SAP Insider Multimedia Training

 

Session Descriptions

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Ground rules to ensure Sarbanes-Oxley compliance in a decentralized, ad hoc reporting environment

Leverage SAP reporting to improve controls and detect fraud

Powerful financial slice-and-dice capabilities with SAP R/3 Drill-Down Reporting

Build effective accounts payable and accounts receivable reports using standard R/3 reporting tools

Tips and tricks to leverage SAP Report Painter to overcome the most complex financial reporting challenges

Five techniques to speed performance of profitability analyses and other CO-PA reports

Exploit proven, undocumented techniques to achieve better fixed asset reporting

A comprehensive guide to SAP options for building, customizing, generating, formatting, and distributing financial reports

Know your options for printing and formatting reports and pick the right one

Struggling with currency limitations, legal and sub-legal entity reporting, and different fiscal-year reporting requirements?

Evaluate your company's business plan using SAP BW and BPS-generated real-time intercompany balance sheets

Lessons for delivering flexible, dynamic reports and complex calculations in your SAP BW reports

Get the most out of SAP BW ad hoc queries with real-world, undocumented techniques

Create simple and advanced statistic and ranked lists using SAP Query

Special 2-part session: Everything you need to know to create your own reports with SAP Query — no programming required!

Perform basic and advanced calculations with SAP Query — little to no programming required!

Ground rules to ensure Sarbanes-Oxley compliance in a decentralized, ad hoc reporting environment
This session offers new insights into ad hoc reporting and the impact it has on Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Watch this session to:

  • Examine areas where user ad hoc reporting development is likely to lack sufficient controls and how this could wreak havoc with your company’s Sarbanes-Oxley compliance efforts.
  • Learn the best ways to apply appropriate controls and to perform testing and validation in a decentralized, ad hoc reporting environment to ensure that your business is Sarbanes-Oxley compliant.
  • Evaluate whether it makes sense to have ad hoc reports reviewed by a quality assurance expert or whether a peer review system might work better.
  • Gain insight into the tradeoffs between reviewing ad hoc reports in advance versus reviewing previously developed ad hoc reports on a periodic basis.
  • See how to maintain a balance between a tightly controlled ad hoc reporting environment and one that gives users more freedom and flexibility.
  • Get tips for how to justify your program to your auditors.
  • Identify the most common ad hoc reporting errors that are likely to compromise Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
  • Obtain expert advice on how to approach user training.
  • Learn how to decide whether users have demonstrated a baseline reporting capability that warrants giving them ad hoc reporting privileges.

Leverage SAP reporting to improve controls and detect fraud
Sarbanes-Oxley and similar international regulations require yearly testing of controls deemed significant to the organization's financial reporting. However, these types of compliance activities don't always have to be an additional cost of doing business. Watch this session to:

  • Learn how to leverage your SAP reporting system to make ongoing compliance an efficient, streamlined, self-sustaining process based on transactions you already capture every day.
  • Gain expert recommendations for wielding your existing SAP data to produce a solution that will be compliant and stay that way, including a review of alternate reporting functions, such as AIS, already at the disposal of most SAP customers.
  • Learn how other companies have provided solutions for real-time control monitoring through creative reporting inside and outside of their SAP systems, and where many companies are seeing a shift in focus as they enter years two and three of compliance.
  • Examine indicators of potential fraud in functional areas like financial reporting, disbursement, and revenue recognition.
  • Examine short- and long-term strategies to increase the effectiveness and strategic value of your management reporting to support compliance initiatives.

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  • See how this little-known and often underutilized tool allows you to slice and dice a vast array of General Ledger, Treasury, A/R, A/P, and other financial information from just a single report.
  • Find out how Drill-Down reporting reduces the drain on your IT resources by allowing developers to build a single report that satisfies the requirements of several reporting requests.
  • Gain insight into how you can use Drill-Down reporting to overcome common financial reporting pain points, such as reporting off multiple characteristics in a single report.
  • Identify the areas within FI/CO where you can access Drill-Down reporting.
  • Learn how to build a Drill-Down report from either A/P or A/R.

Build effective accounts payable and accounts receivable reports using standard R/3 reporting tools
Explore techniques that will help you overcome common pain points associated with building A/P and A/R subledger reports in your R/3 system. Watch this session to:

  • Acquire expert tips for how to include master data characteristics in A/P and A/R reports, as well as how to freely define aging buckets.
  • Identify the reporting tools that will best help you with these reports, including SAP Query, Drill-Down Reporting, and Evaluations, and learn which tool to use for the job at hand.
  • View detailed demos of techniques for building A/P and A/R reports using drill-down reporting.
  • Step through examples of how to simplify the creation of commonly requested reports, such as Actual A/R Aging, from invoice data.
  • Learn how to customize evaluations to meet your A/R and A/P reporting needs.

