Utility Financials Accelerator delivers numerous unique features for utility companies that maintain SAP environments. Contact us for a demonstration.
Key Features
- Trace Assurance ensures that you have an error-free trace every month. One of the most time-consuming tasks during the monthly close is correcting those nagging trace errors. This can take multiple runs and many hours manually correcting each error. Using HPC’s UFA, you’ll eliminate this burden completely. Trace Assurance reduces your workload and eliminates the errors that are inherent in manual corrections. So how do we do it? We’ve discovered a failsafe method to account for every dollar in the regulatory range, even for sending cost centers that don’t charge out any time. Our proven UFA solution has resulted in best-in-class closing timelines and makes our clients the envy of other SAP-based utility companies.
- Common Cost Allocator provides a means to allocate common administrative and general expenses, supervision and engineering expenses, and customer accounts expenses by utility code post-Controlling (CO) module. You won’t be limited by the allocations in CO any longer: with the HPC UFA Common Cost Allocator, each utility segment can be allocated common regulatory accounts in any percentage for any regulatory account. This feature helps utilities that are required to separate common costs for cost of service ratemaking and the setting of rate tariffs.
- Click-Thru Profit & Loss Financials allows you to drill down from the Net Income amount to regulatory accounts, to natural accounts, and down further to any one of thousands of supporting documents. With just a few clicks, you’ll be able to go from the highest-level income statement line item view to individual transactions and back again with ease. The standard SAP solution for regulatory reporting starts at the account level; HPC UFA takes it up several more levels to further summarize the big picture view of the P&L statement. Interactive file folders allow up to 10 summary levels for robust and interactive P&L analysis.
- Post-Closing Adjustments with Versioning provides a means to reclassify regulatory accounts for restatement of income required to prepare rate case testimony, and reclassification of accounts such as revenues, non-operating income, taxes, depreciation, and other accounts in the regulatory range. Income statement views include the report version option allowing up to 99 versions to state income. This what-if presentation tool is ideal for “as recorded” vs. “as adjusted” line item accounting typical in rate case cycles.
- Auto Assign for Regulatory ID automatically connects the dots between SAP’s Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and Finance functionality by assigning regulatory indicators to work orders based on functional locations. This makes order creation easier, faster, and more accurate than asking field forces to enter regulatory IDs manually. What’s more, HPC UFA will assure accurate and complete assignment as part of its built-in validations.
- Auto Assign for Translation helps you translate every dollar in every natural, FI-GL account correctly. Like many utility companies, you may have thousands of lines of translation. Updating and maintaining them is tedious work and prone to error. Not anymore. Our Translation Auto Assign feature covers every possible combination and makes translation maintenance far more hands-off and accurate than the standard SAP solution. It also facilitates clearing out old translation table entries and replacing them with new entries without the cumbersome front-end manual inputs in the standard solution. HPC’s Translation Auto Assign finds all the combinations of natural account and regulatory category, and then creates translations for you automatically in just a few minutes.
- Generator for Regulatory Accounts enables you to create new regulatory accounts in Microsoft Excel and upload them to the SAP FI General Ledger. You’ll save time when creating new regulatory accounts for electric, gas, water and wastewater in your DEV, QAS, and PRD clients.
- Generator for Regulatory Indicators creates the indictors required to comply with your chart of accounts. Each utility segment has functional accounts that need to be populated from internal orders, plant maintenance (PM) orders, or Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) objects. The regulatory indictor generator creates the table entries required on these objects based on the digit order of the regulatory accounts in the general ledger.
- Conversion Optimizer takes many work orders in CO and PM and retroactively assigns the correct regulatory indicators to them. Typically, utilities have thousands of charge orders in Plant Maintenance and Controlling. HPC UFA will kick-start your use of regulatory reporting by uploading new regulatory indicators to existing orders so conversion is fast and easy.
- Seamless Integration with the IS-U/FERC module through BADI and ABAP enables your SAP internal ABAP support staff and consultants to work with Utility Financials Accelerator easily since UFA is built on the SAP NetWeaver stack. Our solution is loaded onto your development client (DEV) and transported to quality assurance (QAS) and production (PRD) using routine change management processes by your Basis team.
Contact Us
To learn more about optimizing SAP FERC with HPC Utility Financials Accelerator, please contact us online or call us at (925) 831-4765.