With FSG you can create ad hoc reports to meet special reporting needs where you don't want to create a permanent report definition. For example, you might get a request from your organization's Controller to produce a one-time analysis report of travel-related expenses. When the ad hoc report is complete, you want to delete it.
From the Run Financial Reports window, you select the option to Define Ad Hoc Report. You then specify the row set and column set you want to use to build the report. Optionally, you may need to define a new row set or column set first. When defining the ad hoc report, you can also use any of the other available report objects, such as content sets, display sets, and row orders.
You run the ad hoc report the same way you run any other FSG report. You can even rerun the report later, as long as you have not yet deleted it. Once you are finished with an ad hoc report, you should delete it using the Delete Ad-Hoc Report program in FSG.
Often, the only thing you need to do to build a new report is copy a row set and column set, make a few minor edits, then define the new report. For this reason, FSG includes a feature called AutoCopy. With AutoCopy, you can copy row and column sets, reports and report sets, row orders, display sets, and content sets.
If you want to download a report into a spreadsheet program, FSG provides the option to produce your output as a tab-delimited file. Such files are easily imported into a spreadsheet, where you can do additional customizing, analyze the financial information in the report, produce financial graphs, or upload the report information to some other tool.
eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is an open specification for software that uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) data tags, together with a taxonomy, to describe business reporting, including financial information. An XBRL taxonomy is a standard description and classification system for the contents of accounting reports.
FSG supports XBRL and allows you to produce XBRL instance documents as output. For more information, see: XRBL
You can enhance FSG performance by enabling the profile option, FSG: Enable Search Optimization. This profile option improves the performance of FSG reports that retrieve a large number of rows which meet the report definition criteria by optimizing the process of searching for detail child values associated with each parent account value.
Reports that benefit have account assignments with the following characteristics:
The report has account assignments which employ a large number of parent values.
Each parent value has a relatively large number of child ranges.
The degree of performance improvement is relative to the number of child ranges for the parents used in account assignment definitions in the FSG reports.
You can generate Financial Statement Generator (FSG) reports with BI Publisher to publish FSG reports with custom layouts. XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language, which is a report format used as input for BI Publisher to create reports with your own custom layout design. For example, you might want to share a financial report with a board of directors, so you might want to add your company logo to the report or highlight information with color. When you choose to generate your FSG report with BI Publisher, you create this type of report formatting using your word processing or spreadsheet application.
Note: You cannot use content sets with the Parallel processing type to publish FSG reports with BI Publisher. The Parallel processing type is not supported when using BI Publisher to publish FSG reports.
Use a word processing application's formatting features to create report templates that can be used with your FSG reports to take advantage of a fuller scale of formatting options and transform your FSG report into boardroom-quality financial reports. Formatting and layout options include the following:
varying the font, size, and coloring of text
embedding images or logos, such as .jpg, .gif, or .png files
inserting headers or footers
adding background color
reordering columns
controlling the width and display position of each column
The use of BI Publisher with FSG also allows FSG reports to support bi-directional languages.
To publish a FSG report, perform the following high-level steps:
If you do not wish to use an existing template, design a rich text format (RTF) report template in your word processing application or use a spreadsheet application. Basic report templates are provided for you to use or modify as a new report templates.
For additional information on the basic report template, see BI Publisher Basic Report Templates.
For new report templates, register the template using the XML Publisher Administrator responsibility so the designed layout can be applied to a FSG report.
Define your FSG report. You can select the XML output option as the default or you can select it when you generate the FSG report.
Generate your FSG report using the XML output option.
Use BI Publisher to publish your FSG report using the formatting of your report template to feed the XML output into BI Publisher.
Note: Alternatively, publish your FSG report with a single submission request that generates your XML output and publishes your FSG report from one request.
For additional information on generating financial reports with BI Publisher, see Running Financial Reports with BI Publisher.
For detailed information on designing your report template in BI Publisher, see: Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Report Designer's Guide.
For detailed information on generating a customized report in BI Publisher, see Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Report Designer's Guide.