Updated as SAP S/4HANA 2020
This is the third part of a blog post called "What you should know about controlling in S/4HANA". Here you may find Part 1 and Part 2
In my experience, during an S/4HANA implementation, there are usually though questions on the table regarding Controlling Reporting.
Aim of this blog post is to try to analyze these questions one by one and possibly give replies.
Will our ECC Reporting still be available?
Thanks to the mechanism of compatibility view the majority of ECC reports will continue to work in S/4HANA, despite that my personal opinion is that continuing to use only the old ECC reporting in S/4HANA would be in the long period a pity.
Old reports may not benefit of the Universal Journal, in fact:
There are anyway some reports for example cost element reporting that will not continue to work. Please read OSS 2349297 to learn about details.
How our reporting should evolve in S/4HANA?
If you are in S/4 you should try to use new Fiori Apps as much as you can. Of course beside classical ECC reporting and Fiori there are also other possibilities in reporting. If you want to know more I strongly suggest to have a look to this OSS note’s attachment.
If this should not be a problem for net new S/4 customers, it may come a bit more difficult for customers using ECC before. The reason for that is that business users may be reluctant to use Fiori cause they are happy about the old ECC Controlling Reporting.
Well, I think I explained already in the first and second part of this blog the Controlling’s advantage in S/4HANA, so there’s no other way, if business users are interested to them, they need to leave some of the old reporting.
I am talking about “some ECC reporting”, I am not saying Business Users will be pushed to substitute completely ECC Reporting with FIORI, because as I write there still some parts of controlling reports that are not reflected in standard FIORI apps. As OSS note 2349297 says:
“For the cost centers there are not yet Fiori apps for reporting on target costs, variance categories, and intercompany eliminations. For the internal orders and projects, there are not yet Fiori apps for reporting on work in process or results analysis. For the sales orders, there are not yet Fiori apps for reporting on cost estimates or results analysis. For these reporting tasks, you will need to continue to use Report Writer/Painter or drill-down reports as appropriate.”
From one side business users want to be sure to find their reports in FIORI, from another point of view they have now complete new concepts in FIORI. Compared to other business users, CO users are quite lucky because a high quantity of old CO ECC reports have been brought to Fiori just as an HTML version of the old report. If in most of the cases it is possible to find a corresponding Controlling Fiori app for CO reports, working on the other way round (searching the ECC report related to FIORI apps) may not be always possible. The reason for that is the development of new FIORI apps dedicated to Controlling Business Users.
Where do we start if we want to use Controlling apps in S/4?
If you are converting to S/4 and your business users are looking for their reports, but even if you are starting a new S/4 implementation, you may want to start from the “select apps from application component” in Fiori Apps Library.
So, if you start from FIORIAPPSLIBRARY and you select All apps for SAP S/4HANA
You may want to search by application component. The good thing about this library is that you can immediately see pictures on how the app is designed and what are its main characteristic.
And scroll down until you find the most suitable for you.
In some cases not only reports but even ECC transactions have a dedicated FIORI APP, in this case you can also search for the specific transaction code in the FIORI APPS LIBRARY.
For example let’s take KS03, Cost Center visualization.
Following this example for a bit, if you analyze to this app you will notice that it contains new fields related to Budget availability control.
In fact in S/4HANA from Release 1909 it is possible to check budget availability control in cost centers (if you want to know more about this possibility just go here), but please note that these fields will not be present in the GUI transaction, and this is an example of what I was trying to describe before.
Will the new S/4HANA functionalities be available in ECC reporting? In most of the cases to report results from new S/4HANA functionalities you will need to use FIORI. So please take this aspect in consideration when new functionalities are analyzed.
Please also note that going in the APP’s technical details, you will find the Business Role that you must assign to the user to allow him to use the APP.
My Favorite roles are:
If you want to search a list of apps by Role:
In particular the Sales Accountant role second role gives me the possibility to run the Market Segment APP
When I want to show Controlling FIORI possibilities to a business user, I usually start from this app. The good thing about this APP is the possibility to show the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) concept in S/4.
