Planning order-to-cash regression after conversion

A conversion is a technical move, but sign-off is a business decision: Dan and the sales process owner must be able to say that Contoso can take orders, ship, bill and collect on SAP S/4HANA as well as on ECC, or better. Regression testing gives them the evidence. This lesson turns the impact list from lesson 1 into a test plan.

Prioritize by simplification impact

Not every order-to-cash scenario carries the same risk. A scenario touched by several simplification items (for example, a credit-checked order for a rebate-eligible distributor with an emailed invoice) is far riskier than a cash sale that touches none. Score each scenario by business criticality and by how many relevant items touch it.

Design the tests around the changes

• Business partner: create and change a customer via BP; check CVI created the customer data; use converted customers, not just new ones.
• Credit: an order under the limit flows; an order over the limit blocks; a release lets delivery proceed; exposure updates after billing and payment.
• Rebates: settle an old agreement after conversion; run a new condition contract through accrual, partial and final settlement; reconcile accruals.
• Data model: statuses update correctly through partial delivery and billing; document flow and process overview are complete; custom reports reconcile.
• Output: every customer-facing output for new and converted documents, in every channel.
• Converted documents: open orders, deliveries and invoices from ECC can be completed in SAP S/4HANA.

That last point is easy to miss. On go-live day Contoso will have hundreds of open orders created in ECC. They must be deliverable, billable and creditable in SAP S/4HANA. Test with converted open documents in a conversion rehearsal, not only with documents created fresh in the new system.

When a test fails, classify the defect before you route it. Is it caused by a simplification item that nobody designed for (for example, a document type still without a credit check), by converted data (a business partner missing a sales area role), by custom code reading an old table, or by a genuine design gap? The classification tells you who fixes it and whether the same cause can hit other scenarios. A data defect found in one converted customer usually means a data quality check across all of them.

Define sign-off criteria before you test

Exit criteria agreed in advance stop arguments at go/no-go. For the converted order-to-cash process, Contoso agrees the following.

1. All highest and high priority scenarios passed on converted data, with evidence (document numbers, outputs, journal entries).
2. No open critical or high defects; medium defects have an agreed workaround and owner.
3. Credit exposure and limits reconcile with ECC for the agreed customer sample.
4. Rebate accrual balances reconcile per agreement.
5. Retained custom reports reconcile against ECC output.
6. Open ECC documents completed through to billing and journal entry in the rehearsal.