Features

The line item report analyzes Line Items using criteria entered by the user.

The Report Painter tool also allows you to analyze summarized line items in the form of Totals Records based on your criteria.

Each business transaction is documented using a line item and saved in a Controlling (CO) line item file. The system manages data separately in these files by plan and actual transactions.

Actual and Commitment postings are always documented as individual line items. Each posting transaction (for example, an Internal Activity Allocation) creates one or more line item entries.

In planning, you can use the version to determine whether or not the system creates line items for planning transactions (see: Cost Center Planning).

The plan and actual line items are differentiated further into primary and secondary postings. Primary postings are transferred from external accounting to internal accounting, while secondary postings are exclusively entries in internal accounting. You can analyze the individual transaction movements in actuals and commitments with the aid of the line item report.

The system summarizes each individual transaction automatically in a totals record. This summarization by the system is based on the criteria “cost center/cost element”or “cost center/cost element/activity type”. The system saves the summarized numbers in CO totals record files. The totals record structure is similar to that of the line item data. You can then analyze the summarized data with Report Painter reports. You can call up a line item report from the totals record report, and from the line item report you can access the original document, such as the posting in the Financial Accounting component (FI).

To simplify Report Painter report callup, you can use Extracts and user-specific defaults for selection parameters. If extracts exist for the report callup, the system does not need to read the data from the database, which can be greatly time-consuming. By using custom selection criteria, you can execute a given report without having to repeatedly enter selection criteria .

Report Writer and Report Painter reports are available initially only in the standard client of the system. You must transport the standard reports to the target client and generate them there. To do so, see the Implementation Guide (IMG) for Cost Center Accounting under  Information System Standard Reports Importing Standard Reports or Generating Standard Reports.

You only need to define your own reports if you cannot address selected user-specific report structures with the standard reports.