When I started my SAP career (in the past century ?), my first junior role was related to R/3 Reporting. I had to show users how to create a report with report painter and report writer, and I remember one of the concept highlighted in the slides I had was the possibility to build a report following the concept of moving columns and rows and building your report immediately before executing it. But to be honest this concept was not particularly attractive for the business users cause they had no possibility to modify their reports after the execution and they had to use Report Painter or even Report writers transactions to decide the report structure in advance.
Now with this FIORI APP and thanks to the Universal Journal Concept, it is quite easy to decide what to see in columns and rows by dragging and dropping fields “on the fly”. And as said in the part one and part two of this blog post, this new concept represents an undoubtful advantage comparing to the reporting possibilities they had before in ECC Controlling (for example with cost centers, Orders, Profit centers, Or COPA reports)
if you want to have visual details please have a look here
The mentioned video is contained in the SAP HELP here
Besides Fiori what kind of reporting options do we have?
As per OSS 2956071 attachment, from a technology point of view, besides classical reporting there are various kind of reporting alternatives (Fiori, Design Studio, Webdynpro and SAP Analytics Cloud that is anyway a cloud solution). Since the attached PDF to the OSS note is very detailed please have a look at it to obtain more information.
Moreover please do not forget FIORI is a good option to read ACDOCP planning data.
As stated in part 2 if this blog post, old planning functionalities will continue to work but they will not write in ACDOCP table. So, depending on the requirements you have, you may want to Use of SAC (SAP Analytics Cloud) or BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation). In this case a good option to check actual and planning data may still be FIORI.
If you want to know more about FIORI I strongly suggest to read this community.
I hope I gave you a good overview of the main topics to be analyzed when you think about Controlling Reporting with FIORI. I am conscious I did not cover everything but at least I think I have given a start point on the topic.
As usual what I wrote is based on my experience, if you have any question or comment or correction proposal I am here to read them.
Brought to you by SAP S/4HANA RIG.
This is the third part of a blog post called "What you should know about controlling in S/4HANA". Here you may find Part 1 and Part 2
In my experience, during an S/4HANA implementation, there are usually though questions on the table regarding Controlling Reporting.
- Will our ECC Reporting still be available?
- How our reporting should evolve in S/4HANA?
- Where do we start if we want to use Controlling Apps in S/4HANA?
- Besides Fiori what kind of reporting options do we have?
Aim of this blog post is to try to analyze these questions one by one and possibly give replies.
Will our ECC Reporting still be available?
Thanks to the mechanism of compatibility view the majority of ECC reports will continue to work in S/4HANA, despite that my personal opinion is that continuing to use only the old ECC reporting in S/4HANA would be in the long period a pity.
Old reports may not benefit of the Universal Journal, in fact:
- Technically they will be based on compatibility views and aggregate data on the fly from the universal Journal.
- Functionally they will not be able to show postings coming from previously mentioned S/4HANA new functionalities as for example Predictive Accounting, Attributed COPA and so on.
There are anyway some reports for example cost element reporting that will not continue to work. Please read OSS 2349297 to learn about details.
How our reporting should evolve in S/4HANA?
If you are in S/4 you should try to use new Fiori Apps as much as you can. Of course beside classical ECC reporting and Fiori there are also other possibilities in reporting. If you want to know more I strongly suggest to have a look to this OSS note’s attachment.
If this should not be a problem for net new S/4 customers, it may come a bit more difficult for customers using ECC before. The reason for that is that business users may be reluctant to use Fiori cause they are happy about the old ECC Controlling Reporting.
Well, I think I explained already in the first and second part of this blog the Controlling’s advantage in S/4HANA, so there’s no other way, if business users are interested to them, they need to leave some of the old reporting.
I am talking about “some ECC reporting”, I am not saying Business Users will be pushed to substitute completely ECC Reporting with FIORI, because as I write there still some parts of controlling reports that are not reflected in standard FIORI apps. As OSS note 2349297 says:
“For the cost centers there are not yet Fiori apps for reporting on target costs, variance categories, and intercompany eliminations. For the internal orders and projects, there are not yet Fiori apps for reporting on work in process or results analysis. For the sales orders, there are not yet Fiori apps for reporting on cost estimates or results analysis. For these reporting tasks, you will need to continue to use Report Writer/Painter or drill-down reports as appropriate.”
