Reporting

Now that you understand how goods are produced and sold in SAP, section 3 will show you how to extract information. While SAP excels at keeping the production process on time and error free, another benefit of the system is the huge amount of readily accessible information it stores.

The primary cause for SAP’s success in the ERP market has come from its shared database structure. By using a single large database to store ALL system data, information is kept incredibly accurate and is always up to date. It did not take SAP users long to realize that this also meant that management could use the system information to make highly educated business decisions. Which would you rather have to make an important decision: a report which was compiled over a week with information from last month’s sales, or a report which was built a few minutes ago, using the company’s up to the minute SAP database?

There are many different ways to form useful reports with SAP. The most common is to run one of the many preconfigured reports which come with the system. If the preconfigured reports do not show you what you wish to see, you have the option of creating custom reports using two methods: Report Painter and Report Writer. Report Painter is the easier of the two. The Report Painter tool sets up a report template for you. All you have to do is decide what information you want to see, and enter the appropriate key figures and characteristics in the blank report template. Report Writer is much more difficult, and is usually only used by specialists. Report Writer involves the building of every aspect of the report, and requires an in-depth knowledge of database structures (specifically info cubes). In this tutorial we will be sticking with the use of the preconfigured reports. As a manager, you will most likely be using either these reports, or