SAP S/4HANA Cash Management is one of those finance applications where business users can immediately see the huge advancements when comparing to the old SAP ERP predecessor application. The classic Cash Management in SAP ERP provided only basic functionality and user experience was not always optimal. In contrast, SAP S/4HANA  Cash Management offers a better experience (UI is completely FIORI based) and more functionality than classic Cash Management and Liquidity Planner.

In this blog post, we will take a look at what is new in release 1909. There are 3 major functional areas of SAP Cash Management— Bank Account Management, Cash Operations, and Liquidity Management. I will give you an overview of new or enhanced functionalities for each of these areas.

Bank Relationship Management

Overview page for Bank Account Management

The new Fiori App Bank Relationship Overview is available. As its name suggests it is an overview page. Overview pages are special types of FIORI apps. Their primary purpose is to serve as a main access point and dashboard for a relevant business role.  This app offers several individual cards to reflect bank relationships from various perspectives, including bank profiles, bank fees, payments, etc.

 

Global Accounting Hierarchy for bank accounts

The global accounting hierarchies is functionality to maintain all different hierarchies – profit centers, cost centers, functional areas, financial statement versions – in a single place. It supports time dependencies (valid from-to) and version handling (draft, active, in revision). In release 1909, the global accounting hierarchies framework has been enabled for bank accounts. With the Fiori App Manage Global Accounting Hierarchy – For bank accounts, you can create and maintain bank accounts in different groups. The bank account group can be used by the Cash Flow Analyzer or Liquidity planning functionalities.

The global accounting hierarchy replaces the older webdynpro app Manage Bank Accounts – Bank Hierarchy View for bank group maintenance.  The migration of the old hierarchies is supported directly within the new app.

Situation Handling for Dual Control

The Situation handling framework has been made available for Dual Control in Bank Account Management.

With Bank Account Management, every time you create a new bank account or make changes to an existing bank account, your changes are saved as a bank account revision. Revisions must be activated before they become effective and can be used in daily operations. You can define the activation mode of bank account revisions as Dual Control. It means that the person who has made the revision needs to contact another user to activate the revision.  Normally, this contact is done outside the BAM – you have to remember to reach out to colleagues via either face to face, via email, chat or call him or her.

With Situation Handling when a bank account revision stays without being activated for some predefined period of time, responsible persons will be informed by notification thru which he or she can easily navigate to bank account detail to finish the activation.

Enhancement of workflow functionality

The workflow for opening, changing and closing bank accounts has been enhanced. Now, in the Manage Workflows – For Bank Accounts app, you are able to define users who are authorized to maintain their bank accounts without subsequent workflow approval.

 

Cash Operations

Improved multi-level Cash Pooling

The cash flows available in all the sub-pools would be accumulated up into its header account, as part of the ‘Before Balance’. Under ‘Simulation Results’, the details of the simulation would be listed as the explanation for the ‘Before Balances’. And the Target Balance amount, as well as the Minimum Transfer amount, would be also considered during the simulation

The new Cash Concentration Simulation view in the Cash Flow Analyzer app is able to show the simulation for the whole cash pool hierarchy, and independently also a simulation for sub-pools.

Memo Records enhancements 

The FIORI app Manage Memo Records has been enhanced to support:

Cash Trade Requests

Cash Trade Requests is the functionality supporting communication between Cash management and Treasury front office function within a company

Using the Manage Memo Records app, cash manager is able to create cash trade requests for a specific financial instrument, such as FX spot rate.  After the approval process, the cash trade request is released to the corporate trading desk as a TRM trade request. When the deal is created, the cash request is fulfilled.

The entry of Offsetting information – the fields offsetting company code, bank account, and value date are available for entry.

Copy/Distribute functionality – You can create multiple memo records in one go by copying or distributing a memo record. You can specify the number of memo records to be created, the recurrence pattern for creation, and whether to consider a working calendar when creating memo records.

 

Bank to Bank Transfer enhancements

There are 2 new FIORI apps that make it easier to perform repetitive bank to bank transfers. With the Define Bank Transfer Templates app, you can define templates for bank-to-bank transfers that occur frequently. With the templates, you can then use the Make Bank Transfers – Create with Templates app to create multiple bank transfers in a batch, based on the templates.

Bank Account Balance app

The new FIORI app Bank Account Balance gives an overview of the available bank account balance for a selected period of time.

Bank Statement Monitor – Intraday app

With the new FIORI app Bank Statement Monitor – Intraday, you can monitor the import status of intraday bank statement, similar to end of day statements app.

Cash Flow Comparison by Timestamp app

Using the new FIORI app Cash Flow Comparison by Timestamp you can compare any two snapshots of forecasted cash flows in the past or compare the forecasted flows with the actual flows

Liquidity management

Liquidity Planning Using the SAP Analytics Cloud

With S/4HANA 1909 customers have two options on how to create their liquidity plans. The older solution is based on the use of SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (SAP BPC) functionality for liquidity planning. In line with the overall strategic direction for planning, the liquidity planning in release 1909 is built on the top of the SAP Analytics Cloud tool.

Global Accounting Hierarchies for Liquidity Item Hierarchies

Similar to bank accounts, the Global Accounting Hierarchy framework has been extended to support the maintenance of liquidity items. Now, with the new Fiori App Manage Global Accounting Hierarchies – For Liquidity Items can create and edit liquidity item hierarchies. If you have defined liquidity item hierarchies in the Liquidity Item Hierarchy app in earlier releases, you can migrate the legacy liquidity item hierarchies directly within the new app.

Machine Learning to predict liquidity items

With the new FIORI app Adjust Assigned Liquidity Items, SAP introduced the first machine learning scenario in SAP S/4HANA Cash Management.

The classification of cash flows into liquidity items is important information for cash managers to understand the use and source of cash flows. Normally, liquidity items are derived based on configuration (for example, from Gl accounts or/and different attributes available in the source documents). Sometimes liquidity item cannot be derived based on the configured rules because the business process has not been covered, sometimes they are derived wrongly. In these cases, the machine learning algorithm can help to identify the probable liquidity item.

Using the app, you can display a list of liquidity items assigned to cash flows. Leveraging machine learning capabilities, the app is able to propose Liquidity Items together with Confidence Level. Then you can compare the actual and predicted liquidity items. If assigned and proposed liquidity items are different, you can check the details. You can decide to accept or reject the proposal for all or for a selected number of cash flows.

 

Brought to you by the SAP S/4HANA RIG