SAP® SOLUTIONS and ACCOUNTING STRATEGIES © Copyright 2007 SAP AG
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SAP Solution in Detail SAP for Banking ACCOUNTING IN BANKS: SAP® SOLUTIONS AND ACCOUNTING STRATEGIES © Copyright 2007 SAP AG. All rights reserved. HTML, XML, XHTML and W3C are trademarks or registered trademarks of W3C®, World Wide Web Consortium, No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in Massachusetts Institute of Technology. any form or for any purpose without the express permission of SAP AG. The information contained herein may be changed Java is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. without prior notice. JavaScript is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc., Some software products marketed by SAP AG and its distributors used under license for technology invented and implemented contain proprietary software components of other software by Netscape. vendors. MaxDB is a trademark of MySQL AB, Sweden. Microsoft, Windows, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. 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Citrix, ICA, Program Neighborhood, MetaFrame, WinFrame, VideoFrame, and MultiWin are trademarks or registered trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. 2 CONTENTS Summary . 5 Accounting Functions Covered . 5 Financial Accounting . 5 Management Accounting . 6 SAP Software for Financial and Management Accounting . 7 SAP Bank Analyzer . 7 SAP ERP . 7 SAP NetWeaver . 8 Accounting Strategies from SAP . 9 Overview of Accounting Strategies . 9 Group Accounting Strategy . 12 – Business Scope . 12 – Functional Architecture . 13 Centralized Accounting Strategy . 13 – Business Scope . 13 – Functional Architecture . 14 Decentralized Accounting Strategy . 16 – Business Scope . 16 – Functional Architecture . 16 Business Line Accounting Strategy . 18 – Business Scope . 18 – Functional Architecture . 18 Best Practices and Recommendations for Setup . 19 Organizational Setup . 19 – Multi-GAAP Accounting . 19 – Foreign Branches . 20 – Management Accounting and GAAP . 20 Subledger Setup . 20 – Financial Products . 20 – Aggregation of Current and Saving Accounts . 20 – FX Position Management . 21 – ERP Operations . 21 3 General Ledger Setup . 21 Operations Setup . 22 – Shared-Services Organizations . 22 – Sharing Activities . 22 – Basic Rationale for Shared Services . 23 Benefits of the Proposed SAP Software–Based Architecture . 23 Business Benefits . 23 IT Benefits . 24 4 ACCOUNTING FUNCTIONS SUMMARY COVERED SAP offers a comprehensive solution portfolio covering financial Financial Accounting and management accounting operations for the banking indus- The main task of financial accounting is to record all business try. To ensure that the solution fully covers a bank’s needs, a transactions and summarize the results in periodic reports. bank-specific solution map is carefully planned that reflects the For the banking industry the main focus is on accounting for bank’s business model, its organizational setup, and how it has financial products. There are three types of financial products allocated its accounting tasks. The experience SAP has acquired in particular: service contracts, contracts, and instruments. in the banking industry counts as well. Careful observation • Service contracts do not usually generate on-balance financial found that four accounting strategies are typically used by banks, asset or financial liability positions other than receivables each characterized by a distinct functional scope. This article between invoicing and settlement. When service contracts discusses those strategies, their functional architectures, and how generate off-balance positions, they must be reflected in accounting tasks can be integrated to support financial reporting accounting. Examples of service contracts are customer on the legal entity and group levels. Another focus of this paper securities accounts, credit cards, and payment transactions. is to show how SAP® solutions can be placed within those strate- • Contracts are based on bank-specific conditions drawn up gies to give banks maximum benefit for their accounting and per contract between the bank and the business partner. reporting activities. They generate financial asset and liability positions. Loans, deposits, over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, and letters of From a business viewpoint, the architecture proposed in this credit are examples of contracts. paper recommends standardization of accounting methods and • Instruments – short or long positions in public, tradable finan- accounting processes within a bank or banking group to support cial products owned by the bank – are based on formal legal better compliance with internal and external accounting rules. documents and governed by conditions that are standardized Best practices are outlined to enable daily trial closings to mini- per instrument type. They generate financial asset and liability mize surprises at the end of the month, and to ensure that all positions. Examples of instruments are listed securities and information supplied to, generated by, and reported by the solu- exchange-traded derivatives such as futures. tion can be audited. Particular to financial products is the fact that accounting is an From an IT point of view, the proposed architecture facilitates integral part of regular operations as some of these operational consolidation of IT operations, maintenance, and support, activities and their related functions directly impact accounting; thereby reducing IT costs and operational risks. this is referred to as operational accounting. Operational accounting comprises functions such as nominal position man- agement, billing, invoicing, collection management, write-down, write-off, settlement, and matching.1 In financial accounting operational accounting refers to the same activities which may be referred to as customer accounting or trade accounting from another point of view. Usually, all financial product-related,.