Reporting takes an important place in the role of a financial accounting department. At the end of the day, all the transactions that are recorded throughout a given time period will have to be summarized in reports and conveniently analyzed.
Other reports are mainly used internally by the company and can correspond to recurring standard evaluations or custom one-time queries. For example, an industrial company may analyze its debt aging by using as little as three aging buckets, for short, medium, and long-term debt. On the other hand, a financial institution may require a more detailed analysis, using over a dozen aging buckets (Due today, next day, current week, next week, and so on).
SAP S/4HANA offers the opportunity to use standard embedded reports without any modification, but it is also possible to customize and adapt them to different customer’s specific needs. Moreover, depending on the version installed, it is also possible to create brand new reports tailored to the very individual requirements of each customer.
In all cases, a key feature in reporting is the drill-down ability to access the original line items from the balance reports.
SAP S/4HANA provides two key apps for the Financial Statements:
- Balance Sheet/Income Statement
- Cash Flow Statement
The header of the Balance Sheet/Income Statement app enables you to filter and select the data to display. For example, it is possible to select:
- The Ledger: Depending on the Accounting principle to query
- The Financial Statement Version: Indicates the account hierarchy to use, depending on legal or business requirements
- The Statement Type: Allows you to make comparisons of the selected data, for example, against a previous period or the plan data.
The Adapt Filters functionality enables adding further data selection criteria, for example:
- Including Zero-Balance Accounts
- Account Display (to switch between standard and alternative accounts)
- Segment or Profit Center
The displayed columns can be modified using the Personalization button. For reuse, the modified View can also be saved.
For sharing or further analysis, it is also possible to export the data to PDF format.
If the current selection and display settings are going to be reused, it is possible to save them by using the Save as Tile which is available in the Share button.
Once this report is executed, it is possible to browse through it and access several other apps, including the drill-down to the document line-item level:
Display G/L Account Balances
Display Line Items in General Ledger
As a conclusion, Jill has determined that the Balance Sheet/Income statement app settings can be used to generate a balance sheet at segment level as required by the board. Thus, there is no need to develop a new report, and her colleague can continue preparing the board meeting without further assistance. Let’s take a closer look at the different reporting functions.
Show Different Reporting Functions
Now, let's see an exercise on how to generate different reports
