Real time Consolidation (RTC) with SAP S/4HANA Central Finance (CFIN)

In this blog I will talk about the Real Time Consolidation with the scenario of Central Finance present in the present or planned roadmap.

Central Finance is not mandatory for Real Time Consolidation solution. The fundamental of Real Time Consolidation is based on the assumption that most subsidiaries financial documents are in a S/4HANA system. It can be a scenario that those subsidiaries are using S/4HANA as their transactional system or the accounting documents of those subsidiaries are replicated to S/4HANA Central Finance.

Let’s understand what is Real Time Consolidation?

Real-Time Consolidation (RTC) is a consolidation solution based on the deep integration between SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (SAP BPC). It has the direct access to universal journal entries, while leveraging the consolidation capabilities from SAP BPC.

RTC is embedded in S/4HANA Finance and leverages both HANA as well as SAP BPC rule-based consolidation engine. By provisioning data in table ACDOCA directly to SAP BPC, the Real Time Consolidation can run consolidation in Real time.

Key Features of Real Time Consolidation:

• SAP S/4HANA data modelling
• Currency Translation
• Document Concept for Consolidation Journal Entries
• Data Validation
• Data Collection

Real Time Consolidation Key Objectives

Traditional Architecture for Consolidation

In this design the consolidation was not real time as several systems were feeding to BPC. There was a time lag to see the consolidated numbers since the data models are different in each transactional system and BPC must take care of harmonising the data and run the processes like translation, Intercompany elimination etc before publishing the final numbers for reporting

Architecture for Consolidation with Central Finance

In this design all the transactional systems are feeding the data in SAP S/4HANA and for BPC the source of data is only S/4HANA which make the data flow simple and quick. Since the replication from source systems to SAP S/4HANA is real time the same happens with consolidation where the data can be seen in BPC in real time with RTC.

The data is S/4HANA ACDOCA table remains in local format like chart of accounts, currencies and fiscal years. With the real time consolidation only the conversion of that data happens from group reporting perspective.

Real time consolidation provides an additional currency translation feature in S/4HANA Finance. Its main purpose is to allow the local accountants to submit the local data in group currency so that more data validation work can be done before the data goes for group level accounting team.

Financial Consolidation not just reads the data but also push back the data to S/4HANA to write the consolidation results. The consolidation Journal (Table ACDOCC) is used to store the data for consolidation results. This is important to note that without CFIN scenario the same table is used to storing the local data for non-SAP integrated companies through flexible upload.

Real Time Consolidation is a real value add with Central Finance to get the maximum benefit out of the Investment in SAP landscape and is callable in long term

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