From one side business users want to be sure to find their reports in FIORI, from another point of view they have now complete new concepts in FIORI. Compared to other business users, CO users are quite lucky because a high quantity of old CO ECC reports have been brought to Fiori just as an HTML version of the old report. If in most of the cases it is possible to find a corresponding Controlling Fiori app for CO reports, working on the other way round (searching the ECC report related to FIORI apps) may not be always possible. The reason for that is the development of new FIORI apps dedicated to Controlling Business Users.
Where do we start if we want to use Controlling apps in S/4?
If you are converting to S/4 and your business users are looking for their reports, but even if you are starting a new S/4 implementation, you may want to start from the “select apps from application component” in Fiori Apps Library.
So, if you start from FIORIAPPSLIBRARY and you select All apps for SAP S/4HANA
You may want to search by application component. The good thing about this library is that you can immediately see pictures on how the app is designed and what are its main characteristic.
And scroll down until you find the most suitable for you.
In some cases not only reports but even ECC transactions have a dedicated FIORI APP, in this case you can also search for the specific transaction code in the FIORI APPS LIBRARY.
For example let’s take KS03, Cost Center visualization.
Following this example for a bit, if you analyze to this app you will notice that it contains new fields related to Budget availability control.
In fact in S/4HANA from Release 1909 it is possible to check budget availability control in cost centers (if you want to know more about this possibility just go here), but please note that these fields will not be present in the GUI transaction, and this is an example of what I was trying to describe before.
Will the new S/4HANA functionalities be available in ECC reporting? In most of the cases to report results from new S/4HANA functionalities you will need to use FIORI. So please take this aspect in consideration when new functionalities are analyzed.
Please also note that going in the APP’s technical details, you will find the Business Role that you must assign to the user to allow him to use the APP.
My Favorite roles are:
- SAP_BR_OVERHEAD_ACCOUNTANT
- SAP_BR_SALES_ACCOUNTANT
If you want to search a list of apps by Role:
In particular the Sales Accountant role second role gives me the possibility to run the Market Segment APP
When I want to show Controlling FIORI possibilities to a business user, I usually start from this app. The good thing about this APP is the possibility to show the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) concept in S/4.
When I started my SAP career (in the past century ?), my first junior role was related to R/3 Reporting. I had to show users how to create a report with report painter and report writer, and I remember one of the concept highlighted in the slides I had was the possibility to build a report following the concept of moving columns and rows and building your report immediately before executing it. But to be honest this concept was not particularly attractive for the business users cause they had no possibility to modify their reports after the execution and they had to use Report Painter or even Report writers transactions to decide the report structure in advance.
Now with this FIORI APP and thanks to the Universal Journal Concept, it is quite easy to decide what to see in columns and rows by dragging and dropping fields “on the fly”. And as said in the part one and part two of this blog post, this new concept represents an undoubtful advantage comparing to the reporting possibilities they had before in ECC Controlling (for example with cost centers, Orders, Profit centers, Or COPA reports)
if you want to have visual details please have a look here
The mentioned video is contained in the SAP HELP here
Besides Fiori what kind of reporting options do we have?
As per OSS 2956071 attachment, from a technology point of view, besides classical reporting there are various kind of reporting alternatives (Fiori, Design Studio, Webdynpro and SAP Analytics Cloud that is anyway a cloud solution). Since the attached PDF to the OSS note is very detailed please have a look at it to obtain more information.
Moreover please do not forget FIORI is a good option to read ACDOCP planning data.
As stated in part 2 if this blog post, old planning functionalities will continue to work but they will not write in ACDOCP table. So, depending on the requirements you have, you may want to Use of SAC (SAP Analytics Cloud) or BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation). In this case a good option to check actual and planning data may still be FIORI.
If you want to know more about FIORI I strongly suggest to read this community.
I hope I gave you a good overview of the main topics to be analyzed when you think about Controlling Reporting with FIORI. I am conscious I did not cover everything but at least I think I have given a start point on the topic.
As usual what I wrote is based on my experience, if you have any question or comment or correction proposal I am here to read them.
Brought to you by SAP S/4HANA RIG.
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