SAP S/4HANA Financial Closing Cockpit At Glance

In this blog post, general aspect of S/4 HANA Financial Closing Cockpit will be covered in 3 parts shown below;

• Evolution
• Features/Benefits
• Structure

• SAP S/4 HANA FCC Evolution

FFC is evaluated dramatically throghout the years since the first version of product released, starting with simple scheduling manager (SCMA) to Classical Closing Cockpit to SAP FCC 1.0/2.0 and finally to S4HANA FCC. Now newer dimension of fiori applications, providing intuitive dashboards and KPIs are available in both on-premise and cloud version of S4HANA FCC.

•  Wide Range of Features/Benefits of SAP S/4 HANA FCC

SAP S4HANA Financial Closing Cockpit Software is simply used to optimize complex closing process. Benefits of the application will be refered in 4 main topics.

• Transparency
• Efficiency
• Compliance
• Human Impact

Providing Exact Transparency

• Create transparency through centralized task list

Common questions that have to be answered when defining and executing a closing process. Including the following;

• • Who will execute what, and at what time?
  • In what order do we need to execute the steps?
  • What is the current status of the task list?
  • Has the process started?
  • which process steps need to be finished before other related tasks start?
  • Is the process complete?

It is questions like these mostly occurs during the closing progress that the SAP S/4HANA Financial Closing Cockpit is designed to answer.

• Increase control over automatic processes
• Create a single point of access for the whole closing
  process

Relentless Efficiency Throughout the Process

• Fiori based KPI Apps for Financial Closing Cockpit

With these analytical apps you can monitor your financial close. You can view the progress of the closing cycle, including completed tasks, delayed tasks, tasks with errors, omitted tasks, and the planned and actual start and end times for both this closing cycle and the last several closing cycles. You can analyze this information by different views, such as region, country, and phase.

Here the list of the FIORI FCC KPI apps:

F3698 – Close Progression
F3699 – Close Delay
F3700 – Plan Actual Comparison
F3701 – Omitted Tasks
F3702 – Erroneous Tasks
F3703 – Delayed Tasks
F3704 – Close Progression (Current Date)
F3844 – Close Evolution

You can find more information about the apps in the FIORI library and also oss note 2646627 (https://fioriappslibrary.hana.ondemand.com/sap/fix/externalViewer/)

• Automation and scheduling
  • Programs
  • Batch processes
  • Push communication
• Eliminate re-work and institutionalize controls
• Automate orchestration of tasks

• Ensure and prove that the same procedures are respected throughout the organization
• All audit trace available at the right location
  • Build results that you can rely on
  • Store proof of actions. You can attach documents in the task that contain results of tasks or process-related critical informations, various formats of document are supported such as .xls, .pdf . doc etc.
• Fully integrated with other SAP systems via RFC services. -with SAP Business process automation by Redwood (SAP BPA)-
• Generate accurate and comprehensive reports leveraging consistent master data and hierarchies

Human Impact

• Set realistic work duration and planning
• Identify bottlenecks that become milestones
• Eliminate double work
• Guidelines & work instructions
• Manage interdependencies
• Pre-close preparation

• S/4 HANA FCC Structure

For SAP On-premise environment, in ECC or 1511/1610 version of S/4HANA, Financial Closing Cockpit was as add-on product. – available in two versions, 1.0 and then enhanced 2.0-. Starting with S/4HANA Enterprise Management version 1709, the FCC has been started to deliver as part of the digital core, so no more add-on to be installed for this, which makes this product well integrated into the core components. Regardless of being delivered as part of digital core, the usage of FCC still need a separate license

Setting Up a Closing Template

The template contains all default tasks related to the local close and a relative default schedule.
Closing types, Organizational units, Task types (manual transactions, job or workflow) are some of maint points to consider when defining templates.

Creating Task List

A template contains a list of tasks in a hierarchy. All tasks in the template are classified by close types.
The month-end closing, quarter end closing and year-end closing checkmarks indicate whether the tasks are copied into the task list when it is generated.

The generation of task list can be organized under corporate responsibility to ensure a harmonized closing process across subsidiaries.

Defining dependencies and critical path are crucial elements of application.

Execute Task List

The task list providies status information on each task and links to all system documentation (job logs, spool lists, application logs) and user-created documentation (supporting .pdf and office documents)

The SAP Financial Closing cockpit saves all start time, duration and end time of task executions.

Monitor and Analyze

The status and progress of the entity close can be displayed as SAP Netweaer BW queries or SAP Fiori applications which are enriched with 1809 version that provide real-time access to the close figures.

The duration of the tasks in a single close can be compared with the planned duration using an SAP BW query. This enables the users to improve the template based on clear insights for the next closing cycle.