Save time, gain accuracy, and automate asset retirement obligation accounting with SAP S/4HANA

Many companies, across many industries, need to manage asset retirement obligations.  However, most companies struggle to define or scale work processes and fall back to relying on manual activities and tasks. Utilizing office tools such as Excel may seem convenient, but this practice is often time consuming, prone to error, not integrated, leads to a broken audit trail, and places the accounting team in a pinch.

Bad math, transposition errors, and “fat finger” errors run rampant in companies of all sizes. Almost 90 percent of all spreadsheets have errors.  Even the most carefully developed, tried, and tested spreadsheets have errors in 1 percent of all formula cells. In larger spreadsheets with thousands of formulas (that, let’s face it, exist in every company), there are dozens of errors.

All of this culminates in a procedural “soup” that is inconsistent, unpredictable, unreliable and can lead to corrections that extend the financial close cycle and brings unwanted attention during audit engagements.

To help solve these challenges, SAP offers the add-on application SAP S/4HANA for Asset Retirement Obligation.  A powerful suite of features built to support the end-to-end accounting aspect of asset retirement obligations.

Save Time, and Gain Accuracy, with Greater Automation

As part of the SAP S/4HANA for Asset Retirement Obligation application, users can now utilize the new SAP Fiori App for managing asset retirement obligations.

This new feature allows user quick access to:

• Check the overall obligation status
• Sort and filter the list of obligation items
• Initiate the creation of new obligations
• Access existing obligations

With the new SAP Fiori App, significant user improvements have been made for creating and maintaining obligations, reducing the amount of inputs and ‘clicks’ required and increasing the visibility of the obligations most critical data.

But it doesn’t end there… With only one additional click, helpful links provide the user access to more details such as the; ARO calculation steps, statement of interest cash flows, access to accounting documents (not shown) and, in the case of US GAAP, the obligation layering details.

With SAP S/4HANA for Asset Retirement Obligation, and the newly available Fiori App, customers can:

• Eliminate the use of disparate office tools and manual process that are time-consuming, not integrated and error prone
• Increase the confidence and efficiency of the financial close by removing unnecessary batch uploads and maintenance
• Realize “one source of truth” for ARO calculations, general ledger and asset postings, periodic accruals and reporting

For more information on this topic:

Go to help.sap.com; or, contact Bret Strobo.