22/10/2021 13:44 An Introduction To Group Reporting in SAP

What is Group Reporting in SAP S/4HANA?

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SAP Training Blog (/blog) › SAP (/blog/sap) › What is Group Reporting in SAP S/4HANA?
(https://www.michaelmanagement.com/blog/sap/an-introduction-to-group-reporting-in-sap)

3/9/2021 by Daniel  Mateo  Posted in SAP (/blog/sap)

SAP Group Reporting is the new consolidation solution for SAP on the S/4HANA platform
delivered on the 1809 release (https://www.michaelmanagement.com/sap-access-s4hana-
1809.asp). It provides functions for group accounting and management reporting by
supporting process control, data collection, data quality control, consolidation, and
reporting.

SAP positions Group Reporting as their new, strategic solution for all customers who want
a future-oriented, complete solution for consolidation. Much is invested in the  SAP
S/4HANA 2020 release in giving this new solution all the functionality, power, and
experience of all other SAP consolidation solutions. It is available as a cloud and in an on-
premise version, and it runs directly on the financial data in the S/4HANA
(https://www.michaelmanagement.com/browse?sap-system=s4hana) system.

What Are The Main Features?

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The new Group Reporting tool provides a smooth process between the local and group
closing activities since both are in the same database within SAP S/4HANA. It is well-
integrated with SAP Analytics Cloud (https://www.michaelmanagement.com/browse?
q=SAP%20Cloud) and offers the following capabilities:

Direct access to legal and management accounting from the universal journal, without
needing an ETL or data warehousing tool to transfer the financial records from the
transaction system to the consolidation system.

Customers can perform consolidation and planning activities in a single application and
in real-time, having a detailed perspective of the business at any point in the period.
That speeds up the closing process to provide more time to analyze and make business
decisions upon the results.

Introduces Financial Statement (FS) Items, replacing the Group Chart of Accounts. The
setup and maintenance of FS Items are managed inside Group Reporting, which means
the Operating Chart of Accounts is not affected.

Rule-based eliminations, validations, and reports by desired breakdown items are

shared for both local and group closing activities.

Fully enabled drill-down reporting to the line-items of the entity, leveraging all details of
the underlying Universal Journal, having a significant granularity of data, and a clear
roadmap for integration with SAP Disclosure Management.

System Integration

If part of the organization is not running within the S/4HANA Finance system, the data can
be loaded via the SAP Group Reporting Data Collection module. It is an additional
Cloud-based Data Collection application delivered on the SAP Cloud Platform, with native
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integration to S/4 HANA Group Reporting. It helps to access data that is not in S/4HANA
and for data Transformation.

If you want to visualize and present the figures or add advanced planning & forecasting,
the system connects directly to the SAP Analytics Cloud. This Cloud solution provides
deep insights into the business using reporting and data visualization, which will help in
making better decisions. With live data connections, the integration between SAP
S/4HANA Finance for group reporting and SAP Analytics Cloud enables business analysis
at a group or corporate level without data replication.

There is a roadmap to connect SAP group reporting to SAP Disclosure Management to

help you deliver the final stage reporting. SAP Disclosure Management is designed to
produce, fill, and publish your financial statements and reports, with embedded workflow,
collaborative and audit features.

Basic Flow

SAP Group Reporting obtains the financial records directly from the SAP S/4HANA system,
feasibly supplemented with external data via API or manual data entry. After this, the data
is validated in accordance with the defined requirements. Followed by a currency
conversion, manual journal entries, and consolidation to the group structure. This
consolidation can take place as a matrix, for example by an  entity, but can also
consolidate cost centers over the same data; including inter-company and equity
eliminations.

At any time of that process, it is possible to generate reports at the consolidation unit or
group level using SAP Group Reporting standard reports, SAP Analytics Cloud, Disclosure
Management, Embedded Analytics, or Analysis for Office. A reporting solution is available
for each requirement. 
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SAP Group Reporting Vs SAP BPC

Not so long ago, SAP released the latest version of SAP BPC
(https://www.michaelmanagement.com/browse?q=SAP%20BPC): SAP BPC 11.1 for
BW4/HANA. With SAP Group Reporting another new SAP solution for consolidation is
available for the customers. Then, many of them can consider which solution would fit
best for their organizations. Although the answer is not always straightforward, the
following recommendation can be taken into consideration for most organizations:

If the organization has already implemented SAP S/4HANA Finance

(https://www.michaelmanagement.com/browse?q=Finance&sap-system=s4hana), and
that is also the most important source for the financial records: SAP Group Reporting,
often combined with SAP Analytics Cloud is a good option.

If there are a large number of source systems and it is desired for an on-premise
solution for consolidation and planning/budgeting: SAP BPC 11 would be a good
solution.

For a more in-depth look at Group Reporting, check out the next blog in this series about
configuration and master data elements
(https://www.michaelmanagement.com/blog/sap/configuration-and-master-data-in-sap-
group-reporting).

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Daniel  Mateo

SAP S/4HANA Project Lead with over 13 years in financial accounting and controlling modules (FICO);
focused on international projects. Holding several professional certifications such as SAP Activate
Project Manager, SAP S/4HANA Financial Accounting, Project Manager Professional (PMP), ITIL
Foundation, Professional Scrum Master, among others. Strong functional and technical knowledge in
MM, SD, S/4HANA, Machine Learning, SAP Leonardo, ABAP, AIF, HCI, PO, and Agile methodologies.

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