Common classing questions to be answered before any financial close
- Who will execute what, and at what time?
- In what order do we need to execute the steps?
- What is the current status of the task list?
- Has the process started?
- Which process steps need to be finished before other related tasks start?
- Is the process complete?
Mix of complex business process, entities, and local accounting principles.
Stakeholders demand for compliance, transparency, and efficiency to complete the process in time with accuracy.
Demand a solution which facilitate compliance, brings transparency, improve efficiency, reduce human monotony and reduce operational cost.
- Various transactions, programs, and batch jobs to perform within the corporate deadline.
- Offline communication, offline SOP, no central place to see close activities.
- Lack of auditable information.
Without financial closing cockpit, the business manages / tracks the process in excel.
Purpose:
- Achieve financial excellence:
- Strong cash flow and liquidity
- Compliant and accurate financial reporting
- Maximized profitability
- Reduced cost of finance.
- Partnering with the organization to drive value creation.
Benefit:
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Transparency
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Efficiency
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Compliance
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Human Impact
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Availability
SAP Financial Closing cockpit add-on 2.0
- The SAP Financial Closing cockpit add-on 2.0 can be used at SAP ERP 6.0 and SAP S/ 4HANA1511 + 1610 as an add-on.
- The add-on has to be installed separately, which gives you more flexibility for upgrades to the SAP Financial Closing cockpit add-on. It requires a valid license.
SAP S/4HANA Financial Closing cockpit
- The SAP S/4HANA Financial Closing cockpit is part of S4C0RE, but it requires a separate license fee.
- A new support package for SAP S/4FIANA Financial Closing cockpit is delivered in accordance to the SAP S/4FIANA support package schedule.
Benefits:
Template: The template contains all default tasks related to the Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly close. Customers create separate template for each close types or a single template all close types. Customer can define (1) Task types (manual, transactions, job, workflows, web application...),(2) Closing types (monthly, quarterly,...), (3) Organizational units, (4) Time Variables, (5) Dependencies, (6) Responsible users and processors, (7) Factory calendars, (8) Workflows and Worklists, (9) Custom-specific closing programs and (10) Additional automation and tasks in a remote system.
Template: A Factory calendar can be assigned to a template, which will act as a default calendar for all groups and tasks within the template.
For better control, a customer can assign an authorization group at the template level.
The additional TVARC variable can be added to a template for automation.
Template: Folder(s): In the template, customer can group tasks as folder(s). These folders can be by organizational unit, by closing phase, by functions. For example, if you want to perform the same closing tasks for multiple company codes, you group them in one folder of by company code.
At the folder level, a customer can assign a factory calendar. This helps to address geographical differences such as holidays. A customer can create this group based on the use case.
At the folder level, a customer can assign responsible person(s). This helps segregation duties and viewing the relevant task, while maintaining data silos by authorization.
A customer can add additional variables to control the activities of the group.
Task Types: In the template, customer can include various task types as depicted below.
Remote Task : You can use trusted Remote Function Call (RFC) connection to other SAP systems to execute transaction codes, programs, jobs, or flow definitions. In the SAP Financial Closing cockpit (SAP FCc), you see the correct status of the remote task.
Redwood: The SAP Financial Closing cockpit (SAP FCc) is integrated with the SAP Business Process Automation application by Redwood (BPA). End users can create SAP BAE tasks in the financial closing cockpit.
External Scheduler: Customers also use other schedulers, such as BM TWS, Control-M, and UC4,however these External schedulers and the financial closing cockpit will run their independently of each other.
Task: Stakeholder: The closing cockpit stakeholder (Responsible / Processor) could be (1) a user, (2) organization units, (3) a job, (4) a position, (5) a Role, (6) a customer user group.
Task: Start Date: The task list start date can be based on multiple calendars (factory calendar at header level, task group level). The start time can be based on TVARC variable.
Critical Path: Critical Path flag to identify the critical task for completion of close.
Dependency: Customer define dependencies by working backwards from the balance sheet, through all tasks that lead to a complete balance sheet. The system checks whether the function order can be executed using the predefined scheduled start time and planned duration, if not, an error message is issued. There can be a 1:1, a 1:N, or an N:M dependency with successors as well as with predecessors.
Task : Closing Types: A single task can be designated for various closing types. With the help of special closing, customer can automate the daily jobs.
Task: Notification: Enablement of notification by task. Closing cockpit can generate email for task execution status. This can be customized further to adopt customer requirement. The notification can be displayed on closing cockpit task list. The email notification can an outlook email / SAP mail.
