How to Use the Report Signage Parameter in the EPM Add-In on BW InfoProviders by Peter Jones, BI Solution Architect, MI6 Solutions This document is for your personal use only. Reproduction or distribution in any form is strictly prohibited without the permission of the publisher, Wellesley Information Services. For information about SAP Experts visit www.SAPexperts.com. This article is found at SAPexperts.com. SAP Experts is an independent, online knowledgebase packed with proven, step-by-step instruction, best practices, case studies, tools, and tips from the world’s top experts in SAP technology. SAP professionals around the world who deploy, manage, support, configure, and customize SAP solutions rely on SAP Experts as a trusted learning tool throughout the year. A 12-month subscription to SAPexperts.com helps you advance your skills and do your job better while you avoid costly mistakes and get more out of your SAP technology. Subscribe, or get more information, at SAPexperts.com. Hone your ability to view financial data in an SAP system by using the report signage parameter in the SAP Enterprise Performance Management add-in. If you review the reporting components that are available in the SAP BI space, you see that most toolsets enable you to display data, specifically financial data, by using two approaches. You can use data that is stored in tables in the system (InfoProviders in SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse [SAP NetWeaver BW]), and therefore see the information based on the way it is posted, or you can use an approach that switches the information to a more business user-friendly view of the data. I call this business user-friendly view the ability to see the data with a report signage view. Looking at financial information you see that the format of the data >> Note I use the term InfoCube, but I am referencing all tables, including DataStore Objects (DSOs) and other new SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 InfoProviders, such as the Semantic Partition Objects (SPOs). stored in the InfoCube definitely makes sense for the financial person, but it is a bit more challenging for the regular users or for printing and more statutory reporting requirements. The reason for this is that financial information is stored with signs that are a bit different from the types of signs that users are accustomed to seeing. What I mean is that information that is based on revenue or income has a negative sign applied, and the expenses are stored as a positive sign. If the base data stored in the InfoProvider is used for reporting, it would mean that the business user would be seeing a negative sign on Net Income, and this would identify that the company is profitable rather than a positive. To help align the view of financial data with the more user-friendly approach of having Net Income be displayed as a positive if a company is profitable, SAP has developed multiple approaches to allowing the business user to switch from one view to another in a report process. For example, if you look at the BEx reporting process, you see that there are a number of options to overcome this issue. If you want, you can create a calculated key figure (CKF), which is a formula that is created and used against the data. You can use these CKFs to create a basic multiplication by a –1 or +1 to accommodate the need to see the data in a report format. Another approach is to identify a specific cell in a static report and use the cell editor to create a formula that adjusts that cell’s information for the reporting view. You can also use the parameter reverse sign in the properties of the key figures or CKFs to accommodate this requirement. If push comes to shove, you can always use a BEx workbook and insert some small macro to accommodate this requirement as well. >> Note A key figure is a value that’s stored in the InfoProvider (table). A CKF is generated at the time the query is executed. ©2014 SAP Experts • Reprinted with permission from SAP Experts • Reproduction or distribution in any form is strictly prohibited without the permission of the publisher, Wellesley Information Services. The SAP Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Add-In little bit of back-end work on the SAP NetWeaver BW side. Remember that this parameter is integrated with the reverse signage property found on the Hierarchy tab used on the InfoObjects in SAP NetWeaver BW (Figure 2). You might see The EPM add-in can be used against standard SAP NetWeaver BW InfoProviders — specifically InfoCubes (virtual or basic) and MultiProviders — by using a local connection via the EPM connection screen. An additional parameter has been added to the EPM add-in. You can access this parameter by following menu path Options > Sheet Options > Formatting (Figure 1). This parameter in the EPM add-in Sheet Options provides the business user with a reverse sign property to influence the view of the data in the report. Therefore, when the EPM add-in is used against the SAP NetWeaver BW InfoProviders, you can offer the reverse signage to the business users so that they can decide if they want to see the data based on the raw data view as posted into the cube, or if they want to see the business user view of the data based on a report signage approach. Figure 1 The Use Reverse Sign Property parameter in the EPM Sheet Options for turning the reverse sign property on or off Remember that this is based on a link to the SAP NetWeaver BW InfoCubes, which in turn are based on a local connection from the EPM add-in to the SAP NetWeaver BW InfoProviders. As anyone who uses SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (SAP BPC) knows, the ability to see the data from a SAP BPC connection using the EPM add-in is inherent in the connection between the SAP BPC MultiProvider and the EPM add-in. Thus, the view of the data using the SAP BPC connection — Web services — is normally showing as the reporting view. For those who are interested in using the EPM add-in against SAP NetWeaver BW InfoProviders, this additional parameter offers a valuable enhancement for the business user and allows the use of the different features offered by the EPM add-in against core SAP NetWeaver BW data. To set up this feature you need to do a Figure 2 The Reverse +/– sign for nodes parameter on the Hierarchy tab of the InfoObject ©2014 SAP Experts • Reprinted with permission from SAP Experts • Reproduction or distribution in any form is strictly prohibited without the permission of the publisher, Wellesley Information Services. www.SAPexperts.com this parameter turned on for the general ledger (G/L) account hierarchies if you are addressing financial data. You also need to turn on this reverse sign on the nodes and base values in the hierarchy that is required. Normally, if you are going to use this feature, you usually turn on the property for all values, nodes, and