Finance for SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2202

[Ulrich_Hauke]

Welcome to release SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2202. In the following please find a number of selected highlights in group reporting, accounting and financial close as well as treasury management including business benefits, capabilities and demos. 

 

https://youtu.be/VGWtkY8jVrg

Video 1: Release Video for Finance in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2202

 

Advanced Valuation Processes

Period-end closing is a time-consuming and cumbersome task when it comes to valuations of invoices. New and existing customers now benefit from the next generation of advanced valuation processes that offer GL accountants a range of user-friendly capabilities needed to easily configure and complete period-end closing activities in the domains of Discounting of Long-Term Assets and Liabilities, Advanced Foreign Currency Valuation, Credit-Risk Based Impairment and Balance Sheet Reclassification. GL accountants carry out the processes in the form of jobs in a certain order. All jobs and their results have a single point of entry via the Schedule General Ledger Jobs app from which they are started and scheduled. They benefit from additional analysis and insights, full traceability of valuation effects to the original items, effective trouble shooting with a re-run capability, less manual rework in case of changes and many more. It supports latest innovations, such as Parallel Accounting as well as the Bank Account Ledger and is integrated with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Advanced Financial Closing.

Figure 1: Schedule Advanced Valuation Process: Post BS Reclassification (Demo see below Blogseries Part 1)

 

Value Proposition

• End-user friendly valuation job UI’s and configurable process definition


• Effective trouble shooting with a re-run capability


• Full traceability of valuation effects of a journal entry


• Less manual rework: changes in an original journal entry are considered automatically e.g., not cleared payments or credit notes for an invoice or other changes of input parameters and amounts


• The new delta posting scheme allows detailed analysis and insights


• All valuation effects posted on original G/L account


• Support of Parallel Accounting: all advanced valuation processes follow the general currency setting in company and ledger


• Efficient posting in all parallel currencies is automated in one single run for a company code and ledger


• Valuation of Bank Account Ledger is enabled


• Transparent grouping of journal entries to be valuated together


• Simple definition of valuation scope by use of semantic tags in the financial statement version


• Consistent configuration with a single configuration and closing activity framework for all valuation processes


• Flexible account assignment setup to meet management accounting and legal reporting requirements


• Easy transability of posted valuation effects to an original open item

Capabilities

• Post Discounting of Long-Term Assets and Liabilities


• Advanced Foreign Currency Valuation


• Post Credit-Risk Based Impairment


• Post B/S Reclassification


• Post Credit-Risk Based Impairment and Advanced Foreign Currency Valuation are also available in SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Advanced Financial Closing

For more information on the 4 valuation processes you will find a small blog series starting from Feb, 1, 2022:

• Advanced Valuations: Post B/S Reclassification for Correct Presentation of Financial Statements


• Advanced Valuations: Post Credit-Risk Based Impairment


• Advanced Valuations: Post Discounting of Long-Term Assets & Liabilities


• Advanced Valuations: Advanced Foreign Currency Valuation

App for Review of Group Financial Statement Powered by SAP Analytics Cloud

Group accountants can intuitively display, analyze, and validate group reporting data with interactive answers to predefined business questions that can guide them along a progressive disclosure path. The app presents an aggregated view of financial statements by combining predefined business pages grouped under the main areas of Consolidated Balance Sheet, Profit & Loss Statement, Cash Flow Statement, and Statement of Changes in Equity. This collection of pages forms a review booklet, which supports the group accountants to carry out the financial review process much more efficient and convenient with a strongly improved usability.

https://youtu.be/JOOKIyhe7D0

Video 2: Group Financial Statement Review Booklet

Value Proposition

• Improved usability in financial reporting


• Ability to download formatted and digestible financial information


• Interactive answers to predefined business questions to guide the casual user along a progressive disclosure path


• Ability to navigate to generic analytics tools with the relevant context through smooth integration of analytics capabilities

Capabilities

• Consolidated balance sheets


• Profit and loss statements (cost of sales and nature of expense structure)


• Cash flow statements


• Predefined column structures: comparison reporting (prior year actuals, budget, forecast, and so on) and data source analysis (value development)


• Various measures: month to date, quarter to date, and year to date, as well as local currency, transaction currency, group currency, and quantity


• Context-specific navigation targets

In the following please find innovations not covered in the video.

