SAP S/4HANA Finance


What is SAP S/4HANA Finance?

Initially released in 2014, SAP S/4HANA Finance is the core financial solution for SAP customers, designed to leverage the SAP Fiori user interface and in-memory computing power of HANA. Previously referred to as SAP Simple Finance and SAP ERP Financials, SAP S/4HANA Finance provides multiple innovations, such as the Universal Journal single source of truth, allowing organizations to streamline financial processes, with real-time updates and reporting, across a simplified data model for storing financial and managerial accounting information.

What is SAP S/4HANA Finance?

Initially released in 2014, SAP S/4HANA Finance is the core financial solution for SAP customers, designed to leverage the SAP Fiori user interface and in-memory computing power of HANA. Previously referred to as SAP Simple Finance and SAP ERP Financials, SAP S/4HANA Finance provides multiple innovations, such as the Universal Journal single source of truth, allowing organizations to streamline financial processes, with real-time updates and reporting, across a simplified data model for storing financial and managerial accounting information.

Many SAP ERP customers utilize SAP S/4HANA to manage core business functions that enable timely and accurate financial operations and reporting, such as accounting and finance, financial planning and analysis, financial risk management, and risk and compliance management. SAP S/4HANA Finance is a powerful and versatile system that can be deployed in multiple ways to suit your organization’s needs.

Key features of SAP S/4HANA Finance include:

  • Unified real-time data model for storing all finance-related information
  • Enhanced financial closing capability
  • Centralization of account payables and account receivables
  • Predictive accounting
  • Embedded analytics

Key Considerations for SAPinsiders 

Start thinking about your SAP S/4HANA Finance journey now. In 2027, SAP expects to cease all new development for the core ERP and sunset support, requiring organizations to transition to S/4HANA Finance. Organizations that have yet to make the move to SAP S/4HANA Finance need to begin planning and develop a viable roadmap or risk falling behind their peers.

Reduce compliance risks by properly archiving financial information prior to SAP S/4HANA Finance transition. The size of your financial database directly impacts both the complexity and cost, which often leads to long timelines for moving everything over as well potential compliance risks that need addressing before they can be done. Achieve a high level of data protection by archiving critical financial information before it impacts performance, cost, or availability. Evaluate requirements for data cleanup to transfer historical data securely.

Leverage Central Finance in transition to SAP S/4HANA Finance as an opportunity to optimize core finance functions.Consolidating data from multiple sources and creating a single summary of the information is difficult. Central Finance can make this process easier, as it simplifies everything into one easily accessible place for greater visibility. Organizations can empower SAP S/4HANA Finance modules, applications, and extensions end-to-end with more accessible financial information.

122 results

  1. Extending Your Vision of Value

    Reading time: 3 mins

    Changes in technology and in the ways businesses operate have made the finance function increasingly fragmented, with data residing in disparate systems and locations. The Central Finance deployment option for SAP S/4HANA Finance helps finance departments overcome this challenge by enabling a single source of truth for finance data. This article looks at how Central…

  2. Finance at the Core of Tackling Digital Disruption

    Reading time: 9 mins

    The digital economy is here, and with it perhaps no part of the business is more essential than finance. Whether it’s reporting, compliance, bookkeeping, or predictive analysis, finance plays a central role in anything a business wants to do. It’s no surprise, then, that finance is one of the major components of companies’ digital efforts.…

  3. Finance Is Leading the Way to Digital Change with SAP S/4HANA

    Reading time: 6 mins

    Expectations for financial software have changed. To make insightful, data-driven planning and budgeting decisions, users need real-time access to data via an intuitive user interface, and to provide this, businesses need to digitize their financial processes. This article provides an overview of how SAP S/4HANA can help digitally transform your finance department into an agile,…

  4. Are Your Financial Controls Ready for SAP S/4HANA?

    Reading time: 2 mins

    As organizations are transforming their business with SAP S/4HANA, they’re reinventing business processes and eliminating redundancies to focus more on exceptions and critical tasks, ultimately resulting in better decision making. But a key consideration must be the impact on financial controls and alignment not only with redefined business processes, but also with the next-generation technology...…

  5. Legal Entity Design Considerations in Global SAP Implementations

    Reading time: 7 mins

    Tanya Duncan’s experiences with global SAP finance implementations in Europe, Mexico, and Singapore have all had one commonality: complex legal entity structures. Designing company codes and plants in an SAP system is not always straightforward and this article presents several considerations in building these structures effectively. Key Concept Maquiladora is a factory in Mexico run...…

  6. A Next-Generation Finance Platform at Carter’s

    Reading time: 9 mins

    Carter’s, Inc., whose business includes the well-known OshKosh B’gosh brand, is the leading brand of clothing items for children in the US. With merchandise sold in more than 1,000 company-owned stores, as well as in most large retail department stores and online, Carter’s has hundreds of thousands of transactions touching its financial systems every day…

  7. Plan Your SAP S/4HANA Finance Implementation with an Understanding of Multicurrency Architecture

    Reading time: 21 mins

    Learn about the multicurrency architecture in SAP S/4HANA Finance and discover how to set up the right solution design aligned to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), external reporting, and internal management reporting needs. Key Concept In both the classic General Ledger and the SAP General Ledger, you can define three parallel currencies in FI, two...…

  8. sap s4hana finance 1610 image

    Key Steps to Follow During a Migration to SAP Simple Finance 1503

    Reading time: 19 mins

    Learn the necessary configuration, migration steps, post-migration steps, tips, and tricks during an SAP Simple Finance migration. Key Concept SAP S/4 HANA Finance, On-Premise Edition has product versions SAP Simple Finance 1503 and SAP S/4HANA Finance 1605, the latter being the successor of the former. If you want to implement and use SAP Accounting powered...…

  9. How Will Digital Transformation Impact Your SAP Financials Processes?

    Reading time: 23 mins

    In this Q&A session experts share strategic advice on how visionary companies optimize and automate finance processes to enable fast, accurate, and compliant financial decisions. If you missed the chat or need a refresher, we welcome you to view the online chat replay or read the edited transcript below. Meet the panelists:  Tom Walker is the OpenText...…

  10. Plan Your SAP S/4HANA Finance Migration with These Tips

    Reading time: 24 mins

    Learn how to plan your SAP S/4HANA Finance migration with some real-life insights. Key Concept In 2014, SAP introduced SAP Simple Finance Add-On 1.0 with many simplifications aimed at streamlining the finance processes at any organization. In 2015, SAP released an updated version, SAP Simple Finance Add-On 2.0, later renamed SAP Simple Finance On-Premise Edition...…