How to run GR55 reports in background for cost center hierarchies

Question

1.  I have been asked by our users to create batch jobs to run in the background for some GR55 reports, that can then be sent directly to cost center managers via email.
I have figured out the process to do this as long as the cost center manager only needs to see a single cost center at a time.  However, if they are in charge of multiple cost centers, we also want to send them a summarized report using the hierarchy we have set up.  I can't seem to make this work, as the job only seem to recognize the last cost center in the group and the report is for that cost center.
Example.  cost centers 100, 200 and 300 belong to hierarchy abc.  If I run the job just for cost center 100 it is fine.  But if I have a variant to run hierarchy abc, or even if I use the range 100 to 300, all I get is a report for cost center 300.
We cannot use BW because we only have revenue in BW.  I am being asked to make this work from standard R/3 within the GR55 realm of reporting.
2.  In addition, the report selection criteria includes two separate plan/forecast versions.  They need to update these each month prior to running the reports and sending them out.  I looked at the variables associated with the versions and tried to set them up with default values that I hoped would update automatically so that they don't have to manually change 50 or so variants each month.  But I don't see any dynamic variables that I can use to have the system make that change without going into each variant individually.
3.  There is another piece to this equation as well.  There is another report they want sent out in batch, but it is several pages wide in SAP and several pages long.  So when you run it in batch and either spool it or get it sent as an email, it is very ugly in the formatting due to all the page splits horizontally and vertically.  If anyone knows how to get the report to stay together like it would if you had excel integration turned on, it would be very helpful.  I have tried running it with that integration turned on, but the jobs are set up with user batch_mgr and not my id, so it isn't working well.  The batch_mgr id is just a system id, not a dialog id.  We also don't want the jobs set up with a regular user id because if people leave, then the jobs all need to be changed.

Answer 1

Kim,
I may have options for issues 1 and 2. In case of 3, what I can tell you is I understand the concern, but this is what  typically happens in some standard CO reports that are not ALV compatible, I don't think there is not much  there to do unless you add some custom code for the output.
In regards to point 1, yes,  I have noticed that this happens in some standard and custom reporting, not sure what is going on. I came up with a work around that  made the trick for my client in a similar scenario; which is editing the cost center groups. For instance, instead  of having the group set as a range from 100 to 300,  the groups are have  listed the cost centers, 100, 200 and 300. Obviously, the disadvantage of  this option is  that it would require a bit of more cost center group maintenance.
In regards to point 2,  I understand from your note  that your users already have set up selection variants for the report. One option for you is to get the help from a developer to create a custom period variable and tiny program that runs in batch every month that would update that variable accordingly. Once that's done, you may have to update at least once, the selection variant  attributes to change the period to a selection variable, so everytime from that point of time forward that the variable gets updated,  it will be ready with the right value for every selection variant that uses it.
Hope this helps.
GG