companies.