consolidation group hierarchy in group reporting

[jerry_wen]

Following is from SAP group reporting online document:

"With the introduction of a new architecture/reporting logic, if you are working with the SAP S/4HANA 1909 release or a later release, consolidation groups should be maintained as flat lists of consolidation units by using the Manage Consolidation Group Structure - Group View [page 35] or Manage Consolidation Group Structure - Unit View,,,,"

Therefore, the group structure created from the above two app only include consolidation group (Parents) and consolidation units (chidden) two level hierarchy structure.

the above screen shot is from the group reporting 1809, the group consolidation hierarchy has three level structure. we can run consolidation at top node, middle node or bottom unit .

In group reporting 2021, we can create the above consolidation unit hierarchy with "Manage Global Hierarchies" app, but this can only be used for reporting purpose, not for data monitor/consolidation monitor.

In GR 2021, with the "flat lists of consolidation units", we have to create three consolidation groups and assign the consolidation units to its corresponding group.

Anybody can explain why with new architecture/reporting logic, consolidation groups now be maintained as flat lists of consolidation units, not allow multiple level nodes for consolidation group anymore? the only reason I can thought is with the old architecture/reporting logic, the consolidation run at each node will generate a lot of redundant data.

[jerry_wen]

Hi Taylor,

Thanks for the explanation, As you mentioned that from GR 1909, there two Fiori app to handle group and hierarchy, with "Manage Global Hierarchies" app, we can create a consolidation unit type hierarchy which can only be used for reporting purpose, while the "manage group structure" (group view/unit view) can be used to create the flat list group structure, this mean that if I want to generate a report with "World" as the top node, Europe, America and Asia as the middle node, and the individual consolidation units are assigned to the three middle node, I need co create three consolidation group structure-Europe, America and Asia, then run data monitor and consolidation monitor for each group structure and then we run the report with "World" consolidation unit hierarchy we created, we will get the report we are looking for.

With the flat list of group structure, we can add or remove the units under each group structure easily if the reorganization is happen after that.

[Arleigh]

Hi Jerry,

The new reporting logic in 1909 and later was done to GREATLY increase the flexibility of being able to easily handle reorganizations and other changes.

In 1809 the Group and Hierarchy were all in the same app. When you ran eliminations the eliminations posted (Hard Coded) to the 1st common parent of the Hierarchy being used. IF you did a reorg in the next year now it's very hard to run current year vs prior year as the eliminations possibly post to different parents and you cant get apples to apples without rerunning prior year consolidations under the new Hierarchy.

By breaking groups and Hierarchies into 2 seperate apps this greatly increases the flexibility and eliminates additional processing when you do a reorganization. I/ve found this feature to be HUGELY popular with our customers.

In the new setup you create groups to handle any sub consolidations you might need.I have not found any short comings with not being able to put all the sub groups in one tree. Setting them up separately works just fine.

Now when IC Eliminations are posted they are posted DIRECTLY to the consolidation units. What was added is reporting logic in the CDS Views that when you use a Hierarchy in the report and you use the Dimension Consolidation Unit Eliminated the report will virtually move these eliminations to the 1st common parent of the Hierarchy being used. But it's NOT hard coded. I had a customer tell me once they don't want the Eliminations in the Tree. They want to keep the eliminations right in the company. Very simple - use Consolidation Unit instead of Cons Unit Eliminated and now the Elimination entries stay in the company. No reprocessing.

In addition there are some other key innovations added. Now we have Effective dates on Hierarchies. SO...you can copy the same Hierarchy with the same name but just have a different Effective date. This effective date shows up in the report Parameters which makes it super to easy look at reports using different hierarchies with no reprocessing. Just run the report. They also added Matrix Eliminations - Eliminations at Profit Center and Segment which can be quite helpful for many customers internal Management reporting.

I've presented this to well over 200 companies. IF they do reorganizations this new logic was HUGELY beneficial. In their older system they would have to create new cubes and rebuild new consolidatons under the new hierarchy. Easily multiple days of work.

In Group Reporting 1909 and beyond - it's a few minutes to copy and change the existing Hierarchy and run the report.

I realize it's different and at times can be tough to understand but I think you will see the benefit of it as you use it more and more.

All the best

Arleigh

[cfaustm3]

What exactly is the question? Each cons group has a flat list of cons units underneath it, and the system will determine the parent/child relationship based on the investee & percentage supplied on the investment in subs account. This limits the need to add/remove different posting level 30 entries as you climb up the tree, like what SEM-BCS used to do in the BW virtual cube, and probably makes the CDS views a bit easier and perform a little better for reporting.

BPC would show a multi-level hierarchy of groups, but when it came to actual run the consolidation and post eliminations, the integration task would basically create a bunch of duplicate data so that in reporting you never actually added up multiple consolidation groups to get to a total, despite what you'd see in the dimension selection in a report. This also helped reporting, though created a lot of extra data volume in the cube for larger companies.

Just create whatever groups you need (World, Europe, etc) and assign the cons units to all the groups where it needs to appear.

-Chris