SAP S/4HANA brings reforms to finan­cial management

These are excit­ing times in SAP finan­cial man­age­ment. SAP S/4HANA brings a lot of new to digest and also enjoy, com­pared to cur­rent SAP ECC sys­tems. I will try to briefly explain the biggest and most inter­est­ing changes. They include both com­plete­ly new func­tion­al­i­ties and new nuances to old fea­tures. 

Prob­a­bly the biggest sin­gle change is the renew­al and sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of the table struc­ture of finan­cial admin­is­tra­tion. In SAP S/4HANA, the new trans­ac­tion table (ACDO­CA, Uni­ver­sal Jour­nal) replaces most of the pre­vi­ous­ly used table struc­tures for exter­nal account­ing, inter­nal account­ing, prof­itabil­i­ty analy­sis, fixed assets, and inven­to­ry ledger. For vir­tu­al­ly all of these mod­ules, post­ing data is trans­ferred to a new trans­ac­tion table from which it is avail­able for report­ing. The new approach over the in-mem­o­ry data­base will also reduce the need for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between, for exam­ple, inter­nal account­ing and gen­er­al ledger, as well as sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the pos­si­bil­i­ties for real-time oper­a­tional report­ing. 

Per­haps in this con­text, it is also worth men­tion­ing the Gen­er­al Ledger func­tion­al­i­ty that came with the New Gen­er­al Ledger. Pre­vi­ous­ly, for exam­ple, group / IFRS report­ing was sep­a­rat­ed from local report­ing in its own gen­er­al ledger accounts. In the new mod­el, both have their own Gen­er­al Ledger, in which the doc­u­ments are gen­er­al­ly updat­ed iden­ti­cal to both, but in which, if nec­es­sary, their own cor­rec­tive or mod­i­fy­ing entries can be made. In addi­tion to this, for exam­ple, fixed asset account­ing and the inven­to­ry ledger make it pos­si­ble to make val­u­a­tions spe­cif­ic to the Ledger. 

Oth­er improve­ments in func­tion­al­i­ties include the end of busi­ness unit account­ing as an inde­pen­dent mod­ule and its strong shift to exter­nal account­ing. This enables, among oth­er things, the real-time dis­tri­b­u­tion of doc­u­ments into cal­cu­la­tion dimen­sions (doc­u­ment dis­tri­b­u­tion), in which case, for exam­ple, dis­count entries are dis­trib­uted by prof­it cen­ter at the line lev­el already in the doc­u­ment entry. Year-end bal­ance trans­fers are com­bined under one trans­ac­tion and the same run includes, in addi­tion to nor­mal exter­nal account­ing trans­ac­tions, the trans­fer of fixed assets. Among the changes in fixed assets, it should be men­tioned, for exam­ple, that the func­tion­al­i­ties of the Sea­son­al Run will be com­plete­ly trans­ferred to the Depre­ci­a­tion Run. 

In terms of basic infor­ma­tion, the biggest changes are the merg­ing of cus­tomer and sup­pli­er infor­ma­tion into Busi­ness Part­ners. Sup­pli­ers and cus­tomers no longer have sep­a­rate mas­ter data, but are cre­at­ed as roles under the Busi­ness Part­ner. Oth­er Busi­ness Part­ner roles include, for exam­ple, basic cred­it con­trol infor­ma­tion. The main­te­nance of gen­er­al ledger accounts and expense types is com­bined under the same trans­ac­tion. The pro­cess­ing of bank accounts becomes “dis­count-like” when they become rec­on­cil­i­a­tion accounts. This way, each bank account no longer requires its own gen­er­al ledger account. 

The new trans­ac­tion table brings with it new report­ing trans­ac­tions (many H‑terminated), but many of the old famil­iar SAP trans­ac­tion codes for post­ings and reports work as before — espe­cial­ly on the inter­nal account­ing side. A big change is also the tran­si­tion of func­tion­al­i­ties to brows­er-based and mobile appli­ca­tions through the Fiori user inter­face. Most of the func­tion­al­i­ties are sup­port­ing SAP’s stan­dard user inter­face (SAP GUI), but some func­tions will be ful­ly migrat­ed to Fiori, such as cre­at­ing bank accounts. Cre­at­ing bank accounts has tra­di­tion­al­ly been part of the con­fig­u­ra­tion, but now it is vir­tu­al­ly mov­ing to basic infor­ma­tion at Fiori. 

Oth­er inter­est­ing tools — new or heav­i­ly revamped – can be found in Inter-com­pa­ny Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, Accru­al Engine, Clos­ing Cock­pit and Group Report­ing. More on these in the fol­low­ing blogs! 

Get in touch: 

Juk­ka Pent­ti­nen 
Chief Busi­ness Offi­cer, Busi­ness Trans­for­ma­tion 
+358 40 355 1973 
jukka.​penttinen@​isletgroup.​fi 

The author of the blog, Marko Has­si­nen is ISLET’s lead­ing SAP Finance con­sul­tant with over 20 years of SAP expe­ri­ence. Marko is expe­ri­enced in many areas of Finance and he has par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al S/4HANA projects. 

#SAP #S4HANA #SAP­Fi­nance #Finance #ERP