Satisfying your company’s Human Resources (HR) and Payroll reporting requirements is always a challenge, beginning with the assessment process through the selection of the right reporting strategy. Deciding which method is best begins with an assessment of the reporting tools available to you.

As part of the standard R/3 installation, five reporting methods are available: (1) Standard list reports and (2) standard structural graphics are the two types of delivered reports. The (3) InfoSet Query and the (4) SAP Query are two enduser reporting tools for HR and Payroll. The language of ABAP can be used by programmers to create (5) custom hard-coded ABAP reports. In addition to these R/3 resources, you also have the option of purchasing and installing BW or any of a dozen or so third-party reporting tools. I’m going to focus only on those tools delivered with your standard R/3 installation that can be used to satisfy reporting requirements.

This article, which is based on my extensive work with the different methods during the past several years, will help you to match your reporting need with the most appropriate tool. I’ll contrast the methods, explain their strengths and weaknesses, and give you an example of when to use each. The reporting decision flow chart (Figure 1) guides you through the selection process. (See Table 1 for an overview.)

Figure 1

Reporting decision flow

Standard Reports Delivered with R/3

R/3 provides two different types of standard reports for HR and Payroll —HIS (Human Resources Information System), which displays the report results in graphical form, and standard reports, which show the results in traditional list form.

If a standard report exists that meets the necessary requirement, this should always be your first choice. R/3 comes delivered with approximately 250 reports. Unlike other modules, which have some reports built into the menus for particular transactions, the reports delivered with R/3 for HR and Payroll are all accessible from a single source.¹ In versions earlier than 4.6, this is through the standard report tree. In version 4.6, this same structure is available through the SAP Easy Access menu (path Human Resources > Information > Reports).

The standard reports delivered by SAP provide the information needed by your business to make informed decisions. One advantage to using R/3-delivered reports is that all of the work is done for you. There is no coding to do, no security to work out, and the information you need is embedded within the delivered report. Standard reports cannot easily be modified to suit your business needs.

In addition to the standard list report format, you can display standard reports graphically through HIS. HIS constitutes a simplified method of requesting reports by letting you start them directly within R/3’s structural graphics. When accessing the HIS (menu path Human Resources Information System>HIS), you see two windows for processing. In the first window, structural graphics is active and you select an object. The second window displays a list of available reports. You use the second window to start a report for the selected object. The reports included in HIS belong to HR components, including Personnel Development (PD) and Personnel Administration (PA). You can start and execute reports that belong to different components from a single, central function. However, these reports can be difficult to print.

The Ad Hoc Query Tool (InfoSet Query)

The Ad Hoc Query (InfoSet Query) has been integrated with HR information systems to enable you to create and save queries in the standard query area. If the reporting requirement is a one-time look-up, the InfoSet Query is your best bet.

An example of the Ad Hoc Query tool (referred to as the InfoSet Query in versions 4.6 and later) is shown in Figure 2. As its original name conveys, the tool works best for after-the-fact reporting. It is great for counts, such as, “How many employees are enrolled in a particular benefit plan?” or if you want to see a list of employees who work in a particular location. As a rule of thumb, reports created with the Ad Hoc Query are primarily for a quick and simple look-up that is not needed more than once.

Figure 2

The Ad Hoc Query (InfoSet Query) design screen

The Ad Hoc Query was the first tool designed exclusively for the HR and Payroll modules in SAP’s earliest releases. In its earliest form, it had limited functionality. As the SAP versions evolved, the Ad Hoc Query was improved to support more advanced HR and Payroll reporting.

In Release 4.6, what was formerly known as the HR Ad Hoc Query was enhanced and integrated with functionality from the SAP Query. This new tool is referred to as the InfoSet Query. The InfoSet Query is available in multiple modules in R/3, but when used for the HR module, it is still often referred to as the Ad Hoc Query. When an Ad Hoc Query is started, default values are written to the query area and user group parameters. Using this tool, you can only perform ad hoc reporting. The Ad Hoc Query (and the SAP Query, which I’m introducing in a moment) were designed for users with little or no ABAP programming knowledge.

The tool looks different in versions 4.6 and later, although the functionality and basic usage remain the same. When you access the Ad Hoc Query, you are prompted with a list of InfoSets (known as “functional areas” in versions earlier than 4.6). InfoSets are collections of data that you use as the source of your reports. After selecting your InfoSet, you define what you want in your report output. You can change selection fields and values in addition to the output fields and format.

