SAP BLOG SAP S/4HANA Move for Finance Blog series #07 of 15 Establish Trust Across the Financial Close

Thank you for joining our SAP S/4HANA Finance Move blog series breaking down the Webinar Series for Finance Professionals

In this on demand webinar Katharina Reichert, Solution Management Finance, Solution Owner Accounting and Financial Close from SAP shares how you can close and report quickly, smoothly, and accurately by automating the close process and eliminating error-prone manual tasks. Increase efficiency, quality, and auditability when closing your books using the SAP S/4HANA Finance solution, the SAP S/4HANA solution for advanced financial closing, and SAP Solution Extensions by BlackLine.

Here’s the agenda Katharina will cover:

• Session overview
• The new world of Financial Closing with SAP S/4HANA
• The ideal world of Financial Closing with additional accelerators
• Summary

In addition to the main session “Establish Trust Across the Financial Close” there are six additional deep dive sessions available with this session. Logon to the main session, then scroll down to access the deep dives seen here:





Deep Dive sessions with abstracts:

• Create More Efficient, Transparent, Trusted Accounting Processes

Speed your journey to SAP S/4HANA by leveraging tools to help collaborate and execute accounting tasks confidently. Learn how you can transform your accounting and financial close process with SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine.

• Bring Governance and Automation to Your Intercompany Processes

Learn how SAP Intercompany Financial Hub by BlackLine and can help you enhance your key financial close steps to connect, accelerate, and automate enterprise accounting and finance operations. Bring intelligence to finance and eliminate manual, error-prone tasks and processes.

• Use Intelligent Technology to Cut Manual Tasks from the Closing To-Do List

Adopt the latest innovations in your accounting processes – for more automation in goods and invoice receipt reconciliation and purchase order accruals. See how machine learning can speed up or eliminate tasks, and how the machine will learn from remaining manual tasks to improve future automation rates.

• Streamline Your Financial Close with SAP S/4HANA for Group Reporting

Support a faster and more accurate close process by unifying entity and group close operations. Learn how the SAP S/4HANA Finance solution for group reporting increases visibility to help you make better decisions. Run close tasks and consolidations at any point, increasing transparency throughout the period and reducing workloads at month end.

• Accelerate Your Close Processes and Ensure Quality and Transparency

Monitor financial closings like never before by streamlining your structures and workflows. Automate your management of the close process with a standardized, innovative, cloud-driven approach enabled by the SAP S/4HANA Cloud solution for advanced financial closing.

• SAP Revenue Accounting and Reporting with SAP S/4HANA – Assisting You with Your Automated Revenue Management

This session provides an overview of S/4 HANA SAP Revenue Accounting and Reporting designed to assist customers with their automated revenue management needs. Learn how customers are utilizing S/4 HANA SAP Revenue Accounting and Reporting for their ASC606 and IFRS 15 financial reporting. Compliance needs, optimization techniques, and transformational strategies will also be discussed.

Again, to access the deep dives log into the main session “Establish Trust Across the Financial Close” from www.sap.com\move-finance then scroll down to access the deep dives as pictured above.

Additionally, here are some of the questions and answers from our live session:

