HPC CEO to judge at Mobile Appathon Challenge 2017

On May 22, 2017, San Francisco State University will host a Mobile Appathon contest sponsored by Pacific Gas & Electric and the College of Business. Participants submit a wide variety of innovative app ideas and prototypes that address practical problems of personal, business, environmental, civic, or social significance. All SF State students are invited to join the challenge.

HPC America CEO, Jerry Cavalieri, will be one of the event's judges, joined by executives from Uber and SAP. Mr. Cavalieri, an SAP for utilities expert and former PG&E accounting manager, is on the SAP Advisory Board for SFSU's SAP Recognition Award Program, and a regular guest speaker at the College of Business.

2017 SAP SAPPHIRE - FERC on SAP S/4HANA

Utilities considering SAP^® S/4HANA can discuss SAP FERC reporting on S/4HANA with HPC America at the 2017 SAP SAPPHIRE NOW conference in Orlando, Florida from May 16-17, 2017. 
HPC will be available to answer questions about regulatory accounting on S/4; explain what HANA can (and can't) do as delivered with respect to FERC reporting; and, more broadly, outline S/4HANA upgrade strategies and best practices for financials, cost flows, and rate case support in an HANA-based system.

CO-Centric FERC for Utilities on SAP

In today's stringent regulatory environment for utilities, the SAP FERC module and its traditional "FI-centric" design are no longer adequate to meet internal and external reporting requirements. That's one of the reasons why HPC America advocates a “CO-centric” model of regulatory accounting for utilities on SAP.

The “CO” refers to the SAP Controlling module, which contains valuable cost data that our customers use to support their FERC balances in SAP (both ECC 6.0 and S/4HANA). This delivers numerous benefits that, ultimately, improve a utility’s responsiveness to regulatory inquiries and strengthen its rate case position. Learn more about CO-centric FERC reporting for utilities on SAP.

SAP FERC Clearing: Just Get Rid of It

Among a number of challenges that utilities on SAP face, the process of FERC clearing comes up in our conversations with customers from time to time.

Clearing in the FERC post program is an abbreviated form of tracing that our CEO, Jerry Cavalieri, originally created in 1994, when he was an accounting principal at Pacific Gas & Electric leading the development of the SAP FERC module with HPC America. At that time, computing power was not adequate to handle the millions of records PG&E had to process, so FERC clearing was intended to gain much-needed process efficiency.

A great deal has changed since then, and for the last decade HPC has advocated an SAP FERC configuration that does not use clearing. In fact, we urge utilities to get rid of it.

Two years ago, one Fortune 500 utility used clearing groups for Service Company cost allocations and payroll overhead distributions as a means of speeding up the FERC trace. As a result, this utility sacrificed FERC trace accuracy and data granularity—and still had to endure lengthy FERC runs each month.

To eliminate the problems associated with FERC clearing, HPC updated this customer’s regulatory accounting model to support FERC balances with primary and secondary cost data. This modern design not only removed clearing, but also mapped costs across FERC accounts more accurately, increased the transparency of costs from FERC to source objects and accounts, and cut FERC processing time by 50% or more each month.

If you're facing challenges around FERC clearing or other aspects of SAP Financials for utilities, contact HPC to discuss pragmatic, meaningful improvements to your ERP.

SAP FERC Offset Accounts: Four Reasons for Differences

When utilities on SAP implement the SAP FERC module correctly, their FERC offset account balances for the FERC post program should be zero. Utilities that see differences in their FERC offset accounts may have such a problem for one or more reasons:

1. FERC offset accounts on the Income Statement and Balance Sheet do not have the same account number, as they must in order to achieve a zero dollar balance. When set up correctly, the Balance Sheet and Income Statement for FERC and GAAP will be equal.
2. Some FERC processes, such as the direct or trace posts, may not be completing properly.
3. Users may be posting directly to FERC accounts, instead of to GAAP (natural) accounts, which disrupts the derivation model. Posting directly to the FERC accounts will give you an incomplete result in your drill down.
4. Cross-company postings can cause differences if configured and mapped incorrectly; look carefully at non-FERC-relevant companies for possible root causes.

HPC America has 20+ years of experience configuring the FERC module the right way, and can identify the source of and eliminate FERC offset account differences very easily. Contact us to learn more.

Utility Case Study: SAP Financial Reporting Improvements

Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA) provides electric, gas, water, wastewater, photovoltaic, and

telecommunication services to 50,000 customers across Arizona and New Mexico. The utility went live on the SAP ERP more than a decade ago, and recently identified an opportunity to improve the efficiency of its financial reporting processes in SAP, which typically required several days to prepare each month's board package.

NTUA engaged longtime consulting partner HPC America to automate manual steps, eliminate the need for extensive data verification and reconciliation, and enable authorized users to generate reports directly from their SAP desktops.

Read the full case study about HPC's financial reporting solution on SAP that cut NTUA's monthly process from three days down to 15 minutes, boosted staff productivity, and created more time for analysis instead of data preparation.

Espresso Tutorials eBooks Library for SAP FICO Users

HPC America is pleased to offer Espresso Tutorials library of e-books for SAP users at utility

companies. We’ve known the Espresso Tutorials team for years, and find their guides to be clear, insightful, and highly effective at helping SAP users boost their practical knowledge SAP ERP functionality.

If you're training a new SAP team, or want to provide reference materials for experienced users, Espresso Tutorials' books are a great resource. Learn more about discounted subscriptions to Espresso Tutorials online library, and specific SAP FICO titles that HPC recommends.