How does financial planning work with the SAC?

1.2 Financial planning as part of the business plan 

The business plan presents a business idea or a business concept and is the basis for investments by potential investors. Financial planning plays an essential role in business plans. It should show whether the start-up is economically viable and how much capital is required. If a financial plan is prepared as part of a business plan for a start-up project, there are differences to the financial plan within a company.

• When planning costs, it is also necessary to calculate costs that the business start-up entails (e.g. consulting costs, fees, costs for business equipment).
• In particular, a financing plan resulting from liquidity planning and capital requirements must be taken into account. Here, it must be stated how the capital requirement will be financed. In the financing plan, founders indicate how much equity they are contributing and how much debt capital they are planning to use.
• Preparation of a profitability calculation that provides information on whether and how profitable the start-up is.

2. when does financial planning need to be prepared? 

In financial planning, a distinction can be made between a short-term and a long-term planning horizon. Short-term financial planning usually covers a period of three to twelve months. Depending on the situation, shorter periods may also be considered. The key issue here is to ensure solvency. Long-term financial planning looks at a period of several years (usually three to five years) and thus also takes into account the strategic orientation of the company. The central issue here is to ensure long-term capital coverage, depending on long-term capital requirements.

3. who will help me with the financial planning? 

For start-ups, start-up consultancies with start-up coaches can help with the preparation of the financial plan. But business consultancies also offer help and can assist in the search for financing.

Financial planning in existing companies falls within the scope of management accounting. However, external service providers can also be called in for advice in this context.

What financial planning software is available? 

In the meantime, there are various providers for creating and managing financial planning digitally. Here, too, a distinction can be made between financial planning within an existing company and a financial plan that is created in the course of setting up a business.

The following software providers, among others, come into question as business software:

• Anaplan
• Board
• Denzhorn
• CCH Tagetik
• IDL
• Jedox
• LucaNet
• unit4

And of course the SAP.

There is software for creating business plans that also includes the financial plan.

These include, for example:

• SmartBusinessPlan
• TheBizPlanner

5. financial planning with the SAC 

One of the challenges in financial planning is to link the various sub-plans with each other. If changes are made in one of the sub-plans, for example in sales planning, this has an impact on the other plans. If there are several change iterations in the planning process, this leads to a high level of manual effort, which can be highly prone to errors.

The SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) offers, among other things, a holistic planning tool in which (planning) data from different departments can be brought together. Partial planning in SAC can be linked with each other and planning can be automated in this way. Changes in cost centre planning can thus also be recorded directly as an effect in the profit and loss account - without manual change effort. This results in a reduced, because automated, planning phase.

5.1 Which transactions can be mapped within a financial plan?

Within the SAC, the following financial planning processes can be mapped:

• Cost centre planning
• Project planning
• Product cost planning
• Sales and profit planning
• P&L, balance sheet and cash flow planning

These can also be delivered predefined by SAP as so-called Business Content.

Via the calendar in the SAC, tasks can be assigned, rejected or approved - e.g. between planner and inspector. In this way, (planning) processes and tasks can be controlled directly in SAC. In addition, e-mails are automatically sent to processors and reviewers. This reduces the need for coordination and the progress of the planning process can be monitored at all times.

Due to the full integration of SAC with S/4 HANA, plan data can be exchanged between the two systems. Thus, S/4 data can first be imported into SAC and plan results exported back.

Another advantage of SAC is that non-SAP databases can be connected or even Excel files can be integrated.

5.2 How long does it take to introduce my financial planning to the SAC? 

The implementation time depends on the one hand on the system infrastructure in the company and on the other hand on the individual requirements placed on the financial planning solution.

With regard to the infrastructure, a distinction is made as to whether an SAP product is already in use in the company (e.g. S/4), whether there is already an existing planning tool, or whether neither an SAP product nor a planning tool is available.

In the first case, one to three months can be sufficient; if no SAP product is in use in the company and no planning solution, three to six months must be expected. However, as individual as companies are, so are their needs and expectations of a planning solution. It is therefore all the more important to take these into account when planning the introduction period.