Overview of SAP FICO

SAP FICO which stands for SAP Financial Accounting (FI) and Controlling (CO) is the Finance and Cost controlling module of the SAP ERP. Its robust nature and the ability to handle any financial and accounting challenges in an organization makes it stand out from any other financial ERP platform in the market. It handles almost all business process encountered in various industries. It is one of the very important and widely implemented modules in SAP.

SAP FI

As mentioned earlier, the SAP FICO is a cluster of two sub-modules called SAP FI and SAP CO. SAP FI stands for Financial Accounting and it is one of the important modules of SAP ERP. It is used to store the financial data of an organization. SAP FI helps to analyze the financial conditions of a company in the market. It can integrate with other SAP modules like SAP SD, SAP PP, SAP MM, SAP SCM, etc.

There are many components available in the SAP FI submodule. They are,

• Finance Accounting General Ledger.
• Finance Accounting Accounts Receivable and Payable.
• Finance Accounting Asset Accounting.
• Finance Accounting Bank Accounting.
• Finance Accounting Travel Management.
• Finance Accounting Fund Management.
• Finance Accounting Legal Consolidation.

Where Do We Use SAP FI?

SAP FI module enables you to manage financial accounting data within an international framework of multiple companies, currencies, and languages. SAP FI module mainly deals with the following financial components −

• Fixed asset
• Accrual
• Cash journal
• Accounts receivable and payable
• Inventory
• Tax accounting
• General ledger
• Fast close functions
• Financial statements
• Parallel valuations
• Master data governance

SAP FI consultants are mainly responsible for implementing Financial Accounting and Cost Accounting with SAP ERP Financials.

SAP CO (Controlling)

Another important half of SAP FICO module is the SAP Controlling (CO). This submodule also plays a vital role in helping the business enabling supports coordination, monitoring, and optimization of all the processes in an organization. SAP CO involves recording both the consumption of production factors and the services provided by an organization. SAP CO includes managing and configuring master data that covers cost and profit centers, internal orders, and other cost elements and functional areas.

The ultimate aim of SAP controlling module is planning. The effective algorithm helps the business to evaluate the variances by matching the actual data with business plan data and thus enables you to control business flows in your organization.

SAP CO Integration with SAP FI

Though SAP CO and SAP FI modules are independent sub-modules in the SAP ERP system, the data flow between these components takes place very frequently. Data flows relevant to cost flows to Controlling from Financial Accounting. At the same time, the system assigns the costs and revenues to different CO account assignment objects, such as cost centers, business processes, projects or orders.