- SAP Managed Tags:
Elizabeth Milne, Accounting and Financial Close Expert, SAP
Pete Graham, Finance Product Marketing, SAP
Molly Boyle, SAP Solutions Expert, BlackLine
SAP is pleased to announce the availability of a new SAP Solution Extension by BlackLine under the name “SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine, financial review option”. This innovative product enables teams to proactively review financial statements at both the entity and group levels. Users can enjoy faster execution of variance analysis, elimination of manual work, and improved collaboration across the Office of the CFO by replacing error-prone, reactive manual processes with a proactive ongoing approach that strengthens key controls.
Figure 1: Key capabilities of Financial Review
Figure 2: Sample screen of SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine, financial review option
SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine, financial review option provides unique record-to-report capabilities that have undergone a premium qualification process exclusive to SAP Solution Extensions. For each solution extension in the SAP portfolio, SAP performs an annual premium qualification (PQ) – an extensive testing program which ensures the quality of the entire integration scenario from the initial data extraction from S/4HANA Cloud to the functional business use cases performed in the partner solution. In this way, PQ goes beyond SAP Certified Integration, and following the successful PQ, the integration technology becomes an integral part of the SAP product, with SAP taking on a support obligation.
Financial review option is the evolutionary update of the SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine, variance and compliance option product. Financial review option now extends the capabilities from an entity basis to a group-level basis and allows group accountants to benefit from the same automation and workflow capabilities as their entity-level colleagues. The financial review option enables accounting professionals to proactively perform financial reviews of an entity or a group of entities (i.e., the consolidation unit) ahead of the period-end close, identifying and resolving potential discrepancies and bottlenecks. Comments made at the entity level to explain a variance can be reviewed by the group accountant in the tool without the usual disjointed steps associated with a standard spreadsheet-and-email approach. Later, when the corporate reporting team is creating the management commentary for financial reports, they can access this central repository of reviewed and approved commentary as a source for their explanations.
Figure 3: An Overview of the SAP Solution Extension SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine
The financial review option is also complementary to SAP S/4HANA for Group Reporting, which allows customers to take advantage of continuous accounting by allowing preliminary consolidation calculations to occur at any time before the period ends. During these preliminary consolidation calculations, it is an ideal time to perform proactive analysis, provide commentary and manage workflow approvals using financial review.
Figure 4: Highlighting the complementary benefits of SAP Group Reporting and SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine, financial review option
SAP Solution Extensions by BlackLine help businesses streamline end-to-end accounting processes by providing account substantiation, accounting automation, and intercompany governance. With this announcement, SAP Solution Extensions by BlackLine now offer proactive financial review capabilities for both entity and group levels as part of the close and consolidation processes. Customers can adopt these solutions and experience risk reduction, greater efficiency, real-time reporting, and improved transparency.
For more information on financial review please visit sap.com SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine | Financial Close.
See the SAP Runs BlackLine success story here: SAP Runs SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine with SAP S/4HANA )
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