How you can transform your data mountains into data treasuries

However, the answers are not always readily available for call-up in the SAP^® system. Sometimes a combination of different standard reports is needed, which the processor must put together manually. However, if a recalculation of the rents following extension renovation measures is due or the deadline for the next cost efficiency analysis is approaching, there is often no time for such special measures.

Over the past 20 years, PROMOS consult has developed numerous solutions that emerged from users’ specific requirements. Many of the tasks a housing company performs relate to managing rental relationships, rental spaces and the corresponding operating and utility costs, and a large number of our software solutions concentrate on real-estate management as a consequence. PROMOS provides various analyses for rental management for you to now transform your master data into true data treasuries and direct the available data into the right channels. We present of these a selection below.

Show us your data

Let’s start with real-estate and contract master data, which even the smallest housing company has. In SAP^®, information is assigned to either properties or contracts. There is a simple guiding principle to determine which is the right place for the information: anything I can take away from the rental object belongs to the contract. The tenant takes his name with him, but the golden taps stay! With the aid of PROMOS reporting in the area of RE-FX master data/contracts, you can now easily analyse this master data, be it the fixtures and fittings, components of the space, vacant rental objects or contract terms.

In order to, for example, find out how many rental objects in your portfolio are occupied, you can use the transaction /PROREX/REISROOC to call the PROMOS occupancy list. First, on the selection screen, you choose the rental objects to be displayed, e.g. hierarchically by the company code, the accounting entity or the building or an individual rental object, then you specify a key date or time period. Then all the rental objects contained in the constraints appear in the results list with their occupancies (Figure 1). You can restrict the selection further and refine it for your needs using various filter options, such as the usage type, contract type, etc. For this purpose, activate the relevant columns as filters or supplement the column selection by showing and hiding different columns. Once you have found the desired layout, you can save the configured display version for subsequent call-up.

Perfectly equipped

To allow you to agree new rental conditions in preparation for a change of tenant or check the fitting and fixture data for the rent index, PROMOS supports you with further useful analyses in the rental calculation section. A good example is the PROMOS rental condition changes overview (Figure 2), which checks the conditions of rental objects and contracts for changes and displays them in a clear ALV presentation with the key date, condition rates and reason for the change. If there are no changes, the condition rates for each accounting entity are simply cumulated. But that’s not all! The package for rent adjustments also provides analyses for rent adjustment runs, conditions for rental objects and contracts, adjustment histories, a report for rent forecasts and much more.

Something is in motion

Apart from the general master data, it is the transaction data in particular that provides information regarding which events or business cases, such as incoming payments, postings, or similar, describe the status of a contract in more detail. This transaction data is consulted in particular for analyses to determine defaults on receivables. With the PROMOS account balances for all lease-outs, for example, both open and settled items for a vendor can be analysed for each contract. For each vendor, the results list contains only items with a reference to the contract; cancelled documents are not taken into account (Figure 3). All the relevant posting data can be found in the list, which can then be exported in Excel format. A detailed list of the dunning history is also available as a separate transaction via /PROREX/REISMAND. The PROMOS solution supplements the standard SAP® dunning history with further useful selection criteria such as dunning run, dunning levels or dunning locks. The results list clearly shows the user all vendors that have already received a dunning notice. Extensive details are shown in the lower area of the screen by double clicking. Further reports in the area of contract accounting and receivables management include analyses for conditions / account assignment, the special G/L indicator (SHBK), dunning locks as well as the dunning and case record, an overview of open items and much more.

Looking at the big picture

The three reporting packages described here are finally completed with the Utilities section, for which a host of reporting options are again provided for the analysis, including the PROMOS cost comparison for utility statements report. Using the transaction /PROREX/NKPV, the posted costs that refer to the utility statement are checked over several years, with a settlement period being compared with a maximum of three comparison periods. This report and other plausibility checks reduce significant errors in advance that would otherwise lead to the utility statement being cancelled and thus contribute to a smooth invoicing process.

Just one click away from the result

This article presented just a few PROMOS reports that support you at every conceivable stage of rental management. Far in excess of 50 analyses – from small to extremely extensive – demonstrate only too well what opportunities are concealed in our master data and with which simple tricks you can bring results to light. The manual combination and post-processing of various SAP^® analyses in Excel are no longer necessary. In combination with PROMOS bulk maintenance tools, you can also maintain, supplement or adjust your master data all in one go. After all, to be able to from the full extent of information, your data needs to be thoroughly maintained – known as data hygiene. Finally, you should always keep the following advice in mind: an analysis can only ever be as good as the quality of your data. In the long term, high-quality master data not only supplies the basis for well-founded analyses and decisions, but also provides the basis requirement for digitising your business processes.