SAP Group Reporting was released in may 2017 as a replacement for BPC. Let’s take stock of the situation now, 7 years later. Robert-Jan Bronsema is the Finext Group Reporting Guru and can tell you more about that and which features really make a difference in real world usage.
Is SAP Group Reporting mature enough now?
SAP’s Group Reporting is a key part of Finext’s SAP Cloud Finance Solution. It helps us to deliver clients the support they need for processes like registering data, creating documents in S/4HANA, consolidating documents for reporting, and bringing them to a unified standard for visualization and integration in the Cloud. Group Reporting is fully integrated in SAP S/4HANA - meaning connections and data integrations are seamless.
But, is it mature?
“From time to time we do get that question, is Group Reporting Mature?” says Robert-Jan Bronsema, SAP Group Reporting Lead at Finext, “In general, the answer is yes. However, there is a caveat. If you’re referring to SAP Group Reporting in the S/4HANA Public Cloud, it’s a straightforward yes. SAP Group Reporting in the Public Cloud has been a mature product for some time now. However, if you’re using the on-premise or private cloud versions, which are essentially the same thing, it gets a little bit more complicated.”
"From time to time we get asked whether SAP Group Reporting is mature"
Yearly updates
SAP’s public cloud infrastructure is updated throughout the year, in line with the published upgrade and maintenance schedule – and namely biannually with some small updates in between. If you’re using S/4HANA pirvate cloud or on-premise, you get all of those updates in a single yearly release. That’s important for SAP Group Reporting because your Group Reporting version is tied paralell to the S/4HANA system that it’s integrated in.
“If you’re running S/4HANA 2020 and you want to activate Group Reporting, you automatically run Group Reporting version 2020”, says Robert-Jan, “Therefore, the relevant question for most organizations isn’t, ‘is Group Reporting Mature’, but rather, ‘From which version is Group Reporting a mature product, capable of fully running the financial consolidation’”.
"If you are running S/4HANA 2020 and you want to activate Group Reporting, you automatically run Group Reporting version 2020."
Looking back to developments within Group Reporting, a lot has been delivered and improved on in the last few years. Which of those functionalities do we at Finext think are critical, or critical to our customers and clients?
Critical improvements
- GRDC integration with on premise and cloud in 2022
- Equity pickup was introduced in version 2020 but is only able to read group currency figures as per version 2021 and this is critical in order to pickup Currency translation Adjustments.
- Change reporting sign (+/-) in reporting was introduced in 2021, enabling sign convention other than debit / credit.
- Various enhancements in GRDC input forms in version 2021
“Based on these deliveries, our general advice to clients at Finext is that Group Reporting is a mature product from version 2021. This means that it has all the functionality to perform your financial consolidations. If you’re running an older version of S/4HANA on-premise or private cloud, that may not be the case.”
SAP Group Reporting is a mature product when you look at Version 2021 and later. However, if you’re using S/4HANA Public Cloud, Group Reporting is most definitely a mature product.
Other major improvements
SAP has worked hard in recent years on improvements to Group Reporting. Some other important enhancements that are not critical, but still of great value, include:
- Substitution and (input) validation introduced in Version 2020. This includes rules that validate or adjust all data that is either entered manually, or imported into the system, directly on the moment of input / upload.
- Consolidation in multiple group currencies from Version 2021
- Restatement Versions, with the possibility to use add-on versions to, for example, store restatements or tax adjustments on data that has already been reported were introduced in Version 2022.
- The ability to integrate planning data from SAP Analytics Cloud to Group Reporting, allowing users to push data from SAC directly to Group Reporting without using S/4HANA in between was introduced in Version 2022.
SAP Group Reporting is a mature product when you look at Version 2021 and later. However, if you’re using S/4HANA Public Cloud, Group Reporting is most definitely a mature product.
