WebFOCUS Financial Report Painter
Just as financial information is a critical cornerstone
of business, the WebFOCUS Financial Report Painter is a critical
cornerstone of the WebFOCUS Financial Reporting Platform.
Fully integrated with the WebFOCUS Financial Reporting Platform,
the robust Financial Report Painter, with its intuitive interface
and matrix workpad, makes it easy for developers to create powerful,
tailored financial reports that can:
- Perform calculations
between row and column elements to produce reports in a row-by-row,
column-by-column format.
- Post reports
to an external file and pick them up at a later time for analysis.
This is a powerful feature to develop and consolidate intermediate
reports, then use the results again in a later report.
- Produce recursive
reports, where the results from the end of one time period or column
become the starting balance in the next. This is an effective way
for organizations to project cash flow or other forward looking
reports.
- Generate profit
and loss statements, consolidations, actuals, budgets, and government-mandated
financial reports easily by simple point-and-click actions.
- Dynamically
create summary financial statements from detailed financial data.
- Build financial
reports from a wide range of data sources and structures, including Charts
of Accounts and other hierarchies.
- Generate accurate
financial reports directly from centralized, secure, and professionally
maintained data sources. Organizations performing financial reporting through
manual spreadsheets and other static, limited processes are at a
distinct disadvantage in this highly scrutinized fast-paced business
climate.
- Provide a wide
range of report styling and customizing options to fit the needs
of different audiences.
The Financial Report Painter is driven by the powerful financial
modeling language within WebFOCUS, which is capable of handling
large volumes of data, volatile data relationships, and custom Charts
of Accounts. These Charts of Accounts can be quickly displayed in
hierarchical trees that can be compressed or expanded with a simple
click of the mouse, making it easy for a wide range of users to:
- View the contents
and structure of financial data.
- Drag an account
from any level and drop it into a report.
- Produce rows
with different levels of aggregation.
- Minimize report
maintenance as a result of Charts of Accounts changes. When accounts
are added, deleted or realigned, the report procedure will not
need to change to reflect the restructuring.
- Dynamically
consolidate data in Charts of Accounts and generate real-time financial reports.
xAdvantage Over SQL-Based Financial Reporting Tools
Although many SQL-based reporting tools claim to be
well-suited for financial reporting, evidence shows that these tools
are actually limited in real-world situations. For example:
- Financial reports
often require account data to be grouped and calculated by rows.
SQL-based tools can only retrieve, group, and calculate data by
columns.
- Financial reports
often require items to be listed by liquidity or some other corporate
or government-defined rule. SQL-based tools can only sort data alphabetically or
numerically.
- Charts of Accounts
hierarchies often change. SQL-based tools refer to account data explicitly,
so financial reports built with SQL-based tools require constant
maintenance.
- Organizations
demand that financial reporting needs get filled fast and SQL-based tools
usually require involvement of IT staff. However, IT personnel typically
have limited understanding of financial and accounting operations,
so reports must often be modified and revised several times before
they fully meet the needs of an organization. This can slow down
valuable decision-making time and place a burden on organization resources.
Compliance with new reporting guidelines will place additional pressure
on IT staff to build reports faster and more often.
Unlike SQL-based financial reporting
tools, the WebFOCUS Financial Report Painter meets and exceeds these
critical business demands rapidly and efficiently by:
- Retrieving,
grouping, and calculating data by columns.
- Grouping and
calculating account data by rows.
- Sorting data
alphabetically or numerically.
- Dynamically
maintaining reports as an organization Charts of Accounts change.
xAdvantages for Data Access
Another advantage of the WebFOCUS Financial Report Painter
is its ability to access more than 100 data sources on some 35 platforms,
including:
- Multi-dimensional
cubes such as Oracle Essbase®.
- Analytical data
structures, including DB2®, Oracle, SQL Server®, and Teradata®.
- Data resident
on legacy systems, such as IMS™, VSAM, and IDMS on the mainframe,
or VAX, UNIX®, Tandem, AS/400®, and Windows®, among others.
This ability for organizations to leverage all their data, from
legacy to data warehouse, provides a powerful edge in enterprise
financial reporting that very few financial reporting solutions
can provide.