# Overview of SAP Central Finance:
Central Finance is there in the market for a while, now additionally it can be seen as an approach to adopt SAP S/4HANA. The approach, instead of forcing customers to migrate to the SAP HANA Database and the S/4 application, it allows finance documents to be replicated into a new Central Finance instance that running on S/4HANA. This is particularly relevant in an organisation where there are multiple older SAP ERP instances or other Non-SAP Finance applications.
Central Finance exploits SAP HANA’s real-time capabilities to replicate financial documents into the central instance as they are posted, giving a real time organisation-wide finance view. In short, Central Finance allows you to create a common reporting structure.
To prepare for this common structure, you must map your different accounting entities (for example, account, profit center, or cost center) in your local systems to one common set of master data in the central system. Then, you can replicate financial accounting (FI) and management accounting (CO) postings.
# Why do we need Central Finance?
Today’s corporate world is suffering from heterogeneous landscapes with multiple local ERP systems
Limited scalability of traditional legacy ERP systems, due to this workload has been forcibly injected to regional instances, rather than centralized instances.
Mergers and Acquisitions are forcing to continue ASIS ERP systems.
SAP saw that there is a driving force here so that Global instance is a must for a proper Financial reporting and more over consolidated statutory reporting is legal and as well consolidated management reporting is good for steering the growth of an enterprise.
# SAP Central Finance Features:
The Central Finance system creates a new profitability segment number and stores the profitability segment in the account-based profitability analysis (CO-PA) component and the universal journal entry.
You can also search for the reposted FI document using the company code, original document number, or fiscal year from the source system.
All business documents related to a transaction are available in the document relationship browser, provided the source system is an SAP system.
To navigate to the document relationship browser, you can use the following transactions:
Controlling Documents: Actual (KSB5), then choose Environment Relationship Browser
Display Document (FB03), then choose Environment Document Environment Relationship Browser
The picture below shows the interfaces that feed data from the source systems into the Central Finance system and is followed by an explanation:
The interfaces that feed data from the source systems into the Central Finance system include the following:
An interface for reposting Financial Accounting/Management Accounting (FI/CO) postings
When you post financial documents in the source system, this interface is used to repost these FI documents as new FI documents in the Central Finance system. If these posting are also relevant for CO (for example, expenses on cost elements), the CO postings are also updated in the Central Finance system.
An interface for reposting secondary CO postings
This interface is used to repost CO postings that are not always entered in FI in the source systems, for example, postings on secondary cost elements.
An interface for cost object mapping
This interface is used to map certain cost objects such as production orders, internal orders, and quality management orders to corresponding cost objects in the central system.
IBP covers the following:
Expense planning
Profitability planning
Profit and loss planning
# Central Finance Challenges:
Cost of Acquisition: From a business perspective there is a challenge around how to justify the additional cost associated with a central finance approach. The additional cost is associated with the fact that there will be two systems running to reflect financial transactions rather than a single one. This means that for a period of time it is necessary to maintain and support both legacy and new central finance system. Budget for patching and regression testing source system.
# Integration with SAP & Non-SAP Systems with S/4 HANA Central Finance System:
Note1: Central Finance can be used out-of-the box with all SAP ERP releases that are still in maintenance starting from SAP ERP 6.0.
Note2: Releases such as SAP R/3 4.6C to SAP ERP 5 are still possible; for this special services or discussion with SAP would be required.
# SAP Central Finance Landscape
# Licenses to use SAP Central Finance:
# Technical/Functional Information:
2111634
2108225
2115885
8. You have ensured that the central system contains harmonized organizational data and master data for all the accounting entities that you intend to include in your accounting document.
9. Central Accounting Interface is used to harmonize master data and replicate postings
10. System is identified with sender logical system & sender document number in central finance’s universal journal (ACDOCA).
11. Monitor and Error Handling is done with Transaction code /AIF/ERR
12. Master Data Governance (MDG) is done with Transaction code /MDG_KM_MAINTAIN. It will lead you to MDG FIORI Screen as shown below.
# Recommendations
# Key Notes:
# Summary
Central Finance represents a route to ERP system consolidation and migration to SAP S/4HANA at low risk. It delivers various benefits, however there are various challenges also (mentioned above under challenge section).
The Central Finance is not for all it shall be used where landscape is very complicated, for example, organizations which are into mergers and acquisitions and have different ERP systems (SAP and Non-SAP).
Okumaya devam et...
Central Finance is there in the market for a while, now additionally it can be seen as an approach to adopt SAP S/4HANA. The approach, instead of forcing customers to migrate to the SAP HANA Database and the S/4 application, it allows finance documents to be replicated into a new Central Finance instance that running on S/4HANA. This is particularly relevant in an organisation where there are multiple older SAP ERP instances or other Non-SAP Finance applications.
