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Consolidating data based on Charts of Accounts or other hierarchies is a powerful feature that enables real-time data access for timely and accurate financial reports.Typically, data is stored at the posted account level in the database. However, if users want to report on assets or liabilities, they first must consolidate the lower-level accounts to higher levels. For example, if users want to print a report, such as an income statement, they need the numbers for Total Revenue. Total Revenue is not typically stored in the database. However, the revenue numbers are all posted in the database at low levels. Thus, some sort of mechanism is required so that at report time these lower-level numbers show up as consolidated numbers, or numbers rolled up to a higher level. These condolidated (rolled up) numbers can then be shown as Total Revenue in the financial statement.

WebFOCUS consolidation of financial data provides the benefits of quickly and easily managing financial reporting without the overhead involved in cube creation. It also speeds the creation of data warehouses to make it easier to generate financial reports with more flexibility when dealing with various business mergers, acquisitions, and new business units.

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WebFOCUS report generation makes it easy to build a wide range of financial reports for many uses and many audiences. Organizations can get a worldwide picture of financial and business activities because WebFOCUS financial reports can handle international currency conversion, reading and interpreting national characters, and handle sorting, case conversions and formatting of dates, currencies, and numbers. Multiple currencies can be shown on a single report with appropriate symbols, and reporting applications can be developed that provide users with the ability to select the language in which they are most comfortable working.

Additionally, its dynamic posting capability allows for generating summary statements from individual, detailed reports. And its ability to dynamically roll up financial data that has been consolidated simplifies fast generation of a range of financial reports. Refer to WebFOCUS Financial Report Painter for more information.

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WebFOCUS financial reports that contain active drill downs can take advantage of WebFOCUS OLAP. Within a financial report, for example, a user can drill down on a field such as Income Statement. The drill down takes the user to a non-financial report, from which the user can access a WebFOCUS OLAP panel. In the WebFOCUS OLAP panel, the user can perform extensive data analysis functionality on the organization. For example, the user can slice and dice data in many ways to answer vital business questions such as, "What is selling and at what price point?" or "What products in what geographical location account for the largest percentage of my profits?"

WebFOCUS financial reports, with drill downs intact, can be automatically transferred to and displayed in Excel. This conversion greatly reduces the possibility for errors. Report elements, including field names, headers, subtotals, sort breaks, and drill downs are preserved within Excel. Clicking on embedded hyperlinks in Excel produces the same detailed reports as those created in a WebFOCUS financial report. With report information transposed into Excel, users can take advantage of Pivot Tables and other features. In addition, WebFOCUS supports a direct save of report data to Pivot Tables, which provide a powerful data-mining capability. By starting with a relational request to get the scope of desired data into a single report, and then automatically generating a Pivot Table for iterative exploration, this feature supports a workflow common to many organizations. Automatic generation of Pivot Tables is a WebFOCUS exclusive.

WebFOCUS forecasting features can help executives identify trends in numeric data and predict values beyond the range of values stored in the data source, enabling business management to anticipate future conditions and plan ahead.

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After financial reports are generated, organizations can use their existing technology and data-communication infrastructures to deliver reports across the enterprise in a number of ways, such as e-mail, the Web, and wireless devices. Financial reports can be distributed:

• On a scheduled or event-driven basis.
• Using automatic bursting, delivering reports to each user based on his or her security profile, access permissions, and so forth. This more efficiently makes use of network resources.
• By setting up portal-like interfaces from which users can access financial reports.
• By incorporating financial reports into leading third-party portals such as Plumtree, Microsoft SharePoint, IBM WebSphere, PeopleSoft, SAP, Epicentric, and BEA WebLogic.

The reports can be distributed:

• In a variety of output formats, including a PDF file in Adobe Acrobat format, an e-mail attachment, simple HTML text, or direct input into an Excel spreadsheet. For example, a financial analyst can receive a monthly P&L report in an Excel spreadsheet, then analyze it offline instead of rekeying data from a paper printout into the spreadsheet.
• In multiple sections, with each section sent to separate recipients. For example, a single sales report can be sent to multiple regions, with the manager of each region receiving only the information pertaining to their territory.
• To many different people in multiple versions. Unlike most other business intelligence providers, WebFOCUS needs to run a report only once to achieve multiple report delivery to multiple people.

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The WebFOCUS Report Library is a powerful archiving facility that provides organizations with the ability to store and manage financial reports for future retrieval and use. Because businesses generate large volumes of financial information on a regular basis, the ability to archive reports in a secure central storage and efficiently restore them is crucial for efficient compliance with information retention guidelines such as those of the IRS, which requires businesses to retain records for auditing purposes.

Among key features:

• Versioning. The ability to save multiple versions of the same report or document.
• Expiration. The ability to set an expiration date to a file or limit versions to a specified number.
• Categorization. The ability to logically organize documents by categories and domains, so they are easy to locate and retrieve.
• Security. The ability to keep sensitive information protected from unauthorized users by defining which users can view stored content.
• E-mail Notification. The ability to send an e-mail automatically to users to inform them when a new file is added to the archive, and provide them with a URL link to the information.