Tighter Accounting-integration with Group Reporting Preparation Ledgers 

Introduction of group preparation ledgers in accounting.

Value Proposition

• Increase flexibility for field derivations in group reporting supporting requirements such as converting local accounts to group FS items considering other fields (such as functional area)


• Improve the performance of the "data release" task in group reporting


• Improve data quality by supporting group reporting line-item validations on released accounting data


• Increase efficiency in error correction by a modern Fiori task log

Figure 2: Validation of Universal Documents

 

Capabilities 

• Addition of group reporting fields (such as the consolidation unit, financial statement item, partner unit, subitem) to the accounting universal journal group preparation ledger


• More-powerful, customer-specific field derivation by leveraging substitutions in accounting in a new group reporting business context for the new group reporting fields (FS item, subitem, and partner unit)


• Realignment function in accounting which allows to apply latest substitution logic to existing posting material in accounting creating reclassification documents in accounting


• Group reporting substitution logic applied to accounting balance carry-forward


• Support of release of special periods accounting data into Group Reporting special periods 1:1


• Incremental release of latest data since last release creating delta documents in group reporting


• New universal journal validation task log including breakdown checks and line-item validations of Group Reporting

Enabling Use of the Available Balance in Short-term Cash Positioning

Some banks, particularly those in the United States, provide available balance data in bank statements. The available balance is an important figure for cash managers as it indicates the funds at the disposal of the account holder. With this release, cash managers can now use available balances as a data source for short-term cash positioning.

Figure 3: Short-Term Cash Positioning Based on the Available Balance

 

Value Proposition 

• Increases efficiency for cash managers by providing available balance data from banks


• Offers greater flexibility in cash positioning by supporting manual entries of available balances

Capabilities 

• Import closing available balances from MT940, CAMT.053, and BAI


• Enter closing available balances manually in the Manage Bank Account Balances app


• Define cash position profiles based on available balances in the Define Cash Position Profiles app


• View cash positions calculated using available balances in the Short-Term Cash Positioning app

Enablement of Planning Type for Memo Records

In the past, customers had to execute reports manually to generate intraday memo records from intraday bank statements so that they could view the relevant planning levels in cash management reports that reflect the external transaction types. With this release, the process of generating intraday memo records with planning levels that reflect external transaction types has been automated to help cash managers work more efficiently.

Figure 4: Manage Memo Records - Planning Level

 

Value Proposition 

• Reduces manual effort for cash managers by automating the memo record generation process from intraday bank statements


• Provides fine-granular analysis on bank transactions

Capabilities 

• Define planning types and map planning types to planning levels


• Map planning types to external transaction types


• Configure the planning type derivation logic for intraday memo records


• View intraday memo records with various planning levels derived from external transaction types in the Cash Flow Analyzer app.

Next-generation Workplaces in Treasury and Risk Management

You can use the new Manage Financial Transactions app to manage all your financial transactions across all financial instrument groups in one place. From this overview, you can jump directly to the apps for displaying or processing your financial transactions. This app shows all transactions across different instrument categories. It lets you filter easily by different attributes and save variants for a quick overview.

Figure 5: Manage Financial Transaction - Central View

 

Value Proposition

• Deliver role-based workplaces


• Enable more efficient focus on key tasks and
  responsibilities

Capabilities 

• Support operational processes and analytics in
  role-based workplaces using the latest technologies


• New collective processing app:
  Manage Financial Transactions

More Information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud:

• Finance Collection Blog (roadmap, quarterly release highlights, microlearnings) here


• Group Financial Statement Review Booklet here


• openSAP Microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA for Finance and GRC here


• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community for Finance here


• SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info: http://www.sap.com/s4-cloudrelease


• SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here


• Early Release Webinar Series here


• Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here


• Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here


• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community: here


• Feature Scope Description here


• What’s New here


• Help Portal Product Page here


• Implementation Portal here

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