Building Blocks of SAP Simple Finance

This document gives a brief overviw of SAP simple finance and its component applications.

Background-SAP simple finance is the 1^st product available from the next generation of SAP solutions i.e. SAP Business Suite 4 HANA, or S/4HANA
family. The product was launched in 2015 as transformative product in finance landscape and is in stage of early adoption.

While the journey of SAP from R/2 to ECC itself has been path breaking, the advent of simple finance is likely to change the rule of game because of its inherent capabilities such as simplified data structure, new user experience, faster processing and choice of deployment mode. Each of these capability brings immense value to the stakeholders in the ways as mentioned below.

• Simplified data structure– The new simple finance solution is based  on the atomic level of FI Line Item tables and uses SAP HANA calculation views
  to provide real-time insights into FI processes. Many of the aggregate and index tables are now redundant. This brings to fore one common view of financial and operational data, to help ensure enterprise-wide consistency and reduce reconciliation time and errors.

• New user experience– Simple finance has a great inbuilt user experience as it allows real time access to financial reports, intra period close, accelerated period end close and minimal effort for reconciliation. In other words users can get personalized information with granular drill down.

• Faster Processing- Simple finance uses the in-memory processing which relies on keeping data in a server’s RAM as a means of processing at faster speeds. The architecture is designed to handle both high transaction rates and complex query processing on the same platform using columnar database.

• Choice of deployment mode- SAP simple finance provides On-premise, hybrid, and cloud deployment options and a non-disruptive migration path thereby allowing the business to choose a mode as per their IT roadmap.

1. 1.SAP Accounting-
   • With in SAP Accounting the table structure has been extended to to link the line items in FI (the entries in the BSEG
     table) with the line items in CO (the entries in the COEP table) and the CO-PA characteristics (the entries in the CE4XXXX table).
   • The other important feature of SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA is that it continues to support costing-based CO-PA but it puts a much stronger emphasis on account-based CO-PA in order to inherit the link by account.
   • The universal journal entry links Financial Accounting (FI) with Controlling (CO) and Profitability Analysis (CO-PA) at the line item level.
   • Aggregate and index tables have become redundant there by allowing faster processing.
   • With new tools like Lumira, Explorer or Analysis for Office, users can easily discover and analyze large volumes of data, in real time, down to the line item.

SAP Cash Management

• Smart cash management in simple finance covers bank account management, cash operations and liquidity management.
• The inherent capabilities of simple finance i.e instant insight (in memory based), intuitive user experience and flexible and non-disruptive deployment
  options are utilized by smart cash applications too.
• Enables the business to get daily financial statements, actual cash flow analysis and liquidity planning and forecast.
• Bank account management leverages SAP workflow to standardize the process and link all people involved.
• Cash management and liquidity forecast can be done through Fiori apps and smart business addon.

Integrated Business Planning in Simple Finance

• Consistent view of planning process.
• Application can be accessed by MS excel front end.
• Enable to combine revenue & cost planning to arrive at a profitability planning at detail level and combine
  it with balance sheet  and liquidity planning  to provide an holistic integrated planning
• Allows to perform Driver Based Planning ,  What if Analysis , Scenario planning
• Enhance the planning functionality with Audit Trail and Activity log