Report Painter / Report Writer 
Report Painter / Report Writer
Purpose
The SAP System provides comprehensive and flexible reporting tools for the analysis of existing cost flows in an enterprise. You can use these both to carry out recurring standard evaluations and to create reports for extraordinary queries and tasks. You can analyze data interactively as soon as it has been created in the SAP System and trace its origins right down to document level. All reports that are available online can also be executed in the background. This is particularly important in the case of very extensive datasets.
For objects with a hierarchical structure, such as cost centers, you can either create single reports for all the nodes in the hierarchy and for the individual objects, or you can generate all the relevant reports via the database in a selection run. If you choose the second possibility, you can navigate interactively within the hierarchy. This offers, among other things, a very flexible control of cost center areas, for example.
Report Painter and Report Writer are two very comprehensive reporting tools provided by SAP, using which you can report data from the Special Purpose Ledger (FI-SL) and other application components.
Integration
When defining reports using Report Painter or Report Writer, FI-SL tools, such as
sets, variables and key figures, are also used.Features
Report Painter and Report Writer provide the following functions:For more information on working with reporting tools, see:
Report Painter or Report Writer? User Authorizations Report Painter Overview of the Report Painter Process Report Writer Overview of the Report Writer ProcessExample
You can view an example of a Report Painter report under
creating an example actual/plan comparison report using the Report Painter.