Part 2: An Introduction to SAP Business Planning and Consolidation

by Ryan Leask, Director, BPC Solution Management, Enterprise Performance Management, SAP BusinessObjects, and Prakash Darji, Director, BPC Solution Management, Enterprise Performance Management, SAP BusinessObjects

Learn some of the different features and functions to support planning and consolidation requirements in SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC). This includes creating input schedules for planning, posting journal entries, and using script logic for creating planning functions and consolidation logic in BPC.

Key Concept

Different clients are available to users in SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC). One is the BPC for Web client, which is a zero-footprint client that is used for functions such as end user planning and reporting, document storage, system reports (e.g., security reports), and other tasks. There is also the BPC for Excel client, which is the primary client for BPC that most users access, and it covers a wide range of functions in BPC, from planning and reporting to managing journals to executing Data Manager functions. There are also BPC for Word and BPC for PowerPoint clients for further Microsoft Office integration. Finally, there is the BPC Administration client, in which all administrative activities (e.g., security, application and dimension management) are handled.

Planning, reporting, and consolidations are all unified inside the single SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) application. That means you don't need different tools or technologies to plan or report on your data, nor do you need another tool if you also want to leverage BPC for performing your financial consolidations as well doing your annual budget or monthly forecasts. That provides higher user acceptance and adoption, lower total cost of ownership, and less time spent reconciling different sources of data.

We explained the reporting features of BPC in “Part 1: An Introduction to Business Planning and Consolidation,” which was posted to the Financials Expert knowledgebase in October 2008. Now we'll focus on the planning and consolidation features of BPC. We'll examine input schedules for submitting data, work status for controlling and locking regions of data, posting journal entries, script logic files to manipulate data, as well as the delivered consolidation functions. The focus of this article is to introduce the various functionalities offered. We'll go more in-depth in future articles for Financials Expert.

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