Report Painter 

Purpose

You use the Report Painter to create reports from data in the Special Purpose Ledger (FI-SL) application component and other SAP application components to meet your specific reporting requirements.

Many reporting requirements can be met using the standard reports provided by various SAP application components. However, if your reporting requirements are not fulfilled by SAP’s standard reports, you can use the Report Painter to quickly and easily define your own reports.

The Special Purpose Ledger (FI-SL) application component does not provide any standard Report Painter reports because you must first install your FI-SL system setup (database tables and so on) to meet your specific business requirements.

Advantages of the Report Painter include:

·        Easy and flexible report definition

·        Report definition without using sets

·        Direct layout control

Integration

The Report Painter is similar to the Report Writer, but is easier to use. Many of the Report Writer functions are available in the Report Painter, but you do not need to be familiar with Report Writer concepts (such as sets) to be able to use the Report Painter.

To facilitate report definition, you can use many of the standard reporting objects provided by SAP (such as libraries, row/column models, and standard layouts) in your own specific reports. When you create a Report Painter report, you can use groups (sets), but you can also enter characteristic values directly.

Features

You define Report Painter reports using a graphical report structure, which forms the basis for the report definition. This graphical structure displays the report rows and columns as they will appear in the final report when the report data is output. When you execute a Report Painter report, the system automatically converts the Report Painter report into Report Writer format.

You will find a procedure for creating a Report Painter report under Creating a Report Painter Report.

You can add multiple reports to a report group. You can switch back and forth between the reports in a report group.

If the system takes a long time to select the data for the report, SAP recommends that you store the selected data in an extract. Once data is stored in an extract, it can be output later without having to be selected again. 

Converting a Report Painter Report into a Report Writer Report

Since the Report Painter does not currently support all the functions of the Report Writer, you can convert a Report Painter report into a Report Writer report so that you can use the complete range of functions provided by the Report Writer. To do this, follow the procedure for creating a new Report Writer report using the Report Painter report as a basis. The Report Painter report is copied and becomes available as a Report Writer report. The system generates the required sets automatically.

You cannot, however, edit the sets generated in this way using the set maintenance function. Nor can you use these sets in other reports or functions.

Example

You will find a detailed example for creating a Report Painter report under Create Actual/Plan Comparison Report.