Describing the Available Reporting Solutions

With SAP S/4HANA, you have several options for reporting. All options can also be used in combination.

At any time of the process, it’s possible to use SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics reports, that is, perform standard reporting using SAP Fiori apps at the consolidation unit or group level.

Embedded analytics are available by default and allow drill-down from group reporting into accounting.

Embedded analytics also include the following features:

• Convenient reporting option from the same system.
• You can add your own reports.
• Delivered cash flow and comprehensive income reports.
• Export to Excel pivot tables.

You can also connect to SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office with your SAP S/4HANA system and create, for example, a P&L worksheet in the SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office Workbook.

SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office workbooks can also be launched from the SAP Fiori launchpad.

Additional features include:

• Array-based reports
• Cell-based reports

All group reporting CDS (Core Data Services) views are available including reporting rules for cash flow and other comprehensive income.

The following features are not available for SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system:

• Planning: It’s not possible to enter any plan data.
• Comments: Currently, it is not possible to save or add comments to your cells.

SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) comes with live and import-based content for group reporting.

Likewise, SAC can also be used for generating dashboard reports.

Using SAC for reporting, the local accounting and group accounting data is accessed using a live connection. This means that the data is read directly from the corresponding tables at runtime.

SAC contains the following features:

• Completed reports are available as part of the delivered content.
• SAC reporting stories can be launched from the SAP Fiori launchpad
• SAP offers embedded SAC stories within SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.

This covers already a lot of dashboarding use cases.

The approach to embed stories and create dashboards and visualizations using SAC continues to stay a strategic use case, as SAC combines business intelligence, augmented and predictive analytics, and planning capabilities into one cloud environment.

In addition, there are two more reporting scenarios worth diving into:

The Group Financial Statement review booklet is a Fiori application for group accountants, to achieve more transparency in group financial statements. Group accountants need to monitor and validate multiple aspects of the financial statements during the closing process.

Typically, this work is done under high time pressure with many recurring validation tasks on aggregated group data, both top-down as well as bottom-up.

TheGroup Financial Statement Review Booklet provides out-of-the-box business pages and guidance to help to streamline the group close. It contains:

• predefined page layouts help to answer typical business questions on elements such as balance sheet, profit and loss, cash flow statement or statement of changes in equity.
• guided navigation helps to analyze predefined variances and validate the underlying group data.
• full transparency into the data with an intuitive UX including multi-dimensional analysis, and drill-through the more granular accounting line item.

The preparation of regulatory disclosures describes the final step of consolidation reporting. This is done with the help of SAP Disclosure Management in combination with SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting.

SAP Disclosure Management based on data from SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting automates the creation, electronic submission, and publication of statutory financial statements, financial reports, annual reports, embedded reports, including XBRL or iXBRL electronic reports.

The advantages of using SAP Disclosure Management in conjunction with SAP S/4HANA Cloud for group reporting include:

1. Creation of a timely, accurate, risk-free, and fully automated main closing process.
2. Acceleration of the main close with better control while reducing compliance costs.
3. Faster processing and flexibility.
4. Fostering and simplifying team collaboration.