Central processes in SAP Central Finance

With the help of SAP Central Finance, companies can centralize their heterogeneous system landscapes from SAP and non-SAP systems and link them to SAP S/4HANA - and do so without costly redesign of the existing, often heterogeneous ERP landscape from various SAP and non-SAP systems.

In this way, they benefit from the advantages of SAP S/4HANA without having to set up the new ERP suite in the individual companies.

This includes the fact that - in addition to central reporting as a core Central Finance element - they can use SAP Central Finance to execute other financial processes centrally, from centralized payments to tax reporting.

The introduction of such financial shared services has immense benefits for companies. They help to increase efficiency within the company and reduce costs.

Centralized payment

With this solution, outgoing payments no longer need to be instructed locally in the ERP systems of individual companies.

Instead, companies can now process and pay the replicated open supplier invoices of all companies transparently and centrally in uniform payment formats in Central Finance.

Advanced Payment Management

With Advanced Payment Management (APM), payments can be better controlled within the group - without each company having to create individual communication channels to the bank and manage different payment formats.

Payments are processed on a central platform or in-house bank - the SAP Payment Factory.

The respective companies no longer determine how a payment is settled - instead, fully automated payments are always made from the bank account where the transaction results in the lowest costs.

This applies even if this is the bank account of another company. The necessary clearing entries between the companies are created fully automatically with the APM.

The functional scope of APM includes a whole range of scenarios for processing payments and communicating with the relevant banks.

Central tax reporting

With central tax reporting, sales tax processes can be mapped centrally.

In SAP Central Finance, postings including the necessary tax information are automatically generated by replicating the financial documents of the source systems.

If central tax reporting is activated, local advance sales tax returns or recapitulative statements can also be made.

Important: It is essential that the generated results of the central tax reporting system are checked by tax experts and consultants.

This is because the preparation of tax reports by the central tax reporting system may not meet all the requirements of the country or location in which the taxes are incurred.

Another solution - Advanced Compliance Reporting - provides comprehensive tax reports. SAP S/4HANA Core also provides good reports for sending and reconciling tax reporting.

Central asset accounting

Asset accounting can also be handled centrally - when using Central Finance. Accordingly, fixed asset management and transactions are formed centrally, no longer in the respective subsidiaries.

The decisive factor here is: Companies can in this way carry out both the group valuation and the local valuation of fixed assets according to uniform methods.

Central budgeting for internal orders

Companies can manage budgets for internal orders for multiple source systems centrally in SAP Central Finance. Budgets are usually consumed in processes that are executed in the corresponding source systems.

If a business transaction is assigned to an internal order in the source system, a remote budget check is executed in SAP Central Finance in real time and the result is reported back to the source system.

Once the approved budget limit for the internal order is reached, the internal order can no longer be used for further account assignments - the budget is consumed.

Central planning

Planning can also be carried out centrally at group level. However, this is not done directly in the Central Finance system, but with the help of the SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC).

For this purpose, SAC is connected directly to the Central Finance system - instead of to several source systems or BW systems, as is usually the case. In this way, SAC can access all accounting data in the group via Central Finance. The use of the data can support the planning process or even plan/actual comparisons enormously.

As a general rule, SAP S/4HANA can be used to implement various planning scenarios, such as financial planning.

The use of AI solutions is also playing an increasingly important role here: By using predictive analytics, companies can model forecasts and basically create forecasts at the push of a button.