Central Finance exploits SAP HANA’s real-time capabilities to replicate financial documents into the central instance as they are posted, giving a real time organisation-wide finance view. In short, Central Finance allows you to create a common reporting structure.
To prepare for this common structure, you must map your different accounting entities (for example, account, profit center, or cost center) in your local systems to one common set of master data in the central system. Then, you can replicate financial accounting (FI) and management accounting (CO) postings.
# Why do we need Central Finance?
Today’s corporate world is suffering from heterogeneous landscapes with multiple local ERP systems
Limited scalability of traditional legacy ERP systems, due to this workload has been forcibly injected to regional instances, rather than centralized instances.
Mergers and Acquisitions are forcing to continue ASIS ERP systems.
SAP saw that there is a driving force here so that Global instance is a must for a proper Financial reporting and more over consolidated statutory reporting is legal and as well consolidated management reporting is good for steering the growth of an enterprise.
# SAP Central Finance Features:
- You can use the central accounting interface to harmonize master data and replicate posting
- You can map master data from several source systems (SAP & Non-SAP) to harmonize master data in central finance system either manually or using SAP MDG (Separate license).
- In order to enable the transfer of data between your source systems and central finance, you must maintain mapping which defines the relationship between data in the source systems and data in central finance. The system uses this mapping during the initial load of data from your source systems and when transferring transactional data to central finance, that is, when new postings are made in the source system.
- When a document line item is posted with a profitability segment in the source system, the attributes of the profitability segment are transferred to the Central Finance system. You can also map the attributes of the profitability segment.
The Central Finance system creates a new profitability segment number and stores the profitability segment in the account-based profitability analysis (CO-PA) component and the universal journal entry.
- Intercompany Reconciliation with Central Finance: As receivables and payables are replicated into Central Finance, intercompany reconciliation (ICR) can access these receivables and payables directly in the Central Finance system without having to run long batch jobs for loading the receivables and payables into Central Finance.
- Document Relationship Browser: Using the document relationship browser, you can see the document flow of an FI document. For example, you can navigate back from an FI document to the original sales order.
You can also search for the reposted FI document using the company code, original document number, or fiscal year from the source system.
All business documents related to a transaction are available in the document relationship browser, provided the source system is an SAP system.
To navigate to the document relationship browser, you can use the following transactions:
Controlling Documents: Actual (KSB5), then choose Environment Relationship Browser
Display Document (FB03), then choose Environment Document Environment Relationship Browser
- Harmonized Financial Reporting: Central Finance reporting provides harmonized financial reporting allowing you to report on financial figures that originate in different source systems.
The picture below shows the interfaces that feed data from the source systems into the Central Finance system and is followed by an explanation:
The interfaces that feed data from the source systems into the Central Finance system include the following:
An interface for reposting Financial Accounting/Management Accounting (FI/CO) postings
When you post financial documents in the source system, this interface is used to repost these FI documents as new FI documents in the Central Finance system. If these posting are also relevant for CO (for example, expenses on cost elements), the CO postings are also updated in the Central Finance system.
An interface for reposting secondary CO postings
This interface is used to repost CO postings that are not always entered in FI in the source systems, for example, postings on secondary cost elements.
An interface for cost object mapping
This interface is used to map certain cost objects such as production orders, internal orders, and quality management orders to corresponding cost objects in the central system.
- Integrated Business Planning: Integrated Business Planning for SAP Simple Finance, on-premise edition (IBP) can be combined with Central Finance to provide a consistent view of the planning process. Planning applications can be accessed by a Microsoft Excel frontend to provide a homogeneous look and feel. Actual data and master data are accessed directly in real time without any replication so there is no need to load additional data warehouses.
IBP covers the following:
Expense planning
Profitability planning
Profit and loss planning
# Central Finance Challenges:
Cost of Acquisition: From a business perspective there is a challenge around how to justify the additional cost associated with a central finance approach. The additional cost is associated with the fact that there will be two systems running to reflect financial transactions rather than a single one. This means that for a period of time it is necessary to maintain and support both legacy and new central finance system. Budget for patching and regression testing source system.
- Technical Challenge: As well as continued maintenance on the central finance system and the source systems; a number of other components are necessary; including the SLT server which is best hosted on a separate instance, as well as associated updates to the source systems. These include installing data replication components at the technical level, but also a number of functional level upgrades.
- Document Splitting in S/4 HANA Central Finance: Document splitting and parallel ledgers functionality are important aspect in Finance Transformation for a large scale Enterprise level customers. Lots of customers are using source system without functionalities of new GL or Document splitting, but would want to use the S/4HANA CFIN with New GL and Document splitting. However a source system without Document splitting and a target Central Finance System with Document splitting is not out of box functioanlity. It takes a real challenge to make sure that all the documents replicated from the source SAP ERP (without document splitting) and non SAP Systems have the right level of details to support Document splitting in S/4 HANA Central Finance.
