The SAP Fiori launchpad: Excerpt from A Practical Guide to SAP S/4HANA Financial Accounting

Excerpt from
A Practical Guide to SAP S/4HANA Financial Accounting by Oona Flanagan.

The SAP Fiori launchpad
Using the classic SAP GUI was not easy. Menu paths were complicated, the screen old-fashioned, and transactions only accessible on a desktop or laptop.

You needed extensive training and often had to scroll through multiple screens to action a single item.

SAP has replaced the traditional menu and graphical user interface (GUI) with a consumer-grade user experience called SAP Fiori. SAP Fiori is webbased and consists of a dashboard or launchpad with a number of tiles which contain only the apps relevant to each user. The tiles are simpler, more intuitive to use than the GUI menu, more in line with apps on a Smartphone or tablet, and can be used on any device.
Apps can be transactional, analytical, or factsheets, and many of the analytical apps show key figures on the face of the tile itself. For example, apps for approving purchase orders or staff leave may contain the number of outstanding approvals on the face of the tile; bank apps may show the bank balance; and bank statement monitors may show the number of successful and unsuccessful bank statements processed. There are some examples of these smart apps shown in Figure 2.1.

In many apps, you see an overview screen showing all customers, suppliers, or other items and you can then either drill down to display or edit the details, or create new items.

Figure 2.1: Smart SAP Fiori apps on the SAP Fiori launchpad

Keep reading in A Practical Guide to SAP S/4HANA Financial Accounting.

Take an in-depth look at how basic financial accounting processes work in SAP S/4HANA in this practical guide. Learn about the SAP Fiori launchpad and how to find your way around the many apps available for finance with the help of screenshots and examples. Understand the finance organizational structure and master data and discover some of the SAP Best Practices for finance such as accounts payable and receivable, credit management, asset accounting, cash and bank management, and closings. Explore different ways to enter and upload G/L journal entries and what is meant by the Universal Journal. Run through the bank postings and different options for the bank statements. Go deeper into the structure of asset accounting, including the chart of depreciation, depreciation areas, asset classes, and depreciation methods. Learn about multidimensional reporting, KPIs, and the various analytical apps supplied with SAP S/4HANA.

– Financial accounting processes in SAP S/4HANA
– Finance organizational structure, key financial master data
– Daily transactions using SAP Fiori apps
– SAP Fiori apps for displaying and reporting financial data

Oona Flanagan is an Anglo-Irish freelance SAP FICO and SAP S/4HANA consultant, as well as a qualified accountant and published author. She has over 20 years of global implementation experience across multiple industries (pharma, fashion, food, beverages, consumer goods, media, packaging, shipping containers, banking, and transportation), as well as many years accounting experience. Oona loves languages and has worked in multiple countries during her SAP career. Oona owns her own company, Jazzmore Solutions Limited, has an MBA, and is a Fellow of both the Chartered Institute of Certified Accountants and the British Computer Society.