base level functions (Figure 3) and in this way, make sure that the display of the data is consistent throughout the hierarchy. There may be times where turning on the parameter for only the node level values can be of use — for example, if the information at the base member level needs to be shown in the natural signage, but at the text node level I want to use the reporting view. This way you can offer a summary level report (node level) that is familiar to the business users but for those who drill down to the lower level values, I want to still show the natural sign for analysis purposes. Figure 3 Reverse +/– signs activated in the hierarchy (Financial With Signage) After this step is complete you use the parameter on the EPM add-in. One of the differences between what is in the EPM add-in and BEx, for example, is that the EPM feature is accessible to the business user, whereas the BEx feature needs to be turned on in the Query Designer or by creating a CKF. To illustrate this point consider the set of data shown in Figure 4. This is straightforward dataset containing only four records, but it enables you to see the differences and results. In this case you have two accounts — 0030110000 and 0030311000 — that represent Revenue and Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), respectively. As you can see from the posted data, the raw view of the revenue is a negative, and the COGS is a positive. After reviewing the data from the BW side, you can review the results from the EPM add-in report shown in Figure 5. As you can see, without a hierarchy in the Figure 4 Posted data in the YLEGAL InfoCube Figure 5 EPM add-in report showing the G/L accounts with values ©2014 SAP Experts • Reprinted with permission from SAP Experts • Reproduction or distribution in any form is strictly prohibited without the permission of the publisher, Wellesley Information Services. report, the view of the information shows that the raw or posted view is shown. Therefore, the revenue (account 0030110000) shows as negative, and COGS (account 0030311000) shows as positive. Now, if you switch the view from a list of G/L accounts to a hierarchy of G/L accounts, you see the impact of the reverse signage property. To illustrate this I’ve configured both a hierarchy with the signage turned on (refer back to Figure 3) and one that doesn’t have the signage turned on as shown in Figure 6. In the first report (Figure 7) you see the use of the Reverse Sign Property (Figure 8) and the hierarchy with signage turned on. The results of this feature shows that the revenue values appear as positives, and the expenses (in this case the COGS) appear as negatives. This is a more comfortable view for business users in that they can see that if the results show an increase, that they are positive in nature, rather than seeing a growth value as a negative. If you take the other view of the information and use the hierarchy that doesn’t have the signage turned on and you turn off the reverse sign property in the User Options, you see that the results look very similar to those of the view of the basic raw data. In Figure 9 you see the results of this combination. An additional item you need to be aware of in this case is that this reverse sign option is purely mathematical in nature. For example, with the report signage available using the SAP BPC Web services connection to BPC MultiProviders/ InfoCubes, this uses the additional feature of the property of Account Type (SAP BPC-specific property) on each of the G/L accounts and therefore incorporates an accounting view of the data. Therefore, if the G/L account has an Account Type of INC, then the reverse sign uses this information to generate a report with the data associated with an INC account as a positive and the same approach with all of the other Account Types of AST, LEQ, and EXP. This helps with the accounts that are contrary to the others and that require an Figure 6 Account hierarchy without the signage parameter turned on (Financial WO Signage) Figure 7 Hierarchy with Reverse Sign On and Reverse Sign Property turned on in the EPM add-in ©2014 SAP Experts • Reprinted with permission from SAP Experts • Reproduction or distribution in any form is strictly prohibited without the permission of the publisher, Wellesley Information Services. www.SAPexperts.com account concept attached to them to get the correct format. With the signage property used for SAP NetWeaver BW-specific InfoProviders, you can, if you want, remove all connections to anything accounting-wise. By that I mean you can Figure 8 Turned on Use Reverse Sign Property Figure 9 Hierarchy without signage activated and without the use of the Reverse Sign Property in the EPM add-in ignore the Account Type, Balance Sheet indicator, or Income/Expense indicator. The reverse signage still works and takes any negative data and displays it as positive and vice versa for the others. It doesn’t rely on accounting principles and therefore may have to be tweaked for specific accounts in the hierarchy. In general this parameter can help with most of the G/L accounts (99 percent) and being able to display them as expected by the normal business user. The other situations in which this reporting signage may not work would be based on other contra-accounts in which the signage should, in fact, be reverse of what a simple mathematical calculation would make it. You will also have to make sure that the reverse signage works as expected at the node levels and basically the accounts found under a specific hierarchy node are consistent in their roll up (i.e., all accounts being positive or negative under a node and therefore the signage at the hierarchy node level is correct). Overall, this parameter definitely helps reduce the time spent getting the data ready for display to the stakeholders and formatted appropriately for the statutory reports required at every end-of-month process. n Peter Jones is a business intelligence solution architect in the areas of CO, EC, SAP NetWeaver, BI, BusinessObjects, Planning and Consolidation (BPC), and SEM for MI6 Solutions. He is certified in all areas listed and a subject material expert for SEM, CO, BI, and Planning and Consolidation. He has worked in these areas for SAP and MI6 Solutions during the last 14 years. He is currently involved in projects incorporating SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 and BPC 10.0 and EPM Excel Add-In 10.0. He has consulted in all areas above for the last seven years, was an SAP instructor for seven years, and has written several books about SAP NetWeaver BW and FI/CO. You may contact the author at [email protected]. ©2014 SAP Experts • Reprinted with permission from SAP Experts • Reproduction or distribution in any form is strictly prohibited without the permission of the publisher, Wellesley Information Services.
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