SAP Finance LOB

SAP S/4HANA Finance and  SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management’s Finance Line-of-Business (LOB)

In S/4HANA space, SAP has released TWO MAJOR PRODUCTS

SAP S/4HANA Finance (aka Simple Finance)

The Initial release started with “Simple Finance” – it could be deployed as add-on on ECC Implementation.  &  later SAP released the product with version#1503.

In later years, SAP focused on SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management (with deployment in On-Premise & Cloud Versions)

SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management ON-PREMISE (OP)

Initially released by SAP, on “3 February 2015″ , the First version for “On-Premise” was SAP S/4HANA 1511.  This version was followed with one major release each year –>
  • SAP S/4HANA 1511 : Feb 2015
    • SAP S/4HANA Finance 1605: May 2016.
  • SAP S/4HANA 1610: October 2016.
  • SAP S/4HANA 1709: September 2017.
  • SAP S/4HANA 1809: September 2018.
  • SAP S/4HANA 1909: September 2019.
  • SAP S/4HANA 2020: October 2020 (new nomenclature: switched from YYMM  to YYYY)
  • SAP S/4HANA 2021: October 2021.
  • SAP S/4HANA 2022 : October 2022 : Latest version of S/4HANA as of 2023 May
  • SAP S/4HANA 2023 expected to be released in Oct 2023
    • Release 2023 of SAP S/4HANA, which will be available in October 2023, forms a target release for next-generation technology and compatibility with legacy software.
    • Starting with 2023 release, SAP S/4HANA will move to a 2-year release cycle, longer mainstream maintenance per release of seven years, and easier-to-adapt feature packs.
    • It’s a major milestone, SAP will offer its customers running releases 1709, 1809 and 1909 of SAP S/4HANA the option for extended maintenance which will allow them to upgrade directly to version 2023.
    • SAP’s announcement to always offer maintenance for SAP S/4HANA for at least one release until 2040 remains unaffected.

This picture represents the journey of initial days of the product SAP S/4HANA

SAP S/4HANA Finance covers following capabilities  :

  • Financial Planning and Analysis
  • Accounting and Financial Close
  • Treasury and Financial Risk Management
  • Enterprise Risk and Compliance Management
  • Collaborative Finance Operations
  • Receivables Management

What’s changed in SAP S/4HANA in Finance Line-of-Business (LoB)

SAP S/4HANA has major changes in Finance, Controlling, Asset-Accounting, Inventory-Valuation, Financial Close and many other Finance Functions. All these functions have become extremly tightly integrated, thru UNIVERSAL JOURNAL – THE SINGLE SOURCE of INFORMATION & & Real-time availibility of information. 

The Data-structures are simplified and it helps lower the data-footprint

The faster-thruput and data-fetch is acheived as result of  HANA database. It also ensures facilitating advance capabilities of Machine-Learning.

For details on Innovations in S/4HANA, please refer to page on S/4HANA Innovations.

Some of SAP’s videos on SAP S/4HANA 2021 : Copyright is that if SAP’s

  • SAP S/4HANA 2021 – Financial Compliance : youtube.com/watch?v=WJCSHUJ9O5c
  • SAP S/4HANA 2021 – Financial Planning & Analysis : https://youtu.be/jY1tvlCKWzQ
  • SAP S/4HANA 2021 – Finance and Risk Highlights : https://youtu.be/jY1tvlCKWzQ
  • SAP S/4HANA Finance for group reporting 2021 is generally available :
  • Key Finance Innovations in SAP S/4HANA 2021
    • Machine Learning for Intercompany Document Matching
    • Product Hierarchies in Margin Analysis: In Margin Analysis, Use the centrally created and maintained structure of product hierarchies as additional reporting element. The feature provides further flexibility and granularity to margin analysis.

For further information on SAP S/4HANA 2021 feel free to use the following links:

SAP S/4HANA 2020

SAP S/4HANA 1909