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  • Get illustrated, step-by-step instructions for building complex financial reports with Report Painter.
  • Learn how to set up currency translations to run and view single reports in multiple currencies while controlling the exchange rate.
  • Get tips to properly maintain your reporting libraries, currency exchange rate tables, and FI/CO currency settings, and find out why this is key to running multicurrency reports.
  • Find out how to include a calculated key figure (CKF) section in your report when standard row/column functionality isn’t sufficient to complete intricate formulas.
  • Identify (and avoid) maintenance challenges that can occur in reports with CKF sections.
  • See how your counterparts leverage Report Painter within their R/3 and SAP BW reporting landscapes and take a detailed look at the techniques that have proven to be most valuable.

Five techniques to speed performance of profitability analyses and other CO-PA reports
CO-PA's strength is that it acts as an information hub within R/3, pulling data from various modules such as FI and SD to generate profitability analyses and top-level management reports. The downside, however, is that this capability causes CO-PA's database to increase rapidly in size, often degrading reporting performance to the extent that reports can time out. Watch this session to learn powerful techniques to overcome CO-PA performance challenges:

  • Get expert advice for leveraging summarization levels that allow you to run reports based only on the specific characteristics you need.
  • Learn how to determine the optimum summarization levels for your reporting needs, and find out why it’s important not to define too many.
  • Explore the pros and cons of using the summarization data and frozen data techniques to correct CO-PA performance.
  • Discover how to generate split reports that run based on a specific characteristic.
  • Explore the powerful drill-down capabilities of split reports.
  • Find out how the Read Upon Navigation feature dramatically reduces the number of records the system must search when running a report.
  • Identify the types of reports that are best suited for each tool.

Exploit proven, undocumented techniques to achieve better fixed asset reporting
Learn how to do fixed asset reporting with approaches successfully used by other companies but not generally well explained or documented. Watch this session to:

  • Get expert guidance on how to modify standard reports to include additional asset fields that are not readily available.
  • Learn about advanced ALV features such as ABC Analysis and how they can be best utilized in asset reporting.
  • Uncover several powerful but little-known reports not officially found on the reporting tree.
  • Step through an example of how to use cost center reports to identify blocked cost centers that may prevent you from posting month-end asset depreciations, which can result in costly accounting errors and unnecessary rework.
  • Leverage the asset class change report to see if any configuration changes made to the system could be causing errors in your fixed asset reports.
  • Find out how to easily configure asset history reports so that asset acquisitions are correctly displayed according to GAAP standards.
  • Review functions of SAP Query and better understand how to use it as part of a successful ad hoc reporting strategy for fixed assets.
  • See examples of ways that you perform better master data reporting using search helps.
  • Understand the advantages and capabilities of BW and how it can be used for successful fixed asset reporting.

A comprehensive guide to SAP options for building, customizing, generating, formatting, and distributing financial reports
SAP offers a variety of options for building, customizing, generating, formatting, and distributing financial reports in both SAP R/3 and BW (BI). This session offers a comprehensive guide to these options and the features, requirements, and trade-offs of each. Watch this session to:

  • Weigh the strengths and weaknesses of core R/3 reporting options including Report Painter, SAP Query, and ad hoc reporting capabilities.
  • Understand the array of SAP pre-built financial reports available in R/3 and your options for customizing them.
  • Explore the benefits and reasons to utilize SAP NetWeaver® BI (formerly BW) for financial reporting.
  • Drill into the key capabilities of the BEx reporting tool to generate core financial reports.
  • Explore the pros and cons of utilizing the Information Broadcaster to more efficiently distribute your reports.
  • Understand ways you can more effectively Web-enable reports and offer your analysts and managers more self-service reporting options.

Know your options for printing and formatting reports and pick the right one
Take a critical look at the requirements, capabilities, and limitations of SAP Business Explorer (BEx), Web Application Designer, Crystal Reports, and other popular third-party tools. Watch this session to:

  • Understand the criteria you need to determine which combination of tools best meets your report formatting and printing needs.
  • Understand how your choice of tools varies depending on your current SAP NetWeaver BI version.
  • Get a clear picture of your out-of-the-box and customization options to enhance formatting of your reports.
  • Weigh the pros and cons of using macros as a formatting tool (Hint: They’re user-friendly but carry a high maintenance cost!).

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  • See how to use the FI-SL to address these types of problems and offers an in-depth look at the FI-SL functionality that supports ledger currencies, document splitting, custom organizational object characteristics, and specification of different fiscal year variants.
  • Get new insights and advanced, undocumented tips for the Special Purpose Ledger – e.g.: find out how many currencies you should allow for the tables group in the ledger.
  • Learn how to report from the FI-SL and how to make the most out of FI-SL planner functionality.
  • Get an understanding of how your organization can utilize FI-SL to adapt to continuously evolving reporting needs.

