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Author's profile photo Maximilian Koebler

SAP S/4HANA Cloud for advanced financial closing: Re-Platforming announcement and history

Dear Finance Experts,

continuing the execution of the intelligent finance strategy, SAP has released the next generation financial close orchestration solution SAP S/4HANA Cloud for advanced financial closing (AFC) on December 16th, 2020.

This is SAP’s go-to strategic solution for entity close management and orchestration – supporting the planning, execution, monitoring and analysis of period-end closing tasks for all entities (i.e. typically the headquarters & all subsidiaries) of a corporation.

AFC is a standalone application powered by the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and can be seamlessly integrated in heterogeneous systems landscapes to control closing tasks as a unified hub in distributed financial backend systems.

If you are new to this topic and you first want to understand the scope, functionality and benefits of AFC, I recommend you to start your learning journey with the following resources:

In the following, I want to give you an overview of the history and heritage of AFC and explain, why the release as a standalone application on the SAP BTP allows a simplified deployment.

 

History of SAP Financial Close Orchestration Solutions

SAP has been developing financial close orchestration solutions for more than 20 years. Around the year 2000, many customers used the generic automation functionalities of the Schedule Manager to plan, monitor and optimize the execution of programs and reports via background jobs that are run as part of the period-end close process. SAP then decided to tailor this generic automation framework to meed the specific needs of the financial close. This was the hour of birth of the Closing cockpit (Cc). Later, this was further developed and extended, which led to a new product name (SAP Financial Closing cockpit – FCc) and it was finally released as part of the SAP S/4HANA offering in 2017. Until today, these solutions were successfully implemented and leveraged by thousands of SAP customers across the globe to optimize their financial close processes.

As every enterprise in each industry and region can benefit a lot from a more streamlined, more accurate and faster close process and due to the rise of intelligent technologies, SAP released in 2018 the next-generation and modern financial task list management solution: SAP S/4HANA Cloud for advanced financial closing. This was developed by the same team of architects and experts like FCc, but it was fully based on the SAP Fiori UX and brought lots of new functionalities. Though, it could only be used by customers that already had an SAP S/4HANA Cloud system up and running, because it was part of the core cloud ERP system stack (Scope Item 2V8).

As of today, AFC can be deployed as a standalone application powered by the SAP BTP, which makes the consumption and deployment more light-weight and leaner. AFC can now be implemented without the technical requirement to have an SAP S/4HANA Cloud system up and running – although the number of cloud ERP customers is growing rapidly here, not all of them are there yet. In other words, also SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA customers can leverage AFC easily to steer and monitor their closing processes across multiple systems and achieve a much higher level of quality, transparency and speed in the close process.

History of SAP Financial Close Orchestration Solutions

 

Connectivity and Integration Scenarios

SAP provides out-of-the-box connectivity for AFC with the following financial backend systems:

  • SAP S/4HANA Cloud
  • SAP S/4HANA 2020 and all following releases
  • SAP S/4HANA 1909 FPS02 and higher
  • SAP S/4HANA 1809 SPS04 and higher
  • SAP ERP 6.0, enhancement package 4 and higher

If you want to connect AFC with either SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA On Premise systems, a Cloud Connector is required. In case you want to connect AFC with an SAP ECC System, additionally an integration component needs to be installed there.

 

Outlook

I don’t want to finish this blog without an appetizer and therefore, I want to highlight with the below screenshot, that AFC provides beautiful embedded monitoring and analytical capabilities that allow you to explore multiple intuitive process-related KPIs such as the completion rate of the financial close per Company Code, Country or Fiscal Period and seamlessly drill down from those metrics into single tasks to take direct action. This allows you to immediately identify bottlenecks, critical issues and delays and therefore ensure that the financial results can be delivered faster with less effort, more accurately and reliably.

Financial Close Overview application

 

If you want to learn more about SAP S/4HANA Cloud for advanced financial closing, stay tuned. There are many innovations to come and AFC will be one of the centerpieces for SAP customers to achieve an intelligent and optimized financial close.

 

Thank you for taking the time and reading this blog post.

 

For more information about SAP S/4HANA Cloud for advanced financial closing, check out the following links:

  • SAP Community Page for Advanced Financial Closing: here
  • SAP Help Portal for AFC: here
  • AFC in the SAP Roadmap Explorer: here
  • SAP.com page about AFC: here

 

Follow us via @SAP and #AdvancedFinancialClosing, or myself via Maximilian Koebler or  LinkedIn.

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      18 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Johan Groesbeek
      Johan Groesbeek

      Thanks so much !  AFC is filling the current cloud gaap in the Group Reporting process especially for international DAX companies ..  !!   It  like button does not work so I write this comment ..

      Author's profile photo Rabab AZHAF
      Rabab AZHAF

      Hello Maximilian, thank you for this very informative blog about AFC. In the last S/4HANA Cloud Finance canapé session, it was presented that partners can soon benefit from a demo instance to try and get familiar with AFC. Can you please give more details about this ? And what are the conditions for partners to get access to this demo system ?

      Many thanks!

      Author's profile photo Maximilian Koebler
      Maximilian Koebler
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Rabab,

      thanks for reaching out.

      On Friday, 26th of February 2021, SAP will release an AFC test and demo license for partners.

      You can get it on the SAP PartnerEdge website.

      Best regards,

      Max

      Author's profile photo Rabab AZHAF
      Rabab AZHAF

      Thank you for your answer

      Author's profile photo Bianka Böther
      Bianka Böther

      Dear Maximilian,

      thank you for very interresting information about AFC.

      We are interested in implementing AFC with an ECC backend system.

      Actually we are using the Closing Cockpit (Cc) and want to upgrade the solution.

      The Upgrade to FCc requires the activation of business functions FIN_ACC_LOCAL_CLOSE (1-3).

