Welcome to a brief overview of the highlights for finance in the SAP S/4Cloud 1905 release.
A well-organized accounting system can provide valuable insights into cost trends, product pricing, and business performance which enables proactive management and allows for ongoing business optimizations. In the video below, you can get a quick overview of three 1905 innovations in that space:
Universal Allocation
While most companies have clear rules to allocate direct cost based on direct connections to products, allocating overhead costs is more difficult. Organizations often struggle to understand allocation processes that have grown increasingly complex over the years and have long cycle run times. With ‘Universal Allocation’, SAP is conquering the complexity and simplifying cost allocations by combining various capabilities in a unified approach. It enables you to allocate and distribute overhead for cost centers and profit centers using actual or plan data. New Fiori apps ensure user-friendly handling of the process, ranging from creating cycles to performing the allocation runs and displaying allocation results.
Figure 1: Universal Allocation
It provides high transparency and insights on the overhead allocation process, even within complex organizations. With these features you can easily manage your financial data across complex organization structures. Proven allocation functionality is available with the speed of the universal journal while it is easy to deploy thru guided procedures and in-app help.
Active Budget Control for Cost Centers
Effective and efficient budget management is the cornerstone of a successful business operation. Budget managers often struggle with outdated expenditure information that lead to reactive business decisions. Active Budget Availability Control allows for real-time budget management of costs centers. It supports the end-to-end business process, from budgeting to cost postings, and it offers specific budget reporting. The capabilities comprise of a flexible definition of cost elements to be controlled, a definition of a tolerance limits including the actions that are to be take when the thresholds are reached and the assignment of budget carrying cost centers. Embedded analytics let you monitor what has been spent and what is left of the budget in real-time. The solution cultivates a better spend culture over time and it is easy and fast to implement.
Figure 2: Active Budget Control for Cost Centers
Intelligent Accruals Management
As of this release Intelligent Accruals Management enables you to use the machine learning service provided by SAP for recommending reliable accruals. The system can suggest purchase order accruals that are reliable for mass review. It learns from decisions taken in the past and applies learned knowledge to the new business situation. This accelerates the financial closing process and reduce finance costs and effort.
Figure 3: Intelligent Accruals Management
Here are two additional innovations not covered in the video :
Display Document Flow
With the Display Document app you can view all documents and journal entries related to a business transaction. All you need to do is provide the document number and you can see the document flow that includes your document and all other documents that are part of the business transaction. To explore how these documents are related and can follow the arrows that connect them. In the same app you can see which journal entries belong to which ledger and inspect them further using the ‘display as T-Accounts’ link.
Figure 4: Display Document Flow App
Manage Journal Entry Templates
This app enables you to define a journal entry template for postings based on your needs, which means you can select fields and values in a template for specific posting use. Then the template can be used in the Post General Journal Entries app. After you create a journal entry template, you can also choose to share it publicly and the access level. The templates can help save time when you enter journal entries.
Figure 5: Process: Manage Journal Entry Templates
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
Follow us via @Sap and #S4HANA, or myself via @HaukeUlrich and LinkedIn
A well-organized accounting system can provide valuable insights into cost trends, product pricing, and business performance which enables proactive management and allows for ongoing business optimizations. In the video below, you can get a quick overview of three 1905 innovations in that space:
Universal Allocation
While most companies have clear rules to allocate direct cost based on direct connections to products, allocating overhead costs is more difficult. Organizations often struggle to understand allocation processes that have grown increasingly complex over the years and have long cycle run times. With ‘Universal Allocation’, SAP is conquering the complexity and simplifying cost allocations by combining various capabilities in a unified approach. It enables you to allocate and distribute overhead for cost centers and profit centers using actual or plan data. New Fiori apps ensure user-friendly handling of the process, ranging from creating cycles to performing the allocation runs and displaying allocation results.
Figure 1: Universal AllocationIt provides high transparency and insights on the overhead allocation process, even within complex organizations. With these features you can easily manage your financial data across complex organization structures. Proven allocation functionality is available with the speed of the universal journal while it is easy to deploy thru guided procedures and in-app help.
Active Budget Control for Cost Centers
Effective and efficient budget management is the cornerstone of a successful business operation. Budget managers often struggle with outdated expenditure information that lead to reactive business decisions. Active Budget Availability Control allows for real-time budget management of costs centers. It supports the end-to-end business process, from budgeting to cost postings, and it offers specific budget reporting. The capabilities comprise of a flexible definition of cost elements to be controlled, a definition of a tolerance limits including the actions that are to be take when the thresholds are reached and the assignment of budget carrying cost centers. Embedded analytics let you monitor what has been spent and what is left of the budget in real-time. The solution cultivates a better spend culture over time and it is easy and fast to implement.
Figure 2: Active Budget Control for Cost CentersIntelligent Accruals Management
As of this release Intelligent Accruals Management enables you to use the machine learning service provided by SAP for recommending reliable accruals. The system can suggest purchase order accruals that are reliable for mass review. It learns from decisions taken in the past and applies learned knowledge to the new business situation. This accelerates the financial closing process and reduce finance costs and effort.
Figure 3: Intelligent Accruals ManagementHere are two additional innovations not covered in the video :
Display Document Flow
With the Display Document app you can view all documents and journal entries related to a business transaction. All you need to do is provide the document number and you can see the document flow that includes your document and all other documents that are part of the business transaction. To explore how these documents are related and can follow the arrows that connect them. In the same app you can see which journal entries belong to which ledger and inspect them further using the ‘display as T-Accounts’ link.
Figure 4: Display Document Flow AppManage Journal Entry Templates
This app enables you to define a journal entry template for postings based on your needs, which means you can select fields and values in a template for specific posting use. Then the template can be used in the Post General Journal Entries app. After you create a journal entry template, you can also choose to share it publicly and the access level. The templates can help save time when you enter journal entries.
Figure 5: Process: Manage Journal Entry TemplatesFor more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info: http://www.sap.com/s4-cloudrelease
- Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1905 Release Blog
- Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud User Community: register here
- Feature Scope Description here
- What’s New here
- Help Portal Product Page here
- Implementation Portal here
- New Blog Series ‘Balance Reporting with SAP S/4HANA Cloud’
- New Blog ‘An Introduction to Event-Based Revenue Recognition with Customer Projects in SAP S/4HANA Cloud’
Follow us via @Sap and #S4HANA, or myself via @HaukeUlrich and LinkedIn
- SAP Managed Tags:
