What is Central Finance
Many global organizations record their financial transactions on not one but several ERP systems and then combine these financial transactions for the purposes of corporate reporting. Some of the financial transactions are typically captured in SAP ERP systems, whereas others aren't. However, even using SAP ERP systems doesn't guarantee that corporate reporting is simply a matter of aggregating financial data from multiple systems. Some SAP ERP systems will inevitably have been implemented at different times using different approaches or will have been acquired along with acquired companies. The consulting approach to deal with this disparity has often been to define a global template at headquarters and gradually roll it out to the various subsidiaries so that all parts of the organization are capturing their financial transactions within a similar framework. This typically means virtually reimplementing financials and can be a costly and time-consuming undertaking. Another approach that is gaining favor is to set up a Central Finance system that includes the best practices that have evolved over the last several years and the technical innovations that have been made possible recently with the advent of SAP HANA and the strategic redesign of financial applications. This Central Finance system collects the financial data from each of the local systems and combines them into a harmonized form in real time. The idea that a global organization might want to combine financial data from multiple systems in one central system is hardly new. Consolidation solutions have been gathering financial data from multiple systems, harmonizing this data, and eliminating the intercompany markups to provide a consolidated financial statement for the group as a whole for many years. Many large corporations have implemented one or more data warehouses to bring their data into a structure suitable for financial reporting.
The building blocks of this approach are as follows:
» SAP Landscape Transformation (SLT), which provides the technical link and field mapping between the two systems
» The BAPI BAPI_ACC_DOCUMENT_pOST, used to create the new journal entry in the central jou rnal
» Error Correction and Suspense accounting (ECS), which provides error handling for documents arriving in the central system
» SAP General Ledger (New G/L) and account-based Profitability Analysis (CO-PA), which provide the basic accounting structure in the central journal
Mapping Rules
In addition to the technical transfer structure, the Central Finance system provides mapping tools to transform global parameters, such as countries and company codes, master data, accounts and materials, and even highly dynamic cost objects. This allows you to create that "golden" chart of accounts or perfect profit center structure, however heterogeneous the entities in your local system may be. If in the past you've worked with other system connectors, such as application link enabling (ALE), you'll recognize the basic principles of intermediate document (!Doc) transfers. However, you'll find that you get significantly more flexibility in the Central Finance approach, because ALE scenarios typically create one FI document from another FI document, one CO document from another CO document, and so on, rather than the merge we see in the Document Relationship Browser in Figure 2. There, the accounting document, the controlling document, and the special ledger document in the local system merge into one accounting document in Central Finance. Because master data plays such a major part in any Central Finance project, it also makes sense to consider the use of SAP Master Data Governance in the context of Central Finance. If SAP Master Data Governance is already in place, this mapping can be read during data transfer. If not, you can reuse some of the basic mapping tools at no extra license cost and extend via BAdl if your organization has more complex requirements.
Mapping actions
The following mapping actions are available:
●Keep Data: Field values of this kind are not mapped at all. The data from the sending system is retained.
●Mapping Obligatory: The field values for all filled fields must be mapped (in mdg_km_maintain). If no mapping data exists, an error is raised.
●Clear Data. Fields of this kind are always cleared.
●Map if Possible: The system tries to map any filled field. If no mapping data exists (in mdg_km_maintain), no error is raised but the original data from the sending system is retained.
Drill back from Central finance to non SAP source system
With some modifications, it is possible to enable drillback to source documents in a non-SAP source system. The following describes two options:
1.Display the prima nota in a non-SAP source system via double-click on the field Reference Key in the document header in transaction FB03.
2.Display documents, in particular, the preceding FI document, via the Document Relationship Browser, this includes the function Display Sender Document (Environment Document Environment Display Sender Document) or by double-clicking the Sender Doc. No. in the document header.
More to come, stay tuned....
