Lesson 2 of 5
Roles and handoffs
9 min
Order-to-cash crosses departments. Each step is done by a different person, often in a different building, and every handoff between them is a place where orders can stall. SAP S/4HANA organizes the work into business roles: each role gets a set of Fiori apps on the launchpad and the authorizations to use them. SAP's sample roles include, for example, an internal sales representative, a shipping specialist, a billing clerk, an accounts receivable accountant and a credit controller. Your project will copy and adapt them.
| Role | Contoso person or team | Main work | Typical apps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Internal sales representative | Maria and the inside sales team | Quotations, sales orders, order changes | Create Sales Orders, Manage Sales Orders |
| Credit controller | Finance credit desk | Review and release credit-blocked orders | Credit management apps |
| Shipping specialist | Detroit shipping office | Create deliveries, organize picking, post goods issue | Create Outbound Deliveries, Manage Outbound Deliveries |
| Warehouse clerk | Detroit warehouse | Pick and pack against deliveries | Picking apps or warehouse management |
| Billing clerk | Billing team | Run billing, correct and cancel invoices, send output | Create Billing Documents, Manage Billing Documents |
| Accounts receivable accountant | AR team under Dan | Post and clear payments, dunning, disputes | Manage Customer Line Items, Post Incoming Payments |
Order-to-cash roles at Contoso. App names are examples; your launchpad may differ.
The handoffs
A handoff in SAP is rarely an email. It is a worklist: the next person sees the work because the system lists documents that are due for their step. Knowing those worklists is how a key user finds stuck orders.
- Sales to creditOrder blocked by the credit check appears in the credit controller's release list
- Sales to shippingOrder due for delivery appears in the delivery due list for shipping point 1710
- Shipping to warehouseDelivery appears in the warehouse's picking worklist
- Shipping to billingDelivery with goods issue appears in the billing due list
- Billing to receivablesBilling posts an open item that AR monitors until payment
If a step is missed, the document waits silently in the next worklist. An order with an incomplete field never reaches the delivery due list. A delivery without goods issue never reaches the billing due list. A billing document that fails to post to accounting never reaches AR. None of these produce an error message for the original user, which is why monitoring and document flow matter so much.
- Is the order incomplete or blocked for credit?Yes → sales (incomplete) or credit controller (credit block) · No → next question
- Does the order have a delivery?Yes → next question · No → shipping: check the delivery due list and dates
- Is goods issue posted?Yes → next question · No → shipping and warehouse: check picking
- Is there a billing document posted to accounting?Yes → AR owns collection · No → billing: check the due list, billing block or posting errors
Segregation of duties
Roles also separate duties. The person who enters an order should not be able to release its credit block, and the person who changes prices should not be able to post the customer's payment. When roles are copied and merged for convenience during a project, these separations are easy to lose. A role test checks both sides: the user can do their job, and cannot do the jobs that should belong to someone else.
What would you do?
Contoso's month-end revenue looks low. Shipping says everything went out; billing says they billed everything in their due list. Where should Maria look?
- Business roles bundle apps and authorizations for each order-to-cash job.
- Handoffs happen through worklists: credit release, delivery due list, picking, billing due list, open items.
- Missed steps wait silently in the next worklist; monitor them.
- Roles must keep separations such as order entry versus credit release.
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. How does a shipping specialist usually learn that an order is ready to deliver?
2. A delivery has no goods issue. Which worklist will it never reach?
3. Why should the order entry user not be able to release credit blocks?
4. What does a business role give a user?