By Molly Boyle, SAP Solutions Expert, BlackLine & Elizabeth Milne, Accounting & Financial Close Expert, SAP
This article originally appeared on SAP’s blog and is Part 4 of this blog series.
Read the full series here.
SAP S/4HANA for central finance foundation (Central Finance) is a deployment option for SAP S/4HANA Finance, which accelerates implementation without compromising productivity or disrupting the business. It’s an S/4HANA system that receives financial accounting transactions via real-time replication from SAP and/or non-SAP ERP source systems.
Benefits of Central Finance include:
- Transparency: a single, central source of harmonized financial data for local, entity, and group reporting
- Efficiency: integration, standardization, and automation of business processes, such as managing accounts payable, treasury, and other financial operations
- Simplification: one rationalized and consolidated solution for transaction capturing, reporting, planning, and consolidation
- Business Continuity: SAP and non-SAP ERPs are connected without disruption to SAP S/4HANA, and can run as a digital business
So, how does SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine complement Central Finance?
Central Finance provides powerful data unification and reporting capabilities. This helps decision-makers run a better, simpler business without having to wait for consolidated financial statements for a complete picture.
Yet, in order for the information in Central Finance to provide period-end reporting, accounting organizations must close the books.
For most companies, this involves local accounting teams executing and performing a number of tasks, which are typically done at month-end. These tasks are usually performed in disparate ERP systems before data is consumed into Central Finance.
Typically, these tasks are manual, and they rely heavily on spreadsheets.
SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine complements Central Finance by streamlining and automating core close tasks like balance sheet substantiation, manual journal entries, and high-volume transaction matching. This improves the period close and allows for more complete, meaningful data to be pushed into Central Finance on a continuous basis.
Leveraging both Central Finance and SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine together provides maximum transparency, efficiency, simplification, and auditability to your financial close process.
This article is part of the 5 Ways BlackLine Solutions Help SAP Customers Close Virtually, read more here.
This article is sponsored by BlackLine
