Finance for SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108

In this blog post i would like to share the latest innovations for finance in our SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release with you. This time it is all about enhanced process efficiency in accounting and financial close, finance operations as well as a greater steering effectiveness for your entire group.

Watch my video to get a quick overview of our SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 highlights for Finance:

Video 1: 2108 Release Highlights

Intercompany Document Matching Leveraging Machine Learning

Companies need to match the intercompany documents to ensure transactions are properly booked in both parties. This can be partly achieved by user-defined rules. For the rest of the unmatched documents, accountants used to spend a lot of time on manual matching. By leveraging Machine Learning, the solution can help to further automate the matching process.

Video 2: Demo of Intercompany Document Matching Leveraging Machine Learning

Value Proposition

• Increase automation in intercompany document matching to improve the process efficiency
• Potentially increase the document matching quality by using the high-confidence inference model

Capabilities

• End-to-end process from model training to periodic inference;
• Inference model lifecycle management to support continuous model improvement;
• Inference result review embedded into the standard document matching app.

Automatic Invoice Deferrals Based on Purchase Order Reference Information

As part of Accruals Management, Purchase Order Deferrals services are provided by SAP S/4HANA Cloud with the automatic calculation and posting. The deferrals and accruals for purchase orders are seamlessly integrated in the Purchase Order Accruals application.

Video 3: Demo of Automatic Invoice Deferrals Based on Purchase Order Reference Information

Value Proposition

• Shorten and optimize the financial closing process
• Improve the accuracy in external reports
• Greater process reliability and compliance management
• Reduce tedious effort in manual work

Capabilities

• Automatically calculate and defer costs to future periods based on the performance period or planned costs in the purchase order
• Real-time recognition and posting of the total deferral amounts with a prepaid invoice or an early valuated goods receipt connected with purchase orders
• Post deferred costs in the respective periods with automatic account determination
• Report on deferral objects and deferral postings

Event-based Revenue Recognition for Product and Subscription Bundles

Event-based revenue recognition and margin analysis is now available for subscription provider contracts either individually or bundled into a solution order including sales orders, service orders, service contracts, projects and subscriptions. You easily understand revenue and costs using individual sales and service documents, projects, subscriptions as well as solution orders while having full transparency into the revenue recognition process.

Video 4: Demo of Event-based Revenue Recognition for Product and Subscription Bundles

Value Proposition

• Understand revenue and costs using individual sales and service documents, projects, subscriptions as well as solution orders
• Provide full transparency into the revenue recognition process
• Enable compliance with the revenue accounting standard

Capabilities

• Support event-based revenue recognition and margin analysis for subscription provider contracts either individually or bundled into a solution order
• Defer billed revenue real-time when posting a billing document from sales billing related to a subscription provider contract
• Run event-based revenue recognition for provider contracts to recognize revenue periodically
• Revalue provider contract items individually at any time during the period to analyze recognition values based on accounting principles

Payment Advice Engine

With the enhanced processing of payment advices, you can match open AP/AR items with payment advice items easily in the Reprocess Bank Statement Items app, and directly post and clear them.

Fig. 1: Matching Payment Advices with Open AP/AR Items

Value Proposition

• Reduce your manual daily workload by having the system match and clear invoices and payment items automatically
• Improve and automate the life cycle management of your payment advices
• Save time by having the system assign open items to payment advice items automatically

Capabilities

• Process payment advice items and bank statement items in one single app
• Identify the company code and customer account of the payment advice automatically
• Display, match, and clear open AP/AR items with payment advice items automatically

Group Planning Model

Group planning is now part of the financial planning process in SAP Analytics Cloud. It enhances your planning capabilities by enabling you to do profit and loss and balance sheet planning using group reporting dimensions, such as consolidation unit and financial statement item, for companies managed outside of SAP S4/HANA Cloud. Group planning is based on the SAP S/4HANA Cloud data model and is delivered as ‘SAP Finance Group Reporting Planning with SAP S/4HANA’ business content in SAP Analytics Cloud.

Fig. 2: Financial Statement Planning for Companies Managed Outside of SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Value Proposition  

• Comprehensive balance sheet and income statement planning in SAP Analytics Cloud now also available for companies in the group that are managed outside of SAP S/4HANA Cloud
• Integration is part of the content delivery and is available out of the box

Capabilities

• Profit and loss planning and profit and loss planning by partner
• Balance sheet planning and balance sheet planning by partner
• Manual distribution to partner consolidation unit
• Use the group’s master data and transaction data from SAP S/4HANA Cloud as a starting point for planning
• Planning administrators can pre-populate planning screens based on past actual data
• Reporting stories provide you with further insights into the planned data including further drill downs, for example, by functional area

Check out more innovations related to the finance function in Katrin’s blog on Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) for SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108.

For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:

• Finance Collection Blog (roadmap, quarterly release highlights, microlearnings) here
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info: http://www.sap.com/s4-cloudrelease
• Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here and previous release highlights here
• Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist
• SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
• Early Release Webinar Series here
• Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
• openSAP Microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA for Finance and GRC here
• Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community for Finance here
• Feature Scope Description here
• Help Portal Product Page here
• Implementation Portal here

Follow us via @SAP and #S4HANA, or myself via @HaukeUlrich and LinkedIn