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SAP AR AP: An Overview and Key Considerations
What Is SAP AR AP?
SAP AR AP represents the accounts receivable and accounts payable sub-module components of the SAP Financial (FI) module and helps maintain financial relationships with vendors and customers, as well as manage their accounting data. The SAP accounts receivable sub-module (FI-AR) handles customer invoices, approvals, and incoming payments, enabling organizations to access reports and forecasting features for tracking customer outstanding balances. The SAP accounts payments sub-module (FI-AP) manages vendor invoices, approvals, and outgoing payments to provide organizations with the necessary information for tracking outstanding balances belonging to vendors.
SAP AR AP: An Overview and Key Considerations
What Is SAP AR AP?
SAP AR AP represents the accounts receivable and accounts payable sub-module components of the SAP Financial (FI) module and helps maintain financial relationships with vendors and customers, as well as manage their accounting data. The SAP accounts receivable sub-module (FI-AR) handles customer invoices, approvals, and incoming payments, enabling organizations to access reports and forecasting features for tracking customer outstanding balances. The SAP accounts payments sub-module (FI-AP) manages vendor invoices, approvals, and outgoing payments to provide organizations with the necessary information for tracking outstanding balances belonging to vendors.
SAP AR AP plays a significant role in providing organizations with end-to-end financial management. Finance and accounting teams can streamline their financial processes and improve their overall financial visibility by preventing duplicate inter-company AR/AP postings.
Additional key benefits for SAP AR AP end-users include:
- Improved cash flow
- Better budgeting and forecasting capabilities
- Enhanced decision-making capabilities
- Improved customer service
- Streamlined operations.
Key Considerations for SAPinsiders
Consider options to enhance SAP AR AP capabilities with a move to SAP S/4HANA. SAP S/4HANA Cloud, enabled by in-memory processing and simplified SAP Fiori interfaces, offers extended SAP AR/AP functionality. As a result, organizations can expect improved performance and faster response times when executing financial transactions, with all postings across the SAP AR AP function updating to the SAP General Ledger (FI-GL).
Leverage SAP AR AP best practices to streamline operational processes. The SAP Best Practices Explorer provides standardized essential process flows to help lower the cost of operations and deliver business benefits across multiple geographies, divisions, subsidiaries, and ledgers with global and country-specific content. For example, organizations can realize cost savings by centralizing account receivables and account payables processing, allowing finance and accounting managers to enforce governance and common standards, supporting compliance efforts.
Enable operational efficiencies with SAP AR AP automation. Organizations can save time and money by reducing the workload of finance and accounting teams when AR/AP automation is improved. In addition, core business functions, such as order-to-cash and procure-to-pay processes, are more efficient when organizations significantly reduce the effort required for manual approvals with automation.
63 results
Financials: Case study: How Great-West Financial optimizes its accounts payable processes with limited purchasing integrationMar 6, 2019 — Discover how Great-West Financial optimized its accounts payable processes. FIN2017_Topping_Casestudyhowgreatwest Susan Topping If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.
1 minute read
Financials: Case study: How CF Industries doubled credit and A/R team productivity with SAP receivables management and native SAP automationMar 6, 2019 — Learn how CF Industries lowered credit risk exposure and days sales outstanding by doubling the productivity of credit and A/R teams. FIN2017_Flemmer_Casestudyhowcfindustries Amanda Flemmer If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.
1 minute read
Financials: Case study: Vishay Intertechnology’s secrets to getting users to embrace AP optimizationMar 1, 2019 — Learn how Vishay Intertechnology transformed its paper-based and highly manual invoice process into a fully optimized and centralized process in its shared services centers. here Karen Gabriel If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.
1 minute read
How To Enable Efficient, AI-Driven AP Processes In SAP EnvironmentsFeb 20, 2019 — If Michael Phelps never timed his 100-meter butterfly, how could he ever tell whether he was improving? He couldn’t, because you can’t refine what you don’t measure. The same holds true for your organization’s processes — you can only improve th
1 minute read
Speedy ROI from Automating Accounts PayableApr 6, 2018 — Automating processes to gain efficiency and competitive advantage is not new, but with today’s cloud-enabled solutions, it is becoming increasingly effective for organizations. At the co-located Financials 2018 and GRC 2018 conferences in Las Vegas, SAPinsider spoke with Annie Schrenk, Director, Sales and Marketing, and Ethen Schachle, Senior Director, Product Management, at Top Image Systems, […]
1 minute read
How Accounts Payable Can Improve Fraud Detection with Robotics and Machine LearningFeb 1, 2018 — Panelists: Brian Shannon, Dolphin, and Ingo Czok, Hanse Orga Group Date: Thursday, February 8th Sponsor: Hanse Orga Fraud prevention and compliance are pressing issues for global organizations. Read the transcript to get advice on how to optimize and centralize Accounts Payable and Payments processing to improve compliance and reduce the risk of fraud. By applying […]
10 minute read
Ease Reporting by Enhancing Your Security Deposit Conversion Process in FI-CAMar 20, 2017 — Learn about the enhanced functionality of the security deposit conversion process based on security deposit request reasons in SAP contract accounts receivable and payable (FI-CA). The enhancement involves the posting of security deposits in the SAP system so that they can be easily identified on the basis of request reasons through standard SAP reports. The […]
14 minute read
Great-West Financial Establishes Its Mobile FootprintOct 31, 2016 —
In today’s fast-paced, digital world, employees are more likely to prefer the convenience of a smartphone app than the rigidity of an on-premise one. This was certainly true at Great-West Financial, a life insurance and retirement services provider that hundreds of thousands of customers rely on. Executives and managers could only access their invoice workflows via a desktop connected to the office’s system, which limited the ability to speed Accounts Payable (AP) processes. Learn how Great-West implemented the company’s first mobile app for invoice approval to bring greater speed, efficiency, and controls to its AP process.
8 minute read
5 Reasons Your Controller Needs Accounts Payable AutomationOct 5, 2016 — This video is hosted by SAPinsider and sponsored by Top Image Systems. As the financial front line of your business, your controller values three things above all others: cash, control and compliance. Manual accounts payable processes threaten a Controller’s handle on the “Three C’s”. This threat increases the closer we get to a truly digital […]
1 minute read
Live from SAPinsider Studio: Invoice-to-Pay with SAP S/4HANA and AribaApr 5, 2016 — Friederike Hertenstein, Director, Accounts Payable, SAP Solution Management Finance, visited with SAPinsider Studio at the 2016 SAPinsider Financials event in Las Vegas to discuss Invoice to Pay and Sourcing to Pay processes in SAP S/4HANA Finance and the importance of integrating invoicing with the Ariba Network. This is an edited transcript of the discussion: Ken […]
3 minute read