Why CFOs need to make different decisions today

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602 addresses the current challenges of modern CFOs: on the one hand, they need to deliver financial statements faster, more transparently and with greater audit compliance – despite increasing regulatory requirements and growing data complexity. On the other hand, the Management Board, Supervisory Board and capital market expect a robust, consistent set of figures that does not require manual corrections or room for interpretation.

In many organizations, however, a familiar pattern emerges: too many manual journal entries, dependencies on individuals, rules that are difficult to understand and a high susceptibility to errors – especially in the last few days before the financial statements are released. Against this backdrop, choosing the right consolidation system becomes a strategic decision. CFOs need solutions that enable clear governance, automate processes, minimize risks and withstand audit pressure.

The new SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Release 2602 (February 2026) addresses precisely these challenges. It brings significant improvements that noticeably reduce the burden on the monthly and consolidated financial statements and increase the controllability of Group reporting. Below you will find the most important new features – comprehensible, practical and with a focus on the specific added value for CFOs and specialist departments.

1) Transaction-based capital consolidation for dividend distributions

Dividend distributions are one of the most technically challenging processes in the consolidated financial statements, as they involve both intragroup elimination and the correct adjustment of minority interests. In many organizations, these steps have so far been separated from each other, resulting in manual side calculations, Excel-based reconciliations and recurring queries from the local units. This not only causes delays in critical closing phases, but also increases the risk of manual intervention.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602 now combines these steps into one consistent process. The system automatically derives both the elimination of dividends and the adjustment of minority interests from the same reporting data. This increases technical stringency, reduces scope for interpretation and ensures that results are immediately comprehensible. The automation of this end-to-end process noticeably relieves Group Accounting and improves the quality of the financial statements.

Your business advantage:

• Fewer manual correction loops in critical closing phases
• Less coordination effort between head office and local units
• Significant increase in transparency and traceability for internal and external audits

2) Long texts for error messages when importing/exporting settings

Incorrect imports or exports of settings are among the typical causes of delays in group reporting – especially during test cycles, release upgrades or rollouts. Previously, however, the system often only provided very brief error messages that gave little information about the actual cause. Business users often had to painstakingly reconstruct where a regression, value inconsistency or rule interpretation failed, which often led to escalations between the business department and IT.

With SAP Public Cloud Release 2602, SAP is providing comprehensive long texts for error messages for the first time. These describe in detail which parameter, which rule or which selection triggered the error and where exactly the cause lies. This eliminates the need for reverse engineering and allows specialist teams to analyze and resolve problems where they occur – without detours and without trial-and-error loops.

Especially in labor-intensive phases such as implementations or template rollouts, this leads to significantly more stability and shorter response times.

Your business advantage:

• Faster and more targeted troubleshooting
• Fewer escalations to IT or external teams
• Greater stability and efficiency in test and upgrade processes

3) Improvements for automatic bookings – more governance and efficiency

Automatic postings are a central component for efficient consolidation processes. At the same time, their transparency is crucial for governance and auditability.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602 significantly strengthens this area by substantially improving the transparency and controllability of automatic postings. The logs have been extended so that it is now possible to trace in detail which investment units underlie which results. In addition, posting lines within posting rules can be specifically copied, which considerably simplifies the maintenance of similar or slightly varying logics.

Navigation has also been optimized: Users can now jump directly from rule maintenance to professionally and technically related applications without having to laboriously navigate through several menu items. One of the most effective new features is the extended where-used list, which shows transparently where rules, variables, filters and rule groups are used. This improves governance and allows adjustments to be made much more securely.

Your business advantage:

• Faster assessment of the impact of planned changes
• Reduced risk of unintended side effects
• More transparency and a clear audit trail for internal and external auditors

4) New function: User-defined consolidation methods

One of the most important innovations in Release 2602 is the ability to define your own consolidation methods and flexibly assign consolidation units. Previously, different business scenarios often had to be mapped with complex exception logic in sets of rules.

With 2602, consolidation-specific logics can now be modeled cleanly by clearly separating methods and rules.

Your business advantage:

• Clear structure instead of historically grown special logics
• Less complexity in standard care
• Greater scalability with a growing Group structure
• Improved comprehensibility for new team members and auditors

Conclusion: SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602 delivers tangible added value for the monthly and consolidated financial statements

The release upgrade 2602 brings exactly the improvements that CFOs and Group Reporting teams need in their day-to-day work: more automation, more transparency, more governance and clearer modeling of consolidation logic.

In concrete terms, you benefit from:

• Automated treatment of dividends including minority interests
• Improved error message quality during import/export
• More transparency and efficiency with automatic bookings
• Flexible, user-defined consolidation methods

In this way, SAP helps companies to close deals faster and more securely – and at the same time reduces the manual effort that often arises shortly before the deal is released.

Want to understand the impact of Release 2602 on your closing process?

We are happy to support you with two coordinated formats that provide you with a sound basis for decision-making:

• a no-obligation initial meeting in which we discuss your current situation, typical challenges in Group reporting and potential starting points for improvements,
• as well as a scoping workshop that systematically assesses whether SAP Group Reporting Public Cloud is a good fit for your company, which requirements are covered and where potential expansion or customization needs exist.

Feel free to contact us – we will accompany you on the way to modern, efficient and auditable consolidated financial statements.