Report Painter Or Report Writer? 

Use

Report Painter and Report Writer are tools for defining reports.

Report Painter fulfills a function similar to Report Writer, but is simpler to use. Report Painter contains a large amount of the functions from the Report Writer. However, you do not need to know all of the Report Writer concepts (such as, sets).

When executing a Report Painter report, it is displayed by the R/3 System in Report Writer format. You thus have access to the same functions as for Report Writer reports defined in the same way, and can combine Report Painter and Report Writer reports together in a report group.

Report Painter uses a graphical report structure, which forms the basis for your report definition and displays the rows and columns as they appear in the final report output.

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 define a Report Painter report you can use groups (sets). You can also enter characteristic values directly.

Advantages of Report Painter include:

• Flexible and simple report definition
• Report definition without using sets

For comprehensive information on the Report Writer, see the SAP Library, under Financial Accounting ® Special Purpose Ledger ® Report Writer

For comprehensive information on the Report Painter, see the SAP Library, under Financial Accounting ® Special Purpose Ledger ® Report Painter