1. Is SAP Disclosure Management available as a Cloud based solution – or is the only option still the on premise version?
   SAP Disclosure Management is only available on-premise. Please check out this blog about the future direction of SAP Disclosure Management SAP S/4HANA for group reporting will deliver the last mile of reporting with SAP Disclosure Management | SAP Blogs
2. Are there any plans to enhance SAP Financial Closing Cockpit in SAP S/4HANA
   No – SAP Financial Closing cockpit will be maintained in line with the SAP S/4HANA release strategy, but there won’t be more investment. All investments are being focused on SAP S/4HANA for Advanced Financial Closing.
3. What is SAP S/4HANA for Advanced Financial Closing? How Different is it from SAP Financial Closing Cockpit?
   AFC is a cloud-based hub, which schedules and executes automated jobs in SAP accounting systems and supports manual closing tasks with workflows. SAP Financial Closing cockpit is our older, on premise solution, which has the same core scope. AFC advantages include an improved user interface, built-in reporting and dashboarding, best practice content (the list of closing steps for SAP S/4HANA releases) and improved flexibility of workflow notifications (outlook calendar entries, easy changes). Join the “Accelerate Your Close Processes and Ensure Quality and Transparency” Deep Dive for more details.
4. Do GR/IR reconciliation and Accruals Management require separate licenses?
   GR/IR – yes, additional license is required; Accruals – new processing is included; license required only if you use the Machine Learning add-on. Join the “Use Intelligent Technology to Cut Manual Tasks from the Closing To-Do List” Deep Dive for more details.
5. Are all of these new functionalities standard when moving to SAP S/4HANA?
   SAP S/4HANA for Advanced Financial Closing application and SAP S/4HANA for Group Reporting as well as the SAP Solution Extensions by BlackLine are add-on solutions. The functionality around “reconciliation by design” and intelligent accounting processes -such as improved Intercompany Matching and Reconciliation -are part of the SAP S/4HANA core license.
6. For Group Reporting would expect to create Company Codes for each entity, even though some entities may use other financial systems? (Company Code vs Company)….All the data will always be in the core S/4 HANA solution
   SAP S/4HANA for Group Reporting uses “Consolidation Units” to represent the entities in Group Reporting – some would be filled by S/4HANA data, other non-S/4HANA entities would be loaded via our data collection tool, Group Reporting Data Collection. Yes, at the end of the day, all the consolidation-related data is loaded into S/4HANA – in our ACDOCU table (not the ACDOCA table, which is the universal journal) – since it’s at a different level of granularity. Join the “Streamline Your Financial Close with SAP S/4HANA for Group Reporting” Deep Dive for more details.
7. Can Intercompany Matching and Reconciliation (ICMR) be done in SAP S/4HANA Core instead of Group Reporting?
   Yes, ICMR supports 2 approaches – (same user experience) – the “accounting” version which acts on line-item data (included in the S/4HANA core license) – for which you can feed non-S/4HANA data into a loading table at the line item level OR you can use the Group Reporting version to do intercompany at the balance level – for which you can feed non-S/4HANA data using Group Reporting Data Collection at the balance level
8. Can Fiori Apps be used for Financial Closing activity?
   AFC is delivered as multiple Fiori apps: Define Closing Template (for creating the gameplay), Process Closing Tasks (the task list), Closing Overview (dashboard), etc. Join the “Accelerate Your Close Processes and Ensure Quality and Transparency” Deep Dive for more details.
9. SAP Group Reporting also has Intercompany Elimination then how diff is Blackline solution?
   The foundation of intercompany matching and reconciliation is available as part of the S/4HANA license and as a part of the SAP Group Reporting license. Customers can use the “accounting model” for line-item intercompany, or Group Reporting model for balance-level intercompany. The SAP Intercompany Financial Hub by BlackLine is focused on an end-to-end governance process with a lot of emphasis on aligning the terms and conditions of the intercompany agreement “up-front” (especially for non-trade intercompany) where you wouldn’t have the detail in your S/4HANA system. Check out these blogs for more detail: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/05/03/sap-erp-solutions-have-intercompany-reconciliation-functionality-icr.-why-would-i-need-sap-intercompany-financial-hub-by-blackline/ SAP Intercompany Financial Hub by BlackLine and SAP S/4HANA Intercompany Matching & Reconciliation, How they work together | SAP Blogs

For a complete outline of our on demand series check out www.sap.com/move-finance

SAP S/4HANA Move for Finance Blog series

#01 of 15 Why Finance professionals should move to SAP S/4HANA

#02 of 15 Join the Finance Transformation – Learn How SAP S/4HANA Finance Will Help You Move Forward

#03 of 15 Learn Why it is Beneficial for Finance to Move to SAP S/4HANA

#04 of 15 SAP’s Unique Formula for the Finance Function of Tomorrow

#05 of 15 See How the New Intuitive SAP S/4HANA User Experience Improves Productivity

#06 of 15 Learn How to Manage the Move to SAP S/4HANA Most Effectively

#07 of 15 Establish Trust Across the Financial Close

Coming soon:

#08 of 15 See How SAP’s Finance Platform Has Evolved Beyond Accounting, Supporting the End-to-End FP&A

#09 of 15 Increase Customer Satisfaction and Process Efficiency in Receivables Management with SAP S/4

#10 of 15 Increase Revenue by Establishing Service-Based Business Models with SAP S/4HANA

#11 of 15 Establish an Integrated and Centralized Treasury and Working Capital Management

#12 of 15 Streamline and Automate Financial Shared Services with SAP S/4HANA

#13 of 15 Manage Indirect Tax Consistently and Cost-Effectively with SAP S/4HANA

#14 of 15 Manage Governance, Risk, Compliance (GRC) and Security with SAP S/4HANA

#15 of 15 Learn How SAP S/4HANA Can Support Finance Professionals to Join Enterprise Transformation

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