A consistent and high-quality data foundation from the individual financial statements is essential for successful consolidated financial statements. As a rule, not all companies within a group use a uniform ERP system; rather, they use different software solutions. This results in a significant amount of work to consistently prepare the data from the various source systems so that it can be used by group accountants without requiring additional processing. The key question regarding data provision is how such a data foundation can be created effectively and with minimal effort.
SAP’s strategic consolidation solution, S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting (GR), does not include a built-in data entry feature similar to that found in a traditional reporting package for a single company. SAP offers an additional application for this purpose called Group Reporting Data Collection (GRDC). In the community, this is often referred to as the Data Collection App. It is a purely cloud-based application that is integrated into the Fiori interface and provides web-based data entry and simple mapping rules.
This opens up yet another scenario for data provision integrated with Microsoft Excel—specifically for customers who are using BW/4HANA and wish to strategically delay their transition to the cloud—through the integration of Group Reporting and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC).
BPC is a fully-fledged planning and consolidation tool that makes it possible to create Excel-based data entry masks that store the figures in the underlying Business Warehouse (BW).
The BPC is being set up as the central platform for data provision for group reporting and serves to consolidate, harmonize, and validate all reporting data from the individual subsidiaries. A guided process leads the user step-by-step through the data provision activities. Automated checks, the use of a progress status, and a dual-review principle (Owner/Reviewer) ensure the appropriate quality of the data.
The process is divided into several sub-steps and enables the integration and direct provision of notification data from the source systems via the Business Warehouse.
Extraction and harmonization of source data in BW
The tight integration of the Business Warehouse (BW) with BPC makes it possible to extract and standardize data from the source systems. This process includes automatic mappings, such as from G/L accounts to group accounts or from company codes to companies. In addition, initial validations can be performed at this stage to identify missing partner IDs or transaction types and correct them in the source system. This step alone leads to a dramatic improvement in data quality and the transparency of data reporting.
Data provision and validation in the BPC
Within the BPC, those responsible at the individual subsidiaries are guided through the data entry process using Excel-based reporting packages. These packages enable the collection, validation, and enrichment of reported data by adding missing sub-account codes such as partners, transaction types, or functional areas. Extensive commenting functions also make it possible to collect and consolidate all notes.
Once data entry is complete, the individual companies can carry out an independent and decentralized intercompany reconciliation in order to reconcile open differences in the partner account assignments before consolidation.
Import into Group Reporting
As soon as the data provision of all companies has been completed, the data can be imported into S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting via an API provided by Group Reporting or a flat file.
SAP has currently set the maintenance horizon for the current BPC on BW/4HANA through 2040.
