SAP BPC, introduction:

The Planning and consolidation play a fundamental role in the financial management of a company. Imagine having the power to chart precise financial paths and make informed strategic decisions. Planning, by bringing to life detailed budgets and forecasts, acts as a beacon that guides business operations and strategies. On the other hand, consolidation becomes the master in combining financial data from different areas of the organization, thus painting a true picture of the overall financial health.

Planning involves creating detailed budgets and forecasts that guide both operational and strategic activities. This enables the company to set realistic financial goals and make decisions supported by solid information. For its part, consolidation consists of collecting and unifying financial data from various entities or divisions of the company into coherent consolidated financial statements. This process provides an accurate view of the overall financial health of the organization. and is essential for informing investors, regulators and stakeholders about its overall performance.

Planning and consolidation work together to enable companies to manage their resources effectively, optimize their performance, and meet financial reporting requirements.

But, What is the role of SAP BPC in this exciting journey and how is it applied in large companies?

SAP BPC es una herramienta de SAP que las grandes empresas implementan en sus sistemas debido a su capacidad para planificar y consolidar cuentas, tal como su nombre indica, “Business Planning and Consolidation”. Uno de los aspectos más destacados es su capacidad para procesar y cargar datos de manera más rápida que sus competidores, lo que la convierte en una herramienta ágil y sencilla de usar. Además, su plataforma, que se diferencia de la plataforma estándar de SAP, es muy amigable e intuitiva.

What does budgeting entail?

Budgeting gives us the ability to plan future income, expenses and capital expenditures, unlike SAP ERP, which works mainly with transactions already accounted for in the past. The main function of budgeting is budget control, which allows us to evaluate whether we are meeting the objectives planned for the future, compared to previous years. These plans are usually based on historical data.

SAP BPC offers several options to carry out this planning, listed below:

– Budgeting: One-year planning, allowing users to create a detailed budget.

– Rolling Forecasting: Short-term planning, no more than one year of forecast.

– Strategic plan: Long-term planning, spanning 3 to 5 years.

SAP BPC offers large consulting firms the ability to carry out large-scale financial consolidation. Taking the Ibex35 companies as an example, these organizations, although they operate as a single commercial entity, are internally composed of numerous companies that constantly exchange goods and services. Due to this, the exchange between companies in the same group is treated differently from sales or purchases to external customers. To present the financial statements of Payments and Expenses or the Annual Balance Sheet, it is necessary to carry out a prior financial consolidation to separate and distinguish intercompany sales from normal sales.

Business Process

Both financial planning and consolidation require the use of Business Process Flows (BPF), a SAP BPC feature that ensures a specific order in the process flow. SAP consultants must understand business processes to establish GMPs. This stage is fundamental, since it organizes each process sequentially. Additionally, in this sequential process, a Key User must approve each step completed by the user, or even stop the process if any errors are detected so that the user can correct them.

Where can we see financial planning and consolidation reports?

SAP cuenta con un programa de visualización integrado en Excel llamado Analysis for Office, comúnmente conocido como AFO. Este programa de visualización, conectado a las bases de datos de SAP, nos permite realizar consultas conocidas como “Query”. En estas consultas, podemos filtrar por diferentes campos como Sociedad, fecha, proceso o versión. Dependiendo de los filtros aplicados, los datos cambiarán de acuerdo con lo solicitado por el usuario.