What is the difference between report painter and report writer in SAP? Report Painter and Report Writer is generally used for creating FI reports. Report Writer: The Report Writer is a tool for creating reports that meet specific business and reporting requirements. Report Writer enables you to report on data from multiple applications. Using functions such as sets, variables, formulas, cells and key figures, you can create complex reports that meet specific reporting requirements. When working with Report Writer, you can use certain functions that are not supported by Report Painter. These functions include: Multidimensional column structures User-defined definition of inactive row and column combinations Enhanced functions for using cells in column formulas. Report Painter: The Report Painter is similar to the Report Writer, but is simpler to use. Most of the functions in the Report Writer are also available in the Report Painter. The Report Painter is based on the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) principle. The main components of report painter are characteristics and basic key figure. Characteristics must be defined in your report, either as data selection criteria, report rows, or report columns. To improve processing time, you should specify all characteristics in general data selection that are not needed in the report rows or columns. The process flow for report writer/report painter is almost same and is as following. Create Set -> Select library -> Define report -> Check report -> Assign report to report group -> Generate report -> Execute report. Advantages of the Report Painter include: Easy and flexible report definition Report definition without using sets Direct layout controlThe big advantage of report painter is the time it costs to build a report. Comparing to ABAP programming based report this way of building a report is much faster and the risk of selecting the wrong data is almost zero. You can compare it to making a query. There are several ways of displaying the report. You can also select the MS Excel function, so the reports starts in excel. Very useful function. You can use report painter for almost every report you want to create but it's mostly used for financial and materials management reports . Also you can easily import and export the report to other clients. Procedure for creating a Report Painter report Tcode: GRR1, FGRP - It shows a sap menu structure only for report painter/writer. You can only use this transaction code from the startup screen of sap GR31 for report writer Report Painter is the "simple" version of Report Writer. When you define reports you must assign them to a library. The library defines which characteristics, basic key figures and key figures may be used in a report. If you include reports in report groups, they must be assigned to the same library. The names of reports and parallel reports are only unique together with the library name. A report group, on the other hand, is uniquely identified by its name. Libraries can be used, for example, to distinguish production and test reports differentiate between reports in different user groups collect standard SAP reports form report classesIn a library, you collect the characteristics, basic key figures, and predefined columns from the report table, which you need for your Report Painter or Report Writer reports. The table name is stored in the header of each library. Characteristics are non-numerical fields. They represent criteria with which you can select data records. Examples of characteristics are the controlling area and fiscal year. Basic key figures are numeric fields, which can be evaluated in a report. Examples include overall costs and activity quantities. Key figures consist of a basic key figure and one or more characteristics. They are used for the fast definition of frequently-used columns. Examples include total actual costs for the current fiscal year or plan fixed costs for the previous fiscal year.Transaction Code: The Transaction code to create report painter is GRR1 and for creating report writer it is GR31. Example are Trial Balance report, Consolidated Balance sheet, Profit (loss). Report painter GRR1, GRR2, GRR3 GS11, 12, 13 for variable GS01, 01, 03 for sets GR51, 52, 53 for report group GR21, 22, 23 for library For export-import: - Any new variables (GS17 - Export, GS18 - Import) - New sets (GS07 - Export, GS08 - Import) - New report (GR37 - Export, GR38 - Import) - New report group (GR57 - Export, GR58 - Import) - New library (GR27 - Export, GR28 - Import)