Computerised Accounting in SAP: Benefits, History, and Migration

COMPUTERISED ACCOUNTING IN SAP 1
COMPUTERISED ACCOUNTING IN SAP
Course
Professor’s name
Institution
Location of institution
Date

COMPUTERISED ACCOUNTING IN SAP 2
Computerized accounting in SAP
Introduction
Computerized accounting is one of the fundamental areas that is invested highly in the
business organization. Companies nowadays employ the use of Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP) to analyse and store all financial data. ERP has helped in faster analysis and generation
of financial reports. This report on SAP S/4HANA outlines the importance and challenges of
SAP software on business, user experience in using SAP software, whether it is user-friendly
or not is described in the report. The companies using SAP software have considerable
experience in providing real-time reports and global regulatory and compliance abilities
across all languages. ERP software has helped the firms in closing monthly reports. The SAP
software has brought a lot of changes in the business environments, and provide an added
advantage on business firms over their competitors. This report on SAP S/4HANA contains a
brief history of the software, that is, when and where it was launched and whether it is a
multinational corporation. The companies that have adopted the use of SAP S/4HANA in
doing their daily transactions includes: CenturyLink Telecommunication Company in
Australia, Protective Life Insurance Company in the United States and Lyondellbasell in
Netherland.
History of SAP S/4HANA
SAP S/4HANA is a business suite that was launched in February 2015 by SAP SE
Multinational Corporation in Germany. This software is the fourth generation of SAP
business enterprise resource planning. This software application has promoted the processing
of vast volumes of business information in real time. The ERP system has been made simple
and easy to use in data entry, storage, and processing of large amounts of transactional data.

COMPUTERISED ACCOUNTING IN SAP 3
SAP has presented an opportunity for companies to reinvent their business models by
utilizing the internet of things. SAP S/4HANA uses real-time processing of information; it
doesn't require batch processing of data. The clients can receive their data in real time for
simulation and execution of their data. SAP S/4HANA and SAP Fiori have interlinked
together to provide user-friendly display functions that allow easy use of SAP in a variety of
devices (Alves and Matos, 2011:pg4).
SAP S/4HANA was previously referred to as SAP RF and was growing at a very high
rate, however in the year 1992, SAP R3 was launched as an update of the SAP RF. In the
year 2004 SAP ERP was launched which had more features and components that the business
world required. The central enterprise component was also another name given to SAP ERP
which was well received in the business world with many customers using it. SAP ERP
gained popularity very fast which prompted the company to develop new modules as the
technology was changing quickly (Arik, 2002:pg12). The system offered a variety of
services. Due to the advancement in technology, the SAP Company produced another module
in 2015. The SAP S/4HANA was launched as the most updated Enterprise Resource Planning
of all time. This SAP S/4HANA has many up to date modules which helps in the running of
the business. The primary objective of SAP S/4HANA is to run an enterprise resource
planning which uses the memory available to be effective and easy to use.
In 2016, 5,400 clients had already implemented the use of SAP S/4HANA. Due to the
competition available in the market, SAP S/4HANA had to be reinvented to offer an added
advantage over other competitors like Microsoft or Oracle. The simplifications of business
processes have paved the way for live data to be accessed. Live data has enabled a secure
method of producing real-time reports. There were many transactions and news involved with
the previous versions of SAP ERP, but the new SAP S/4HANA reduced the number of
reports and sales required. It integrated most of the processes into one making them

COMPUTERISED ACCOUNTING IN SAP 4
compound to reduce the number of reports generated. The database storage is only exclusive
to SAP software only, unlike the previous versions which supported databases form other
companies. The use of only SAP database saves the cost of purchasing databases from other
companies (Appiah and Mensah, 2014:pg36).
SAP S/4HANA is divided into several modules which simplify the work of different
departments of the business firm. The first module is the inventory management, this module
of enterprise management give a simplified information model which helps in tracking
inventory in the business firm. Inventory management outline what, when and how the stock
is taken in the company. It simplifies the manual checking of stock. Procurement is another
module of enterprise management in SAP, and it has increased the efficiency of the
procurement officer in procuring and payment of the suppliers (Cherkaoui and Bighrissen,
2012:pg26). There is efficient management of what was purchased and the amount of the
products. Reports from the procurement officer can easily be generated with the help of SAP.
Material requirements planning and order management are modules of enterprise
management in SAP S/4HANA.
The difference between SAP S/4HANA Finance and current SAP ERP FICO
SAP FICO enables business firms to manage and organize all financial data and
information by generating financial statements for reporting and analysis by the business
management. It is divided into two units, SAP FI for Finance and SAP CO, which stands for
SAP controlling. SAP S/4HANA is only one unit which supports only the finance option.
SAP Finance (FI) helps in business financial reporting, that is generating of all the financial
statements required by the company. It is also involved in the accounting department of the
business firm. On the other hand, SAP Controlling (CO) is involved in the planning and
monitoring of the company income and expenses. SAP FI and SAP CO were launched as
different modules while SAP S/4HANA was launched as one module containing different