SAP S/4HANA 1809 Finance – What You Need to Know

The previous release of SAP S/4HANA 1709 in finance involves various inventions like embedded analytics capabilities, enhanced real-time accounting and closing capabilities, advanced cloud apps on the SAP cloud platform, and the first Machine Learning scenario for Finance. Now, SAP S/4HANA 1809 finance got released in September 2018 which includes several new and enhanced functionalities in the finance field. This article focuses on various features of SAP S/4HANA 1809 for finance.

The professional leaders are expecting finance to provide important perceptions for the fact-based decision making so that they can enhance or re-introduce their business models. Finance can provide a constant flow of significant bits of knowledge on trends that influence top and bottom lines of business with direct access to information crossing all parts of the business.

The current time is the intelligent era, and SAP set an objective of supporting the financial experts and lead customers in this particular era, using which the finance experts can focus on significant responsibilities. Technology is advancing at a fantastic speed, for instance, SAP has in-memory database SAP HANA, machine learning, and other advanced capabilities such as analytics using which SAP is developing innovative and intensely improved processes and solutions. Over forty-five years of finance customer experience which is integrated with powerful technologies has provided a way to the smart finance solution, and thus enabling SAP to provide innovations continuously.

Subsequent level of Intelligent Finance with SAP S/4HANA 1809: Chief finance officers (CFO’s) are implementing innovative technology to reduce the daily transaction tasks effort and increase the work devoted to being a business partner. To save time to focus on these important tasks, the operating responsibilities can’t be deserted; however, they should be executed more effectively. With the introduction of an exceptional level of automation, the genuine capability of a finance organization has been unlocked which empowers the subsequent level of intelligent finance.

SAP has introduced a new component, which helps in managing the modifying organizational view and reacting to the need for improved insights, the capacity to continuously deliver correct, up-to-date financial data in a more automated manner for units as well as at the business group level. SAP S/4HANA Finance for group reporting allows enterprises to expand this development towards a constant financial close. It contains a comprehensive set of financial alliance features, from data collection to the final combined statement, which in turn delivers excellent transparency. Using this feature, the process of financial closing and reporting from the collection, processing, analysis, and publication of the information is drastically enhanced.

Improving Productivity in Operational Finance with Next-Generation Automation Scenarios:

SAP has added numerous, highly automated situations with the SAP S/4HANA 1809 release; this helps in taking automation to the next level:

Goods and invoice receipt resolution: With the help of this feature, all significant information can be carried out together in a single screen, and by incorporating a digital assistant into the process, users experience enhanced association is developed for quicker and more effective resolution of items. Also, Machine learning skills are prearranged to add useful references to solve particular problems.

As part of the growth headed for a continuous close, the introduction of a new, highly automated process creates accrual management more effective and correct.

Well, with the new accrual management system in SAP S/4HANA, SAP provides a clear automated process with consistent results. In order to perform this, a combined user interface, transparent reporting, and audibility are provided. It is required to move all the data from manual accrual management to the new accrual engine when you are moving towards SAP S/4HANA 1809.

Checkout the Article- SAP HANA, S/4HANA, and S/4HANA Finance in a Nutshell

Expanding the scope of decision support by improving analytics and progressive visions:

From previous data, professionals can still make decisions for the future. In order to lead organizations successfully in the future, it requires making the decision based on where the business should go. With the SAP S/4HANA 1809 release more developments are added to empower a new intelligent organization which also involves predictions using:

1. Predictive Accounting: SAP has provided new essential features which help businesses to provide a more accurate modern perception of their financial performance. Predictive accounting is similar to mathematics-based predictions, which use the previous document flow to calculate the future results. It contains perceptions from expected revenue and expenses.

• Predictive accounting for incoming sales orders: This involves
• Financial line item details for incoming orders reporting
• Review incoming sales order report
• It offers a complete overview of all orders and their values for the period irrespective of billing status.
• Predictive accounting for commitment situations: It includes:
• Cost duties to WBS, order, cost centre and supplier
• Can be shown for resultant features such as profit centre, segment, and functional area

But now there are some limitations in predictive accounting, such as:

• It does not contain service sales scenarios.
• No predictive journal entries are produced for statistical sales condition.
• In predictive accounting, it is possible to process only SD documents with different groups such as C, H, I, K and L.
• Due to misplaced goods issue, predicted costs are missing in the third-party direct shipment and intercompany sales scenarios.

2. Real-time margin analysis: Because of the market instability, competitive pressure, and costs, the margin pressure has never been higher. Finance solution is searching for enhanced tools that help them to achieve experiences and to take quicker and faster decisions to save and improve margins.  In response to these requests, SAP has provided innovative features to empower resolution between management accounting information and authorized financial information using the design for all consequences.

3. Treasury Management: The significance of treasury management has been increased due to the market and political instability produced by events such as Brexit, tax reforms, or low interest rates. The treasury management role should be more planned in effecting the critical business decisions; thus SAP has provided new functions which help the treasurers. New analytical dashboards have been added in the SAP S/4HANA 1809 release which delivers more insights to the crucial areas, like foreign exchange and interest rate management. The additional capabilities to unite SAP treasury to external providers such as banks or market data agencies like Thomson Reuters streamlines project operations and delivers real-time information.

4. Embedded Analytics: Maximum finance experts agree that it is sometimes troublesome to extract the navigation information from their ERP system. Thus, the extra capacities are added in this particular release which supports business users to obtain insights more flexibly and efficiently, so that they can focus on reacting to the information, instead of spending time in number crunching.

5. Tax Service: Presently, global tax guidelines become more dissimilar and complex and change more frequently. Therefore, it is a challenging task to keep up with the changing speed, usually in multiple systems. With SAP S/4HANA 1809 release, the focus has been engaged on empowering self-service tax management, simplifying an organization’s approach to lower the risks and costs of wrong calculations, and accountability from non-compliance.

Go through our  SAP S/4HANA SIMPLE FINANCE EXAM C_TS4FI_1610 Certification Made Easy to crack the Interviews.

Other Features of SAP S/4HANA 1809 in Finance:

The previous releases of SAP S/4HANA had delivered an improved account-based COPA, but still, there are some functional gaps as compared to costing-based COPA. The latest version of SAP S/4HANA 1809 closes the differences between the account and costing-based COPA. Well, the following enhancements have been done in this particular release:

• Tracking statistical sales conditions in account-based COPA is possible. In order to perform this, SAP utilizes the extension ledger functionality.
• With the use of an extension ledger, reporting on incoming sales orders along with predictive reporting functionality is now obtainable in account-based COPA.
• It is possible to calculate COGS with actual costing available in any ledger for fixed as well as variable values.
• Using SAP S/4HANA 1809, it is easy to activate derivation for items for the account tasks such as cost center, project, production order, maintenance order, and sales order.

Checkout the Article- Users Should Know About: SAP S/4HANA Sourcing & Procurement

Conclusion: SAP S/4HANA 1809 release has provided many essential, new, and advanced skills that support the finance function much better than ever before. The unstable market situations, globalization, and an increase in competition empower enterprises so that they can respond and develop an intelligent organization to prepare themselves for a bright future. The latest release of SAP S/4HANA 1809, allows clients to enhance their business towards a smart organization.

I hope that by now you have had an overview of SAP S/4 HANA Finance. Before you enroll in ZaranTech’s certification course on SAP S/4 HANA Finance, do check out the S4 HANA Finance demo:

Happy learning!