Effective financial data collection, consolidation, and reporting have become paramount in the dynamic landscape of modern business, where organizations operate across multiple entities and geographical regions.
Enter SAP Group Reporting — a robust solution designed to revolutionize how companies manage their financial data collection and reporting processes, enhance data accuracy, and make informed decisions in an ever-evolving global marketplace.
Keep reading to learn about the key capabilities of SAP Group Reporting, how it can help improve your company’s data reporting and consolidation process, and where our team of SAP consultants can come in to help.
What is Group Reporting in SAP?
Group Reporting in the SAP cloud platform offers advanced data collection, consolidation, and reporting capabilities to support the configuration, creation, and disclosure of consolidated reports, offering valuable insight into transactional, performance, and financial data for companies across industries.
With SAP Group Reporting tools, companies can ensure a smooth process between local and group financial closing activities and facilitate more efficient data validation and monitoring processes by keeping all data in the SAP S/4HANA database.
Understanding Group Reporting and Consolidation in SAP
SAP’s Group Reporting data collection and reporting capabilities are fully embedded into the SAP S/4HANA database, meaning whether your company decides to use it or not, it’s automatically installed in your SAP system.
This way, companies can improve the total cost of ownership by simplifying installation and setup processes and leveraging the pre-built user interfaces and security and reporting capabilities in the SAP S/4HANA platform.
Let’s take a closer look at a few of the key features of the Group Reporting solution in SAP:
1) With SAP Group Reporting, business users can perform real-time consolidation and planning activities in a single application, making it easier to gain better insight into business performance and speed up financial closing processes and consolidation.
2) SAP Group Reporting capabilities offer direct access to legal and management accounting data from the universal journal without the need for complex exchange-transfer-load (ETL) processes or data warehousing tools to transfer financial records from transaction systems to consolidation systems.
3) By leveraging fully enabled drill-down reporting capabilities, SAP Group Reporting helps business users access all details in the underlying universal journal and define a clear roadmap for seamless integration in SAP Disclosure Management.
4) The SAP Group Reporting tool offers advanced Financial Statement (FS) items to replace the Group Chart of Accounts, simplifying the setup and maintenance of FS items, managing items inside the Group Reporting system, and not affecting the Operating Chart of Accounts.
Seamless Integration with Other SAP Solutions
SAP’s Group Reporting module provides pre-built integrations with other SAP solutions, enhancing data visibility and accessibility across your organization and offering a comprehensive, integrated consolidation solution for important financial statements and documents.
Here are three of the main integrations included in the SAP Group Reporting solution:
SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Finance
By leveraging integrations between SAP Group Reporting and SAP S/4HANA for Finance, customers can unify their core financial closing processes and leverage advanced drill-down capabilities to access and view document details from the general ledger and other consolidated reports.
With this integration, companies are enabled to:
- Improve transparency and auditability for group reporting operations
- Combine financial and management accounting data into a single source of truth
- Unify entity and group close processes to reduce complexities with master data management
- Leverage different levels of granularity to analyze financial data more accurately
- Utilize a single data model to simplify group reporting processes and improve productivity
SAP Analytics Cloud
With a direct connection to the SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Group Reporting offers improved data visualization, data preparation, and forecasting capabilities to provide deeper insight into transactional data and improve decision-making across teams.
Integrations with SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting and the SAP Analytics Cloud enable users to conduct accurate business analysis and improve consolidation system performance at the group or corporate level, all without requiring complex data replication in the process.
SAP Disclosure Management
SAP Group Reporting offers a pre-built roadmap to connect its core functions to the SAP Disclosure Management module, making it easier for business users to deliver the final stage of the reporting process.
With this integration, users can create, fill, and publish financial statements and reports and leverage embedded workflows and collaborative audit features to manage group accounting and master data management processes more efficiently.
Key Components of the SAP Group Reporting Solution
The SAP Group Reporting solution is hosted on the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), simplifying manual data entry, enriching data entered into the system, and enabling real-time analysis of data to facilitate more efficient and accurate financial management and consolidation.
Let’s take a look at the main components that comprise the SAP Group Reporting solution:
1) Data Collection
- Direct access to data stored in the SAP S/4HANA database
- Seamless integration of non-SAP data into the S/4HANA database
- Improved manual data entry and file/package upload processes
- Flexible data interface for better data transformation and management
2) Data Preparation
- Enhanced manual journal entry posting and intercompany reconciliation process control
- Improved data validation and currency translation processes
- Better governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) management across teams
3) Consolidation
- Advanced versioning and simulation capabilities
- Intercompany elimination to remove transactions between subsidiary companies
- Consolidation of investments and any data category, like plan and forecast
4) Reporting
- Pre-built SAP Fiori embedded analytics for rule-based analysis
- SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office (MS Excel)
- Seamless integration with SAP Analytics Cloud for intelligent reports
Main Advantages for SAP Customers
SAP Group Reporting helps organizations streamline and automate their financial consolidation processes, ensuring accurate and timely reporting across different entities and improving master data management across the entire organization. Here are five of the main advantages of Group Reporting in SAP:
Streamlined Financial Consolidation
SAP Group Reporting helps organizations simplify the complex process of consolidating financial data from multiple entities or subsidiaries. It provides tools to automate intercompany eliminations, currency conversions, and adjustments, reducing manual errors and saving time.
Real-time Insights
The solution allows for real-time visibility into financial data and performance across the entire organization. This enables quicker decision-making by providing up-to-date information on key performance indicators (KPIs), financial ratios, and other metrics.
Standardized Reporting
SAP Group Reporting facilitates the creation of standardized financial reports that adhere to regulatory and compliance requirements. This ensures consistency and accuracy in financial reporting across different subsidiaries, which is crucial for meeting legal obligations and providing transparent information to stakeholders.
Data Accuracy and Integrity
By centralizing financial data and automating consolidation processes, SAP Group Reporting reduces the likelihood of errors that can occur in manual or spreadsheet-based consolidation methods. This improves data accuracy and enhances data integrity, leading to more reliable financial statements.
Efficiency and Time Savings
Manual consolidation processes can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. SAP Group Reporting helps organizations save time by automating tasks like data collection, validation, and consolidation. This allows finance teams to focus on more strategic activities and analysis rather than spending significant time on manual data manipulation.
How Can We Help?
Whether you need help implementing SAP solutions for the first time, navigating SAP Analytics Cloud, additional support navigating complex setup and management processes within Data Monitor and Consolidation Monitor tools, or just an extra hand managing data collection, consolidation unit, and consolidation chart functions to ensure data quality, Surety Systems is here to help.
Our team of senior-level, US-based SAP consultants has the skills, experience, and know-how to handle all your SAP project needs, from implementation to integration, enhancement, and more.
Your technology. Your priorities. Our expertise. That’s the name of the game with our team!
Getting Started with Our Team
Interested in learning more about improved data collection and more with SAP Group Reporting or where our team of SAP consultants can fit in your organization?
Contact us today to get started!
