harbor maintenance fee

A fee levied each time a ship is loaded or unloaded in a U.S. harbor.

Proceeds of the harbor maintenance fee are made available to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the improvement and maintenance of U.S. ports and harbors.

hard currency

A country-specific second currency used in countries with high rates of inflation.

Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System

A standardized system that provides commodity codes and import duty rates for all classes of merchandise.

harmonized system

Since January 1988 the "Harmonized System of goods classification" (HS) from the "Advice for Collaboration between Customs" with its six figure code numbers has been the basis for the EU standard, eight figure encrypted "Combined Nomenclature" (CN). This CN provides unique identification for every single goods item within the EU. The numbers are grouped together in sections that are in-turn grouped in chapters.

Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the USA

A schedule book published by the U.S International Trade Commission that contains commodity codes and duty rates for all countries on all classes of merchandise imported into the USA.

head office account

An account that is used to represent a head office and branch relationship for a customer or vendor in the SAP System.

Payments are made from the head office account, while purchase orders, deliveries or invoices are posted to the branch account.

hidden reserves

The hidden reserves (also referred to as fair value adjustments) are the difference between the value of a balance sheet item at the time of consolidation and its value on the balance sheet of the investee company, the latter value being less if the item is on the asset side, or greater if on the liabilities side.

Hidden reserves affect the consolidation of investments.

When the book value method is applied, and the differential is located on the asset side, hidden reserves are eliminated up to the amount of the group's share.

When the revaluation method is used, one of the following applies:

• The balance sheet items are already revalued on the corporate valuation, in which case there is no need to make entries for the hidden reserves.
• The balance sheet items are revalued when eliminating the group's share and the minority share during consolidation of investments.

If the group's share of hidden reserves exceeds the asset-side differential, these can be eliminated proportionally, or according to priority settings.

Depending on the balance sheet item in question, the eliminated hidden reserves can be amortized during subsequent consolidation.

hierarchy

A hierarchical structure of objects (for example, cost centers, orders, groups, work breakdown structure elements).

Hierarchies (for example, cost center hierarchies) have the following characteristics:

All nodes other than end nodes are used purely for summarization purposes.

The values being structured (for example, the individual cost centers) are called single values and can be assigned only to the end nodes (in other words, at the lowest level of the hierarchy).

hierarchy access

A method of optimizing Pricing for hierarchical data constellations such as for product hierarchies.

For these hierarchies, it can be necessary to include partial quantitiesfor a pre-defined amount of characteristics to define the key for the condition tables.

An example of this is a price. The basis of the price is fixed by the sales organization and distribution channel and is dependent on the customer or material or both.

hierarchy area

A hierarchy area contains one or more business processes or one or more nodes of the standard hierarchy in Activity-Based Costing.

Authorizations for users of the SAP System can be issued for individual hierarchy areas.

hierarchy node

A node in a cost object hierarchy that can be either a cost object node, or a single object assigned to a cost object hierarchy (such as a material).

higher-level item

An item type in a sales document that lets you show hierarchical structures.

For example, you can assign services and free goods to main items by creating them as subitems.

historical currency translation

An interpretation of translated financial statement figures that is equivalent to those of financial statements produced in reporting currency.

This goal can be realized by using the exchange rate valid at the time to which the item to be translated relates.

Example

• Fixed assets can be translated using an exchange rate from the year or period of acquisition.
• Shareholders' equity and investments can be translated using an exchange rate valid at the time that these were entered, formed or made available.

holder of customs procedure

A person responsible for the customs declaration when introducing goods into a customs procedure.

horizontal group of companies

A consolidated group that consists of multiple parent companies.

All of the parent companies are at the same level - that is, they have no ownership interests in each other.

house bank

A business partner that represents a bank through which you can process your own internal transactions.