SAP lets you swap tired spreadsheets for real-time finance data with RealSpend

SAP has introduced a mobile app that lets managers swap aging spreadsheets for up-to-date data on budgets and spending.

SAP RealSpend pulls data from core financial reporting systems, giving that information straight to line managers via the HANA Cloud Platform, allowing them to get clear and quick insight into their companies’ spending.

One customer, sugar refining firm ASR Group International, is using the new app in conjunction with SAP’s revamped Business Suite, S/4 HANA.

ASR’s chief financial officer, Greg Smith, said: “Every company has to manage expenses to be successful. SAP RealSpend enables our company to employ expense management in a real-time environment — all enabled by our adoption of SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA Finance.”

Cost centre managers can use the tool to analyse past spends and future spends, and forecast budgets by factoring in expected costs of divisions like sales, marketing, travel, hiring and infrastructure.

Thack Brown, SAP’s general manager and global head of line of business finance, said: “This app uses the cloud to innovate on top of our finance core and provides line managers and others with budget accountability the tools they need to make sound spending management a real-time activity across the entire enterprise.”

RealSpend marks the creation of one of the first SAP apps to connect directly to S/4 HANA’s finance solution in real-time, without having to replicate data, according to SAP.

It also works with other data from SAP products and third-party products, said SAP.

Cloud Pro's news editor Joe Curtis is on site SAP Sapphire all week. Follow him on Twitter for live updates from the show