- Clear Master Data Governance Strategy and capability plan
- Architectural and integration plan for the consolidated solution
# Integration with SAP & Non-SAP Systems with S/4 HANA Central Finance System:
Note1: Central Finance can be used out-of-the box with all SAP ERP releases that are still in maintenance starting from SAP ERP 6.0.
Note2: Releases such as SAP R/3 4.6C to SAP ERP 5 are still possible; for this special services or discussion with SAP would be required.
# SAP Central Finance Landscape
- SAP S/4 HANA Finance and Central Finance can be used in conjunction with SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server (SLT) and SAP Master Data Governance (SAP MDG).
- The SLT server collects data written to database in the source systems and feeds this data into the corresponding Central Finance Accounting interface. If you are mapping short living cost objects (Order/WBS), you should use SAP MDG in conjunction with cost object mapping framework.
- After the data is mapped, the system uses error handling to log the details of any errors encountered. You can choose to make corrections and repost the item or process the item again after, for example, you correct the mapping rule of adjust incorrect values in the document.
- The internal accounting interface posts the financial accounting (FI)/Management Accounting (CO) document to SAP S/4 HANA as a universal journal entry.
- After the data is mapped, the system uses error handling to log the details of any errors encountered. You can choose to make corrections and repost the item or process the item again after for example, you correct the mapping rule or adjust incorrect values in the document.
- The internal accounting interface posts the financial account/Management Accounting document to SAP S/4 HANA as a Universal Journal Entry.
# Licenses to use SAP Central Finance:
- Central Finance – Obviously separate license
- SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server – separate license
- SAP MDG attracts a Separate license too. It’s not mandatory but it is very much recommended as manual handling of mapping of master data is mammoth work.
- Source Systems with a 3rd-Party Database with a Runtime License
# Technical/Functional Information:
- You have activated the Central Finance (FINS_CFIN) business function.
- You have activated the following business functions for error correction.
- Error Correction System (Reversible) (FIN_GL_ERR_CORR)
- Error Correction and Suspense Accounting (Reversible) (FIN_GL_ERR_CORR_SUSP)
- Required customization/configuration for Central Finance need to be done under Financial Accounting (New). It is as good as you do configuration for any company code within S/4 HANA from Finance area perspective.
- You have to install SAP LT Replication Server
- You have to install the following SAP notes in your source systems:
2111634
2108225
2115885
8. You have ensured that the central system contains harmonized organizational data and master data for all the accounting entities that you intend to include in your accounting document.
9. Central Accounting Interface is used to harmonize master data and replicate postings
10. System is identified with sender logical system & sender document number in central finance’s universal journal (ACDOCA).
11. Monitor and Error Handling is done with Transaction code /AIF/ERR
12. Master Data Governance (MDG) is done with Transaction code /MDG_KM_MAINTAIN. It will lead you to MDG FIORI Screen as shown below.
# Recommendations
- To avoid reporting taxes twice, SAP recommend that tax reporting should only be done from your source systems rather than the Central Finance system.
- It is very much recommended to use MDG since manual handling of mapping of master data is mammoth work
- Central finance shall be used where landscape is very complicated, for example, organizations which are into mergers and acquisitions and have different ERP systems (SAP and Non-SAP). Central Finance allows you to create a common reporting structure.
# Key Notes:
- In addition, when a document line item is posted with a profitability segment in the source system, the attributes of the profitability segment are transferred to the Central Finance system. You can also map the attributes of the profitability segment.
- The Central Finance system creates a new profitability segment number and stores the profitability segment in the account-based profitability analysis (CO-PA) component and the universal journal entry.
- All business documents related to a transaction are available in the document relationship browser, provided the source system is an SAP system.
- Even if you do not want to transfer postings from a previous period, (for example, if you are carrying out a proof-of-concept), you must still execute an “empty” initial load in order to activate online replication in the source system.
- For the initial load only you should note that, if you have enabled replication of CO postings, postings to CO-FI reconciliation ledger (GL reconciliation postings) will be transferred via CO.
- The following types of postings are not transferred as part of the initial load and online replication:
Year-end closing postings where the reference transaction (AWTYP) is GLYEC.
Clearings
Clearing resets
Recurring entries
Sample documents
Noted items
Parked documents
Balance carry-forward items
Closing operations (These comprise processes and functions performed at the end of the fiscal year in certain countries.)
# Summary
Central Finance represents a route to ERP system consolidation and migration to SAP S/4HANA at low risk. It delivers various benefits, however there are various challenges also (mentioned above under challenge section).
The Central Finance is not for all it shall be used where landscape is very complicated, for example, organizations which are into mergers and acquisitions and have different ERP systems (SAP and Non-SAP).
Okumaya devam et...