The article discusses the complexities and manual nature of financial closing in SAP, highlighting the benefits of automation—such as increased efficiency, enhanced accuracy, regulatory compliance, cost savings, and improved visibility—while emphasizing the necessity for organizations, particularly CFOs and finance leaders, to adopt automated solutions like Aico to streamline the closing process and reduce reliance on manual tasks.
Closing in SAP is a complex mix of manual tasks and SAP programs that must be run to complete the closing process successfully. From period handling and carrying forward balances to running distribution cycles and foreign currency revaluation and depreciation programs, there are a large number of activities to perform and monitor in a very short period of time.
For CFOs, Finance Directors and Heads of Financial Accounting, ensuring an accurate and timely close is critical for compliance and strategic decision-making. However, many organisations still rely on manual processes, increasing the risk of errors and inefficiencies.
Benefits of Automating SAP Financial Closing
The key benefits derived from the automation of the SAP financial closing can be divided into 5 key areas.
1. Increased Efficiency
Automation eliminates repetitive manual tasks, reducing the time required to close financial books. This enables finance teams to complete month-end, quarter-end and year-end closing more efficiently, supporting the broader objectives set by leadership roles like the Finance Director and CFO, who prioritise operational excellence and faster financial reporting.
2. Enhanced Accuracy
By minimising human intervention, automation reduces errors caused by manual data entry, miscalculations or omissions. This improves the integrity of financial reports and ensures compliance with regulatory standards. These are key concerns for executives like the Head of Financial Accounting and Finance Transformation Leads, who are responsible for maintaining financial integrity at a strategic level.
3. Regulatory Compliance and Audit Readiness
Automated financial closing in SAP provides a structured and well-documented audit trail, making compliance with IFRS, GAAP and other regulations more straightforward. It also simplifies internal and external audits.
4. Cost Savings
By reducing manual labour, businesses save operational costs while optimising resource allocation. Senior leaders like the Finance Director and CFO can reallocate resources toward value-added activities such as financial planning, analysis and strategic investments, rather than repetitive tasks.
5. Improved Transparency and Visibility
Automation tools provide real-time insights and dashboards, enabling finance teams to monitor closing progress, identify bottlenecks and ensure timely completion.
While SAP, a global leader in ERP software, excels in many areas, it has limited capabilities for automation and task tracking, making it challenging for the finance team to follow the closing process. Even large, complex enterprises end up relying on a combination of Excel checklists, end users manually running T-codes and their IT team running batch jobs.
Even large, complex enterprises end up relying on a combination of Excel checklists, end users manually running T-codes and their IT team running batch jobs. Live SAP integration is a better way.
Let the finance team run the financial close without IT support
Let’s look at some common activities performed during the close that can be fully automated with the finance team using Aico, without IT.
- Opening and closing the periods: This action is most commonly performed manually using OB52 with posting period variants related to the company codes. Control can be provided over ranges of GL accounts which might be closed at different times. At year end, you must also deal with the special periods.
- Manage the open items: The starting point here is often to run the automated clearing using F.13 and then review all uncleared items using FBL3N, FBL1N and FBL5N.
- Run the assessment cycles: Using KEU5/KSU5, the system allocates costs from sender cost centres to receiver cost objects based on predefined rules. This process is typically used in controlling cost distribution and internal reporting.
- Run the actual settlements: Using KO88, the system will settle costs from internal orders (or other cost objects) to their assigned receivers based on the defined settlement rules.
- Foreign currency revaluation: This is the running of the FAGL_FC_VAL program. Before you run this program, you want to ensure that the exchange rates have been updated and the open items reviewed. You will also want to run the revaluation first in test mode before running it in Production.
- Depreciation: This is running the AFAB program in both test mode and then production. This program only allows you to run one company at a time. It produces a report showing any errors and the proposed postings which must be reviewed before running in Production.
- Generate the financial statements: This refers to running F.01, which will generate the Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss (P&L) statements.
- Post adjusting entries: This refers to the regular postings you make each period (accruals, provisions, etc.) Many of these involve extracting data from an SAP report and automatically calculating the posting values.
- Other reports and programs: During the closing, many other reports and programs will be run, a few of which have already been mentioned, but other common examples include:
- VFX3 – release billing documents
- S_ALR_87012357 – Advance Return for Tax on Sales/Purchases
- S_ALR_87011990 – Asset History Sheet
- MB5L – List of Stock Values: Balances
- S_ALR_87012277 – G/L Account Balances
- ASKB – Periodic Asset Postings
- S_ALR_87012178 – Customer Open Items by Balance of Overdue Items
Still running SAP financial close with spreadsheets and T-codes?
Finance leaders need better. Aico automates SAP closing—no IT needed.
Best Practices for Automating SAP Financial Closing
1. Standardise the closing processes across all your companies
Define clear and consistent procedures for financial closing. Standardisation ensures smooth automation and minimises discrepancies.
2. Integrate Systems and Data Sources
Ensure seamless integration between SAP, external financial systems and data sources. This reduces manual data transfer and improves accuracy.
3. Monitor and Optimise Performance
Leverage analytics and dashboards to track the closing process, identify bottlenecks and optimise workflows for continuous improvement.
“We wanted a single solution where we could monitor all aspects of the close and slice and dice at all levels: country level, regional level, account level, journal level. Where individuals could monitor their own progress, but we could also monitor the close at a regional and central level ourselves.”
– Colin Hand, Aico Implementation Lead at AkzoNobel [download the case study]
4. Train and Upskill Finance Teams
Provide training on automation tools to your finance teams, ensuring they can leverage automation effectively and maximise its benefits while leaders like the Head of Digital Transformation focus on strategic goals.
5. Implement a Governance Framework
Establish governance policies for financial closing automation, ensuring compliance, security and accountability.
How Aico Simplifies Automating SAP Financial Closing and Streamlines the SAP Closing Process
For businesses looking to improve efficiency and streamline their SAP closing process, automation is no longer optional—it’s essential. Leaders such as the CFO, Finance Director and Head of Financial Accounting are increasingly recognising the value of automation in reducing manual effort, improving accuracy and driving operational excellence.
Aico can automate this entire process, from bringing together the simple tracking of tasks to automatically running SAP programs as part of a dependent series of tasks. We can automate the extraction of data from reports to calculate and post journals automatically. Where non-SAP reports can be made available, Aico can pull these into Aico closing tasks and extract data from these to calculate and post-closing journals.
By integrating Aico into your financial operations, enterprise finance teams can reduce reliance on manual tasks and Excel checklists, gain greater visibility into the closing process and ensure compliance with regulatory standards. This not only accelerates month-end, quarter-end and year-end closing, but also empowers finance professionals to focus on higher-value strategic activities. Streamline your SAP financial closing automation today and unlock the full potential of your finance team with Aico.