The task list contains all tasks related to a concrete close cycle as well as the time-schedule for the tasks. The task list is generated from the template and adjusted according to the closing cycle of the subsidiary.
You can a task list during the period close or task list for the entire year at the start of the year.
The task list can be monthly, quarterly, yearly or any special period.
Task List: The task list is based on a template. You can generate a single task list for a period or task lists for whole years. The task list has a definite start date.
The task list can be based on multiple factory calendars (by subsidiaries).
Based on factory calendar, tasks in the task list will be planned and executed.
We define a common group factory calendar, which is assigned, by default, to all company codes. In addition, we can assign a separate factory calendar on the folder level, for example on company code specific folders.
Visualization The task status types that you can see in the task list. This screen is based on S/4 HANA 1909. The list may vary for other software components.
The task list provides status information on each task and links to all system documentation (job logs, spool lists, application logs) and user-created documentation (supporting spreadsheets and word documents).
It can be accessed and processed by all stakeholders, either using SAP GUI or an SAP Fiori launchpad or Web application.
From the detail screen you can navigate to other scree and change the status of task.
Task Details – Provides a helicopter view of the task attributes.
Task Dependencies – Provides dependent task list
Documents: You can view attached instructions to the task and attach new notes, approval, any other information.
Notes: You can add a note, which is important for the closing point of view.
Message : You can communicate with the processor from the closing cockpit.
Output Logs: You can see the task log here and this is helpful to see how the closing process performed.
Task Change Logs: You can see here task change logs.
You can change the view of the task list in multiple ways.
The SAP Financial Closing cockpit
- Saves all start time, duration, and end time of task executions.
- Keeps a link to log files and spool lists, which can be copied into the cockpit. At the same time, they are converted into PDF files.
Available status of the tasks ->
You can also enter own comments, attach documents, and send e-mails.
Remote Task: You can schedule Remote Tasks within the SAP S/4HANA Financial Closing cockpit. The Job IDs from SAP Business Process Automation by Redwood (SAP BPA) appear as Remote Tasks in the financial closing cockpit. All logs for remote tasks are available using the financial cockpit.
Task List by Closing: Always the task list created by closing types. The closing types could be (1) Monthly
Extended Security: Security can be based on organization, fields, task and others, such as admin, responsible, person/group, processor or processor group.
Job logs/Spool: SAP Financial Closing cockpit can copy the spool lists and job logs into the financial closing cockpit tables. The spool lists and job logs will be converted into PDF files. These PDf files can be stored other places for audit and future references.
Dependency: You create a task which may have a predecessor or successor task. You can see a dependency summary in the task overview screen.
Analysis / View : You can analyze / view the close status by different views, such as region, country and phase. Furthermore, for each information i.e. Completed tasks, delayed tasks, tasks with errors, omitted tasks and the planned and actual start and end times, you can display the resulting information in different charts suiting your purpose. (Charts are available in S/4 HANA).
Visualization: Color coding gives you an immediate status regarding progress on the close so far (1) Green: the process for different company codes looks fine and under control. Yellow or red: there are some problems ie delays.
Summary:
- The SAP S/4HANA Financial Closing cockpit is a comprehensive solution for managing your global financial close on the entity level.
- It covers the planning, execution, monitoring, and analysis of financial close tasks.
- It allows you to standardize your close process across entities and closing cycles, increase compliance, gain transparency, and drive efficiency through higher automation.
- External schedulers are an additional process automation component, tightly integrated into, and accessible via, the SAP S/4HANA Financial Closing cockpit.
- It supports you with SAP and non-SAP tasks, event-based scheduling, intelligent validation of task output, intelligent auto-reactions, batch input management, and more, to reduce manual effort.
- SAP S/4HANA Financial Closing cockpit and external schedulers (optional) are part of a full suite of comprehensive solutions for the end-to-end Financial Close, making it faster, more accurate, and less costly to execute.
Migration:
The S/4 HANA migration tool allows the migration of templates and task lists of the financial closing cockpit into new data structures of SAP S/4HANA Financial Closing cockpit after a system conversion.
It offers:
- Single entry for upgrade process to SAP FCc add-on or SAP S/4HANA FCc
- Clearly defined steps to follow.
- Status control for each upgrade step.
- Easy access to each upgrade activity.
- No interruption to your running FCc.
- Selectable Upgrade Possibility.
- Online and job copy mode selection.
- Real-time monitor of copy progress.
- Application log for recording copy activities.
When you upgrade your system to the current SAP S/4HANA release, the upgrade of the SAP FCc add-on 2.0 is automatic. No additional customizing or tasks are necessary to use the same functionality.
Contact Me for more information and solution.
Thanks, Surya Padhi
