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.

123 results

  1. Key Considerations for Migrating Your SAP Finance Operations to SAP S/4HANA

    Reading time: 3 mins

    Many SAP customers are voicing apprehension about migrating their finance operations to SAP S/4HANA, not sure of what is in store for them and how best to prepare for the shift. This article focuses on two major considerations for SAP customers making the move: implementing the material ledger and moving to account-based profitability analysis. As…

  2. Technical Guide: Add Currencies using S/4HANA Finance 1809

    Reading time: 10 mins

    Traditionally, once you have gone live in a production system, the SAP system gives you a warning message (Figure 1) when you try to add a currency in the ledgers definition, and you then need SAP System Landscape Optimization (SLO) service for such a change in your currency setup. Figure 1 – Issue when adding…

  3. sap s4hana finance 1610 image

    SAP S/4HANA Finance 1610

    Reading time: 10 mins

    SAP S/4HANA Finance 1610 provides users with the flexibility of using two main currencies plus eight freely definable currencies. The translation of the user-defined currencies, whether real time or not, is based on the currency configuration completed after executing transaction code FINSC_LEDGER. The eight freely definable currencies allowed by SAP S/4HANA Finance 1610 are available…

  4. Strategic Versus Standard Financial Planning in Healthcare Using SAP BPC

    Reading time: 8 mins

    Building a standard financial planning, budgeting, and forecast model in healthcare presents a daunting challenge because the key performance indicators (KPIs) are unique to each organization and the market conditions are ever changing. The KPIs for a cancer specialty research center may be quite different from those of a group of family medicine practitioners or…

  5. Accelerate Your Finance Shared Services Transformation and Centralized Reporting

    Reading time: 13 mins

    New features have been introduced in SAP S/4HANA 1709 that enable enterprises to leverage the benefits of shared services for certain financial processes along with added reporting flexibilities. In this blog, I provide a quick overview of the innovations in SAP S/4HANA 1709 along with some key considerations and limitations while implementing them. I focus…

  6. The Sweet Taste of Success

    Reading time: 9 mins

    The Hershey Company, known for its chocolates, sweets, mints, and snacks, is a household name for many families around the world. Founded in 1894, Hershey continues to expand its business across 70 locations and 80 brands. With 4,104 accounts and growing, the reconciliation process soon became too unwieldly for the finance department to maintain as-is.…

  7. Build Your Business Case for SAP S/4HANA & NextGen Financial Technologies

    Reading time: 12 mins

    Panelists: Molly Boyle, Finance Transformation, BlackLine Bill Thomas, Finance Transformation Lead, EY Stephanie Miller, VP Finance CoE, SAP Sponsor: BlackLine It can be difficult to demonstrate the value of new technologies, such as SAP S/4HANA, that elevate accounting and finance departments. One of the most effective approaches is to draft a compelling business case that proves the...…

  8. Keynote Address: Digital Finance Transformation

    Todd McElhatton, SAP North America Monday, February 12, 2018  The digital economy is driving a new era of Finance and Accounting transformation. Finance leaders are facing disruption on all fronts, while continuing to act as business stewards and strategic advisors to the board. There are three challenges that truly stand out for the modern CFO:...…

  9. Optimize Your Statutory Reporting Tasks Using SAP S/4HANA for Advanced Compliance Reporting

    Reading time: 20 mins

    In multinational organizations, reporting requirements are increasing day by day. Keeping track of all the reports generated and submissions can consume a lot of time and resources. The reporting format also changes over time due to changing regulations, and compliance with this format is of the utmost importance. Learn how to use SAP S/4HANA for...…

  10. SAP S/4HANA Finance: What’s in a Name?

    Reading time: 15 mins

    SAP S/4HANA Finance has received much attention since it was announced at SapphireNOW in 2014 under the name SAP Simple Finance. In 2015, SAP Simple Finance was renamed to SAP S/4HANA Finance. This article defines the scope of the SAP S/4HANA Finance solution, as well as how the innovations built on SAP HANA fit into...…