Powering Future-Ready Journal Entry Processes with SAP Solutions from BlackLine

⇨ As the 2027 end of maintenance deadline for SAP ECC approaches, organizations are increasingly migrating to SAP S/4HANA, which offers advanced capabilities such as the Universal Journal for more efficient operations and innovation.

⇨ The Universal Journal is considered crucial by 74% of SAP organizations for their finance strategy, enabling simplified data management and reporting, but the need for manual journal entries remains.

⇨ Automated financial close solutions are gaining traction, with 53% of organizations either evaluating or recognizing the need for them, as they help standardize and centralize journal entry processes, significantly reducing the manual effort involved.

As the 2027 end of maintenance deadline for SAP ECC approaches, more and more SAP organizations are making the transition to SAP S/4HANA. It offers organizations advanced capabilities that can empower their businesses to run more efficiently while bolstering innovation. One of the most beneficial capabilities is the Universal Journal. This simplification of the table structure within SAP’s ERP system stores all relevant data in one place, rather than forcing companies to reconcile multiple tables with one another.

In SAPinsider’s recent SAP S/4HANA for Finance State of the Market 2024 Benchmark Report, 74% of SAP organizations said that the Universal Journal is either important or very important to their overall finance strategy, one of the highest shares among all requirements within the space.

Bolstering the Universal Journal with BlackLine

Universal Journal is a very important piece to the overall S/4HANA upgrade. It simplifies data and reporting within a common line-item entry across different functional sub domains, but does not change the need to manually prepare, process and post manual journal entries.

With compliance and reporting requirements dictating that companies recognize revenues and expenses as they are earned, organizations must ensure that they are capturing all transactions properly. This is beyond the scope of even the most advanced ERP.

To pad out the capabilities of SAP S/4HANA and the Universal Journal, many SAP organizations are turning to SAP Financial Close Solutions by BlackLine. Users can extend their capabilities by weaving in automation opportunities, enhanced workflows, an audit trail, and integration with month-end processes.

Standardization and Automation

Automated financial close solutions are likely to be one of the most commonly adopted financial tools within the next 1-2 years. SAPinsider research found that just 16% of SAP organizations are using automated financial close solutions, yet 53% are either evaluating these tools or aware of the need to add them – one of the largest disparities of any solution.

No financial close is likely to ever be 100% automated, yet BlackLine Journal Entry has shown the ability to automate 97% of journal entries. This leaves finance and accounting teams with enough time to review manual entries for accuracy and compliance. It also offers users the ability to centralize and standardize the journal entry process.

Standardization of journal entries not only saves time for F&A teams but can also improve the audit process. BlackLine Journal Entry can quickly isolate manual entries to help identify any potential issues. Organizations must consider the devastating potential costs of an audit, which include not just financial penalties, but also significant reputational damage.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

SAP S/4HANA offers a unique opportunity to F&A teams with the Universal Journal. Journal entries may be the most important piece of Finance & Accounting. They are the foundation of financial data and tell the story of how an organization operated over the past period. This should ensure that companies are focused on fixing the manual nature of this process. Manual journal entries can be risky, time consuming, and are a factor in management decision making.

SAP Financial Close Solutions by BlackLine provides users with the additional tools they need to standardize processes across multiple SAP S/4HANA instances, giving companies a heterogeneous environment in which they can prepare manual journal entries. BlackLine drives automation, visibility, and accuracy around journal entries allowing processes downstream to be simplified. These tools, in combination with the Universal Journal, provide users with a true end-to-end solution that streamlines, automates, and improves accounting processes.