Explaining the System Architecture

To get a deeper insight of how SAP Advanced Financial Closing integrates into our broader IT system environment, it is useful to explain a few things about the system architecture.

SAP Advanced Financial Closing is an SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) application that runs in an SAP BTP subaccount. The SAP BTP subaccount is associated with an SAP BTP global account. Your organization may have several SAP BTP global accounts. Generally, you should contact SAP directly to see how you can get started.

The solution is an application on SAP BTP in the Cloud Foundry environment, which you can connect to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA, or SAP ERP as your financial communication systems. The integration scenario to SAP systems uses OData services for SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA systems, and a REST service for SAP ERP systems. SAP HANA is used as a database, and attachments are stored in the Object Store on SAP BTP.

The data flows from the core financial communication systems (SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP ERP) towards SAP Advanced Financial Closing include:

• Organizational data (like company code, plant etc.)
• Accounting principles
• Ledgers
• Factory calendars
• Job results (spool lists are transferred display only)
• Task models and task list models

From SAP Advanced Financial Closing to the financial communication systems the flows include:

• Triggers to schedule background jobs
• Parameterization for SAP Fiori apps for intent-based navigation
• Authorization data (User-ID and email) for access checks in the financial communication systems.

As you can see, there is no replication of financial data!