Using fiscal period and Fiscal quarter reporting seemlessly in a BI Query

Question

Hi,
We have a very specific issue. Reporting the Fiscal Period( in our
case we have 53 fiscal periods) and Fiscal Quarter( we have 4 quarters)
in the same query seamlessly as we would have done using Calander Month
and Calander quarter in other reports that uses SAP delivered standard
time dimensions.
However unlike the Calander time dimension (SAP provided all
possible...0CALDAY, 0CALWEEK, 0CALMONTH, 0CALQUARTER, 0CALYEAR) where you have all of these inside your info provider, you can get
aggregation on week, month, quarter etc in your query seamlessly, The Fiscal Year/Period offers a problem in doing report seamlessly.
When we delve into Fiscal realm, SAP only provided with 0FISCVARNT,
0FISCPER, 0FISCYEAR and a special period 0FISCPER3. It doesn't provide
anything like 0FISCQUARTER etc and rightly so, because you can have
only one 0FISCVARNT in the Time dimension and can have related periods
(0FISCPER) only for a Row of data in your infocube. For example if you need to model as per the Fiscalweek, you can create a custom Fiscal year variant (Say z1) and can configure to have only 53 periods (Mapped to 0FISCPER) representing
53 Fiscal WEEK. Similarly for mapping Fiscal Quarter you can create
another fiscal year variant (Say Z2) and have only 4 periods (mapped to
0FISCPER also in this case) to represent the 4 Fiscal Quarter. However
the issue is that for one record you can only map either of those and
not both since you can only have one Fiscal year variant in one row of
data in the info provider.
For example
If I have two rows OF DATA coming from different sources (One FOR
Fiscal Week and another for Fiscal Quarter) I can have the following in
my info provider.
1> Example data in Fiscal
Char1 Char2 0CALDAY 0FISCVARNT 0FISCPER Quantity
X  ......  y .....10/22/07 ....Z1 ....           43’2007 .......10
X .......  Y .....10/22/07 ....Z2 ....          Q3’2007 .......20
The issue is how do I report the Quantity in a query in Quarter Q3 as
(10 + 20 = 30) since both the rows corresponds to FISCAL Q3’2007?
(Please note that Fiscal week 43’2007(For VARIANT Z1 ) actually is
Fiscal Quarter Q3’2007( For Fiscal Variant Z2) as per our
configuration of Fiscal Year Variant configuration Z1 and Z2)
The same is very simple when I have infoprovider with CALENDAR Time
dimensions , for example if we don’t have any fiscal reporting
requirement and just report on calendar time dimension the record in
the info provider would look like the following ( example)
2> Example Data in CALENDAR DIMENSION
Char1 Char2 0CALDAY 0CALWEEK 0CALQUARTER Quantity
X ........ y .......10/22/07 .......43’2007 .......Q3’2007 .......10
X ........Y .......10/22/07 ....... 44’2007 .......Q3’2007 .......20
Here we can use both 0CALQUARTER and get the data aggregated on the
quarter level in addition to the 0CALWEEK.
To solve this issue, One option that we are thinking of Using 0CALQUARTER to represent the
Fiscal Quarter and use Update rule to populate this one. For example
THE example 1 can be as follows.
1A> Example of using 0CALQUARTER along with 0FISCVARNT and 0FISCPER
Char1 Char2 0CALDAY 0FISCVARNT 0FISCPER 0CALQUARTERE Quantity
X .......y .......10/22/07 ..............Z1 .......43’2007 .......Q3’2007 ..............10
X .......Y .......10/22/07 ..............Z2 .......Q3’2007 .......Q3’2007 ..............20
In this case we would populate the 0CALQUARTER by the actual Fiscal
Quarter and then can use both as per example 2 above. But this is not a
smooth option since we have various other info providers to join and
report based on solely Fiscal Quarter etc…
I am certain that this issue have already been solved by somebody as this bound to happen in any finance application.
Would appreciate if we can get some light on this regarding the data modelling, reporting etc.
Thanks
Arun G.

Answer 1

You have yourself suggested a solution, which is fine,
Other option is to have a new characteristic Fiscal Qtr in all the infoproviders ans update the same using a routine in the updaterule depending on the fiscal year variant.
for eg. for transaction with variant Z1 in one case you can say if fiscal week 01 between 01 to 13 the Fiscal Qtr should be update with1 and if it is between 14 to 26 then update fiscal qtr with 2 and so on.
For other Variants Z2 you write a different login in the routine ans so on.
so for all the data irrespective of the variant you will have the qtr as either 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 and you can report on this fiscal qtr.
assign points if it helps.
regards
Venkata Devaraj