SAP Central Finance (CFIN) - Key functionalities on Release 2020

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Despite of challenging year, SAP has come up with latest release SAP S/4HANA 2020 (Oct 2020) with lot of additional functionalities, capabilities & innovation.  This time interestingly release naming convention has simplified and it’s quite easy to think of, as this with reference to a year i.e. 20XX and next it may be S/4HANA 2021.

Earlier release versions were like 1709, 1809, 1909 but going forward it will be 2020, 2021 so on.

Below are the new, additional key functionalities, capabilities in SAP Central Finance area which has releases. 

• Document Splitting: With release of SAP S4 HANA 2020, document splitting is now supported as standard in Central Finance, even if document splitting is not active in the source system. Previously it was supported when the document splitting exists at Source system. Now no need to have document splitting in ECC source system.


• Central Budgeting for Internal Orders: will be enabled in Central Finance 2020. Central budgeting for Internal Order is allowing a centralized approach to maintain budget in a Central Finance system for the Internal orders which are replicated within a Cost object mapping scenario. A budget is an approved cost structure for an Internal Order. This budget will be consumed during postings to the Internal order, which is typically consumed in a process carried out in the source system.


• Customer Defined Validations for the Configuration of Consistency Check report: With release SAP S4 HANA 2020, can check whether configuration settings are compatible between Source and Central Finance systems. This feature allows you to add custom validations that should be checked under their own project’s context, which required some customization activities.


• Cross-System Process Control for the Central Payment Scenario:  With release SAP S4 HANA 2020, can implement controls over business processes which are distributed across the different systems, where documents are replicated between the systems.  It uses a virtual token to Control whether a system is permitted to execute certain process steps. Token is created automatically for each new item and can only be active in one system at a time. Since Release 2020, CSPC is mandatory for customers that introduces Central payment. It’s also recommended for existing Central payment users.


• Replicate Activity rate from Central Finance to Source:  In release SAP S4 Hana 1909, replication of activity rates from source system to Central Finance was enabled. With release 2020, it’s possible to replicate activity rates from Central Finance to Source system through SLT. It allows customers to plan overhead costs and activity rates centrally, while product costing is carried out in source systems. So far source systems planning, the activity rates need to flow back to the source system.


• Customer Defined Validations for the Configuration of Consistency Check report: With release SAP S4 HANA 2020, can check whether configuration settings are compatible between Source and Central Finance systems. This feature allows you to add custom validations that should be checked under their own project’s context, which required some customization activities.

Source Systems - Third party 

• Document changes in Third Party systems/ Interface: Several third-party (source) systems allow changes to Financial documents via SLT. To reflect these document changes also in SAP S4 Hana CFIN, a new interface is delivered with release of SAP S4 Hana 2020.  However, there are some conditions and limits apply.


• Posting into Ledger Groups thru 3rd party system interface: Until now the third-party system interface is only allowed to post Financial documents into all ledgers that are assigned to the determined Company code. It was not possible to post into a specific set of ledgers. By adding the ledger group to the 3rd party system interface, it is now possible to post into ledger groups, which allows to post into all assigned ledgers of that ledger group.


• Third-party system Integration - Magnitude Transaction Replication: Simplifies the integration of third-party systems into Central Finance scenario. The product supports and accelerated the data load, data transformation, and data consolidation from certain 3rd party source systems into the S4 Hana Central Finance system.


• Third-party system Integration- Magnitude Data Harmonization: The product supports and accelerated the Consolidation & standardisation, the data clean up and business mapping as well the data load of Master Data from 3rd party source systems into the S4 Hana Central Finance system.

Some of the above functionalities are required additional configurations. At later stage, will come with some additional details which are relates to user experience and analytics.