Cash Management in SAP S/4HANA

2.1 Bank Account Management

The Bank Account Management suite of applications is the third component in SAP Cash Management powered by SAP HANA. It is all new functionality relating to bank account management processes. Bank Account Management is a structured process to implement governance structures in order to manage the processes and comply with rules and regulations around bank account management. Bank Account Management includes a central repository of bank accounts and related processes that can be monitored within SAP. Prior to the release of Cash Management on HANA, this was a gap in the functionality provided by SAP.

The most visible change in this area is that managing bank accounts is now part of master data, managed by business users, instead of a configuration activity as in a classic SAP ECC system, where it is an IT task. The process of creating bank accounts and the types of data tracked with those bank accounts is new. Now, all relevant information about the bank account can be captured, such as: the status of the bank account, the company code, the owner’s name, the account type, the account number or International Bank Account Number (IBAN), a description, bank key or Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) code, overdraft limits, profit center, and contact person (both internal and external).

Another welcome improvement is the ability to upload and download bank account data from/to Excel.

In addition to bank account management, the solution includes an optional workflow-based governance on opening, changing, and closing accounts. It also includes a bank hierarchy view and bank account group view, a signatory process, overdraft limits and a bank account review process.

Figure 2.2 shows the Bank Account Management features.

Figure 2.2: Features of SAP’s Bank Account Management

For bank account management processes, SAP has given customers two options. The first is comprehensive Bank Account Management, which is part of the separate license of SAP S/4HANA Finance for cash management. The second option is Bank Account Management Lite, which comes pre­installed with SAP S/4HANA Finance (i.e. no separate license is required).

With the release of Bank Account Management in SAP Cash Management powered by SAP HANA, bank account master data is maintained for house bank accounts. Bank accounts are defined as part of a bank account hierarchy. The bank account hierarchy definition can follow how the cash is consolidated or concentrated.

For SAP customers who go with the comprehensive Bank Account Management option, companies can have an annual review process to analyze the current bank accounts, which is supported by the Bank Account Management component. There is typically a person or group in the company who is/are responsible for each bank account. This information is stored in Bank Account Management and is included in the annual review process.

A very useful feature of this new functionality is the integration of the bank account data definition with the cash pooling or cash concentration for the accounts. When accounts are created, they are added to a bank account group. This bank account group is similar to the Cash Management Groupings in the ECC Cash Management functionality.

There are other differences between the lite version and comprehensive version that are detailed in SAP Note 2165520—“Feature Scope Differences Between Bank Account Management and Bank Account Management Lite”.

Figure 2.3 shows an overview of the different components of Cash Management on HANA.

Figure 2.3: Overview of SAP Cash Management Powered by SAP HANA