However, these changes are temporary and lost when you exit. Also, no transport links to the Workbench Organizer. This means you cannot easily transport the reports between clients, as you can with the SAP Query, which provides additional data reporting and output layout options.²

The SAP Query

The SAP Query (known in earlier versions as the ABAP Query) is a tool delivered with the SAP R/3 system that HR and Payroll professionals can use to quickly create reports from data stored in the HR module. It allows end users to create reports such as:

• A list of employees and their v personnel data (address, phone, emergency contacts)
• A list of all employees working in a specific location with the same job title, comparing their salaries and length of service
• A comparison of current salaries against a fixed-increase percentage so that you can make projections for budgeting purposes

If you wish to create a detailed report that you can reuse, the SAP Query is the best fit. I prefer to use the SAP Query wherever possible, as it allows you to customize reports with a lot of flexibility, and without any technical skills.

This reporting method evolved as SAP realized that end users without programming skills wanted hands-on access to their data. With the SAP Query, users with no programming skills pick fields, designate the order, and create reports through the use of the same InfoSets used for the Ad Hoc Query reporting.

This allows users to choose fields in either a standard (versions earlier than 4.6) or graphical format. You also have two choices for designing reports — the standard Query Painter (versions earlier than 4.6) or the graphical query (shown in Figure 3). Although the default is the graphical painter, for new users of the SAP Query, the standard setting is more user friendly. You can toggle between the two from the settings menu on the main screen of the tool.

Figure 3

The SAP Query (formerly ABAP Query) design screen

SAP Query offers users a broad range of ways to define reporting programs and create basic lists, statistics, and ranked lists. It is designed in a screen-by-screen format. On each screen, you complete a step in the report’s design. You can explore options for creating lists, calculated local fields,³ or graphs directly from within the SAP Query.⁴

Custom ABAP Report

If these four methods do not meet your reporting needs, and assuming existing third-party tools and BW are not available, a custom ABAP report is your next option. For example, you may need to create a report that includes information that is not easily retrievable or that is based on an internal custom table.

Custom reports are created in R/3 by ABAP programmers with technical skill and knowledge of the database structure. This ABAP code designates commands to go to the database to retrieve information, compute relationships, configure security, design a selection screen, and present the data in a particular arrangement.

There are disadvantages to having a large number of your reports written by ABAP programmers. For starters, every small change that you want in the report, once created, is a programming change. The report must be reevaluated each time you apply HR Support Packages (also known as Legal Change Packages) or upgrades. These hard-coded reports are only as good as the programmers who create them. Anything custom-made runs this risk. You also have to deal with concerns regarding resources and turnover.

HR Reporting in BW

Business Information Warehouse, known as BW, was released in 1997 as a separate module to allow reporting outside of the R/3 environment. If you have purchased and installed the BW module, it too can be added to your arsenal of reporting tools for HR and Payroll. Essentially, it creates a repository of data for querying by the end user. Depending on the frequency of your downloads of data to BW, it is important to understand that reporting from BW is not “real-time” as it is with the other methods described in this article. BW is a great tool for analytical reporting, especially in cases where you are creating reports of data from R/3 and an external system (legacy, time recording, etc.).

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¹ The reports available to you depend on which application areas you are using. If you are not using all of the sub-modules for the HR module, then not all the reports will be useful.

² To learn more about the Ad Hoc Query (InfoSet Query), visit help.sap.com/saphelp_46c/ helpdata/en/23/7fde36857ccd15e10000009b38f889/frameset.htm.

³ You can create calculated fields — i.e., salary multiplied by 10 percent to assist you with salary projections or calculated fields to read through all of your different date types on infotype 41 to determine an employee's hire date.

⁴ To learn more about the SAP Query, visit help.sap.com/saphelp_46c/ helpdata/en/23/7fde36857ccd15e10000009b38f889/frameset.htm.

Danielle Larocca

Danielle Larocca is currently the Senior Vice President of Human Capital Management for EPI-USE Labs. Previously she was the Executive Vice President of Operations/Chief Knowledge Officer at a technology start-up. She has more than 20 years of strategic leadership experience in multi-national business, business process re-engineering, and project and people management. Danielle is an expert on SAP Human Resources (HR) and reporting and has authored four best-selling books on SAP. She is a regular speaker at numerous conferences around the world on topics such as HR, technology, change management, and leadership. She is an official SAP Mentor, a global designation assigned to less than 160 professionals worldwide, who serve as influential community participants in the SAP ecosystem. This group is nominated by the community and selected by the SAP Mentors’ Advisory Board to keep SAP relevant. Danielle also serves as an expert advisor for SAP Professional Journal.

You may contact the author at me@daniellelarocca.com.

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