Evaluate your company's business plan using SAP BW and BPS-generated real-time intercompany balance sheets
See how to configure SAP BW and SAP Business Planning and Simulation (BPS) in combination to formulate, evaluate, and modify business plans based on actual financial data. Watch this session to:

  • Examine the required formulas, both simple and complex, for rolling up granular income statement data into higher level intercompany balance sheets using SAP BW.
  • Discover how to integrate SAP BW balance sheets into SAP BPS for Web-based access by managers, as well as how to determine whether adjustments to business plans are required.
  • See examples of how managers can change plan and financial data in BPS and send it back to SAP BW through a shared InfoCube to generate read-only reports for business, functional, and casual users.
  • Learn how to perform near-real-time plan allocations from SAP BPS.
  • Tap into a proven “lock-out” strategy that provides users with viewing access to SAP BPS while restricting them from changing sensitive information.
  • Obtain expert advice for how to rapidly and cost-effectively get started with and maintain your SAP BW and SAP BPS reporting environment to better synchronize business plans and actual financial data.

Lessons for delivering flexible, dynamic reports and complex calculations in your SAP BW reports
Go beyond standard SAP BW capabilities and extract greater value from your SAP BW system. Watch this session to:

  • Apply user exit variables to determine fiscal period offsets, present specific selection options, and draw better conclusions from your SAP BW reports.
  • Properly customize and define different types of variables and calculations to increase the flexibility of your SAP BW reports.
  • Build, execute, and link complex calculations so that your reports generate more detailed analyses and results.
  • Discover if, when, and how to use virtual characteristics and key figures (ABAP required) versus calculated or restricted key figures.
  • Tap into expert advice for using replacement path variables to make your reports easier to maintain.

Get the most out of SAP BW ad hoc queries with real-world, undocumented techniques
Tap into a wealth of practical advice to fully leverage the power of SAP BW ad hoc query functionality. Watch this session to:

  • Strike the right balance between empowering users and maintaining tight control over security and system performance.
  • Understand how ad hoc queries differ from pre-designed certified queries in terms of information access and SAP BW system performance.
  • Get tips to overcome the 3 main causes of poor ad hoc query performance.
  • Determine when it makes sense to use calculated key figures versus formulas in ad hoc queries.
  • Improve the way you govern and control ad hoc queries by parsing out different levels of capabilities to different groups of users.
  • Discover when it is and is not advisable to run ad hoc queries over the Web, depending on your current version of SAP BW.
  • Find out how to certify and generally release ad hoc queries that may be useful to the general SAP BW user community.
  • Develop clear guidelines and rules-of-thumb to avoid designing monster, performance-busting ad hoc queries.
  • Evaluate if and when it makes sense to leverage the Analysis Process Designer to analyze the results of ad hoc queries.
  • Learn the right way to leverage structures and hierarchies to optimize ad hoc query performance.

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  • Get complete step-by-step instructions and examples for how to create statistic and ranked lists using SAP Query.
  • See how statistic lists are similar to Microsoft Excel pivot tables and how they allow you to produce summary analyses of data, including totals and averages.
  • Discover how you can leverage summarized data reports to make more meaningful business decisions. Find out which syntax to use within calculated fields and how you can use calculated fields in conjunction with statistics to provide a summarized statistic report.
  • Learn how to create ascending and descending ranked lists.

Special 2-part session: Everything you need to know to create your own reports with SAP Query — no programming required!
This session delivers comprehensive guidance to leverage SAP Query and related tools, including InfoSet Query and QuickViewer, to create your own reports. Part 1 provides best practices to configure R/3 to successfully deploy SAP Query. Part 2 provides detailed, train-the-trainer style instruction for how to use SAP Query to create meaningful, comprehensive reports in all application areas of R/3. Watch this session to:

  • Learn how to configure InfoSets and properly use logical databases.
  • Explore important do’s and don’ts for transport maintenance and client deployment of these tools.
  • Tap into SAP Query enhancements that help you minimize reporting performance problems.
  • Obtain best practices for how to monitor random users to ensure that they are using the tool properly and cataloging reports correctly to prevent the creation of duplicate queries.
  • Learn the right way to use basic and advanced screens.
  • Gain insight into how to leverage seven advanced screens to add subtotals, alter column widths, add colors, create custom headers and footers, and incorporate graphics into your reports.
  • Find out how far you can take SAP Query in creating your own reports and when you need the professional assistance of an ABAP developer.

Perform basic and advanced calculations with SAP Query — little to no programming required!
Obtain detailed instruction on how to perform basic and advanced calculations in SAP Query reports for any application area in SAP — no coding required. Watch this session to:

  • Discover how to create calculated fields in SAP Query to perform basic calculations.
  • Gain expert advice to perform more complex “if…then” statements, such as: “If the cost center is = to X, multiply the annual salary by 3% to project future increase costs.”
  • Unleash the power of how using local fields and entries on selection screens allows you to perform calculations in SAP Query that most people think are only available using ABAP programming.
  • Learn how to add symbols and color icons to your report to highlight certain entries (e.g., red flag any vendor overdue for payment).
  • Understand all your options when using SAP Query’s report output, and discover the various options for your SAP Query output via the toolbar.

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