FICO S/4HANA Conversion Part 2: Finance Data Migration and Reconciliation

📌 KEY POINTS
✅ Conversion migrates finance data into the universal journal; totals must be identical before and after.
✅ Preparation includes period-end activities, consistency checks and closing open items such as uncompleted postings.
✅ Pre-conversion checks reveal inconsistencies that must be fixed in the source system.
✅ Reconciliation compares balances, open items and asset values before and after migration.
⚠️ Signing off a conversion without documented reconciliation exposes the company to audit findings.

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▶ WHERE WE ARE
Part 1 handled master data. Part 2 handles the financial data itself.

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▶ 1. WHAT IS MIGRATED
During conversion, FI, CO, asset and material ledger data are transformed into the S/4HANA data model, with the universal journal as the central table. Balances, open items, line items and asset values must remain the same; only their storage changes.

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▶ 2. PREPARATION
Before downtime, finance completes the period-end close, posts all outstanding documents, checks that no update terminations exist, and runs SAP's pre-checks and consistency reports. Inconsistencies found — for example between ledgers or between subledgers and GL — must be corrected in the source system before conversion.

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▶ 3. MIGRATION STEPS
The technical conversion is followed by finance migration steps executed and monitored in the migration cockpit, covering customizing adjustments, data enrichment and migration of line items, balances and asset values. Each step has logs; errors are analysed and resolved before continuing.

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▶ 4. RECONCILIATION
Before conversion, snapshots of key figures are taken: trial balance per company code and ledger, open item lists for customers and vendors, asset values and inventory values. After migration, the same figures are compared. Any difference must be explained and resolved before go-live.

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▶ 5. SIGN-OFF
Finance signs off based on documented reconciliations, stored as audit evidence. Mock conversions with full reconciliation in earlier test cycles make the final one predictable and shorten downtime.

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▶ STEP BY STEP

1. Define the list of pre-conversion snapshots per company code.
2. Run consistency checks in a sandbox and categorise issues.
3. Execute a mock conversion and compare snapshots.
4. Document a sign-off template for finance.

✅ CHECKPOINT: a mock conversion reconciles balances, open items, assets and inventory with no unexplained differences.

In the first mock conversion, asset values differed from the GL for two company codes because of old inconsistencies between Asset Accounting and the GL. The issues were fixed in the source system and the second mock reconciled fully, giving the team confidence for production cutover.

• No snapshots before conversion.
• Ignoring consistency check findings.
• Skipping reconciliation in mock runs.
• Sign-off without documented evidence.

• Snapshot list agreed with finance and audit.
• Fix inconsistencies in the source early.
• Full reconciliation in every mock.
• Documented sign-off.

Interviewers ask how finance data is migrated in a conversion, what you check before, and how you prove nothing changed.