SAP S/4 Finance blog series-2-Reporting options with COPA as use case

Hi Guys,

It has been some time since my first blog ( SAP Simple Finance blog series-1-Parallel Accou… | SCN ) , I take this second blog to talk about how reporting has changed  / enhanced in S4 HANA. We will take COPA / Profitability analysis as our use case for this example.

With S/4 HANA and OLAP and OLTP in single system, SAP has enabled a lot of simplification in reporting. There are many tools and modes of usage available. Fiori app and HANA live are also a great way to analyze data realtime. With all these options, a Finance functional consultant should be aware of these options and know when to use which option to cater to his clients need. We hope to take the first step in this regard.

We will take the case of Account based COPA for this example as that is the recommended approach by SAP for COPA.

COPA reporting previously 😐

COPA reports were mainly driven from KE30 report painter reports or from BW – BO based reports. These reports were mainly fixed in format and would expect user to be using SAP gui in some form or other. The ability to analyze based on multiple dimensions was not available off the shelf for KE30 reports.

There was also a delay in data replication in case the reports are being accessed from BW system. SAP HANA’s first use case to have COPA reporting enabled in HANA system and would allow faster and more detailed analysis of the data.

So whats new in S/4 HANA

S/4 HANA combines OLAP and OLTP system and enables a single source of truth. It has an inbuilt BI and BW content which can be used for reporting purpose.

So we will list out the various options that are available to report out of S/4 HANA, Some of these may require additional licenses , which you need to check.

1. SAP Fiori Apps

If you are using S/4 HANA it makes a lot of sense to use various Fiori apps provided by SAP. There are 3 main apps in the area of Profitability reporting:-

• Net Margin Analysis
• Margin Analysis
• Profit Margin

Lets take example of Margin Analysis

When you run this app, you will have option to analyze margin based on customer, segment, product and for various period per Controlling Area

With this you can create analysis path and it is almost like drilldown facility 🙂 🙂

So with this app an user can view the profit margin based on product, customer and market segment.

This app requires a fixed cost element groups created for Revenue , Direct Cost, Indirect cost as shown in the figure below This

This has an implication and will fix the Cost element group which can be used and hence reduce user’s ability to analyze the based on different GL accounts.

There are other apps offered in the GL catalog or as part of Integrated Business Planning ( we will have couple of blog on IBP later  🙂 )

Example- P&L plan actual shown below:-

As seen in the left hand side you can choose the various dimensions like Customer Group , Customer, etc to get the P&L and Margin for the required dimension.

Other such apps are- Profit Center Plan actual,Profit Center actual, Trial balance analysis etc.

These are also handy to analyze profit margin but they will not have the COPA dimension and will have standard dimension only ( unless enhanced )

2. Using Analysis for Office tool

AO is a great tool to analyze data and offers a lot of flexibility in report. There are 3 standard query available to analyze COPA data on it as shown below

With these query you can create any layout and analyze the details per all your COPA dimensions

We can select any field in the excel layout and analyze the figures according to it.

This offers a lot of flexibility and should be used by someone who needs to do a lot of slicing and dicing of COPA data.

3. HANA Live content

SAP HANA live can be used to get a browser based access to data and standard query. These query can provide a set of information in standard format

4. And other options 😆

There are other options which can be used like SAP Lumira ( which also has a Fiori app ) or custom report by Design studio.

Adding one of the screenshot from demo content, But I haven’t got a chance to use it so far.

To use Lumira you need to setup the Lumira tool and then enable the Fiori app for Lumira.

All these options so far are in addition to our good old KE30 report and reports out of BW-BO. 😎 😎

So what does all these mean

With greater options comes greater responsibility  ( twisted the dialog a bit 😛 )  so the SFIN consultant working in space of Finance should work on gathering enough requirement from Client on the type of tool and use case for the tool

Putting a short table with modes of usage and flexibility of reporting as criteria. This is just a personal View

Hope this blog is useful and will help you guys plan the reporting better and with more depth for your client.

Do let me know your feedback, In the next blog we will talk about IBP and its usage.

PS-Simple Finance is changed to S/4 Finance and hence the change in the blog name 😉

Next blog on IBP setup

SAP S/4 Finance blog series-3-SAP Integrated Business planning-Overview & Setup

Regards

Rishab

Other blogs in the series:-

SAP Appendix ledger

SAP Simple Finance blog series-1-Parallel Accounting with multiple Ledger & Extension (Appendix )Ledger Usage

CO-FI initial setup

SAP S/4 Finance blog series-4-Changes in Controlling & how to use them

SAP S/4 1511 changes in details

S/4 Finance- Blog series-6- 1511 changes in details

S/4 Finance- Blog series-5- 1511 and its details

SAP IBP Solution

SAP S/4 Finance blog series-3-SAP Integrated Business planning-Overview & Setup