Group Reporting Whitepaper Part 2: Matrix Consolidation with Group Reporting: Utilizing Consolidation Groups vs Matrix Consolidation
Authored by: Michael Goldman, Senior Principal Consultant at TruQua, an IBM Company
Introduction
In TruQua’s previous whitepaper on Matrix Consolidation, the features available starting with the 19xx releases of SAP’s S/4HANA for Group Reporting (“GR”) and how to implement them were discussed. GR’s primary purpose is supporting a full “legal” oriented financial consolidation through consolidation groups containing an underlying entity dimension made up of companies. However, organizations often have additional consolidated reporting requirements where reporting is needed either for reorganizations, for “managerial” oriented views of eliminated data along other dimensions like profit center or segment, or for alternative roll-ups of consolidation groups like a “regional” view. GR supports these types of “managerial” analyses using its Matrix Consolidation features to report multiple views of the same set of consolidated data by producing on-the-fly eliminated reporting beyond a consolidation group for the consolidation unit, profit center, or segment characteristics. It does this by using “virtual” elimination entities in a “first common parent” hierarchical approach when running reports. Some eliminated reporting requirements are best met with consolidation groups (i.e., a full legal consolidation). Others with the support provided by Matrix Consolidations (i.e., managerial views/consolidations). Part 2 of this whitepaper series will further examine Matrix Consolidation reporting to help determine when it is better to implement another consolidation group versus using the Matrix Consolidation features.
To learn more about Matrix Consolidation in SAP Group Reporting, download our whitepaper below.