      Is it a technical precondition to activate the business functions in ECC to use AFC? Or do we have to allow for other important preconditions in ECC?

      Thank you so much.

      Best regards

      Bianka

      Author's profile photo Maximilian Koebler
      Maximilian Koebler
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Bianka,

      thanks for reaching out.

      For integrating AFC with ECC, there is no business function activation required. You need to ensure that your ECC system is at least on release ECC 6.0 EHP4 or higher and then install a small add-on component that we call "ECC Connector". The required procedures are documented here in the SAP Help Portal - AFC Administration Guide.

      Please also note that AFC requires a separate license.

      Let me know in case of further questions.

      Best regards

      Max

      Author's profile photo Anand Agrawal
      Anand Agrawal

      Hello Maximillian,

      We are planning to implement AFC in our organizations. We have lot of Task lists. We heard that ability to upload task list  no longer exists. Do have suggestions for mass-upload or simplify the process here ?

       

      Thanks

      Anand

      Author's profile photo Maximilian Koebler
      Maximilian Koebler
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Anand,

      thanks for reaching out with that valid question.

      It is indeed not planned that we provide a spreadsheet-upload function for closing templates in AFC.

      Instead, we have multiple features such as task list models and task attribute mass changes in place to support the efficient maintenance of closing templates. Also, we currently invest a high portion of the development capacity to further improve the initial creation of closing templates as well as the enhanced handling of lifecycle events such as new acquisitions, new processes in the close or re-organisations, which lead to changed responsibilities in the process.

      If you are interested, I am happy to provide you an overview of this topic.

      Best regards,

      Max

      Author's profile photo Mrs Devi
      Mrs Devi

      Hello Maximillian,

      we have also same requirement from client asking for mass uploading functionalities for processors, task list during new entity live.

      Its difficult to update processor every month if there is any changes in task list.

       

      Please reply on this.

       

      Regards,

      Devi

       

      Author's profile photo Maximilian Koebler
      Maximilian Koebler
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Devi,

      it's a valid question.

      • First, you can now assign a separate access level for user assignment so that for example a central team maintains the closing structures and decentral key users can maintain the processing and responsible users, check out this blog for the task list creation scope.
      • Second, it is possible to perform mass-changes for task attributes such as the processing user field
      • Also, with the February release update for AFC we plan to enable that processing users can be maintained on folder level and there is an automatic top down derivation to the underlying nodes of the closing structure, which again reduces the effort to maintain them

      Best wishes,

      Max

      Author's profile photo Bianka Böther
      Bianka Böther

      Hi Maximilian,

       

      we requested SAP for a demo version of AFC few weeks ago.  Unfortunately there was no reaction so we asked again. Same result.

      Can you support my request please?

       

      Thanks and best regards

      Bianka

      Author's profile photo Maximilian Koebler
      Maximilian Koebler
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Bianka,

      I apologize that you have not yet received an appointment for an AFC demo and I'm happy to take care of that. I suspect that there was no reaction so far due to vacation absences.

      Can you please send me your contact details and company name via direct message (click on your user avatar on the right top and then choose "Send a message", add me via the "+" button to a chat).

      Thank you and best regards,

      Max

      Author's profile photo Amandeep Bal
      Amandeep Bal

      Hi Maximilian Koebler ,

       

      The link you posted seems to be an internal link.

      https://help.sap.com/viewer/DRAFT/b021b34a2c2d4943abc3a31008c7bdfc/SHIP/en-US/7b85121d4aef4e9f9e0f577129625f8d.html

      At this moment, we are not sure how to we get this application on our BTP.

      Thanks

      Aman

       

      Author's profile photo Maximilian Koebler
      Maximilian Koebler
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Amand,

      thanks for reaching out. This is the correct link for instructions about connectivity between AFC and SAP ERP.

      Best wishes,

      Max

      Author's profile photo POTHIYAPPAN Vairavasundaram
      POTHIYAPPAN Vairavasundaram

      Hi Maximilian Koebler ,

      Currently, we are exploring the closing cockpit for month/year-end financial closing activities.

      We have some challenges with the current version of the closing cockpit (CLOCOC); e.g (multiple users cannot access the Task list at one time and the task status must be updated manually).

      At this moment we have more than 1000 entities.

      EHP8 System environment:

      Component Release SP Level Support package Description
      SAP_APPL 618 0013 SAPK-61813INSAPAPPL Logistics and Accounting

      Recently we are implementing the BTP platform and it is in the UAT stage, Kindly advise the best possible options to adopt AFC with EHP8 / BTP platform.

      If possible, kindly arrange a DEMO session.

      Hope to hear from you ASAP.

      Regards

      Sam

      Author's profile photo Katharina Reichert
      Katharina Reichert

      Hi Sam,

       

      I'd be happy to get in touch for a demo and discussion. Would you please reach out to me at katharina.reichert (at) sap.com?

       

      Have a great day!

      Author's profile photo Sanjay Mukhopadhyay
      Sanjay Mukhopadhyay

      Hallo Maximilian, Thanks for the useful information on AFC. Currently within the client I am working with has S4 HANA Private Cloud 2022 version. I can only see Financial Close and not the Advanced Financial Close. Could you please provide some guidance how to activate the AFC within Private Cloud environment ? Thank you. Sanjay

      Author's profile photo Maximilian Koebler
      Maximilian Koebler
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Sanjay,

      AFC can be perfectly used in combination with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition and with release S/4HANA 2022.

      To use AFC, you need to have a separate subscription for it, because AFC is a standalone product that runs on the SAP Business Technology Platform - it's technically not part of the S/4HANA Cloud system.

      If you already have an AFC subscription, you can follow this manual for the onboarding steps.

      Best wishes,

      Max