A More Secure Excel Reporting Solution for PeopleSoft GL
Security is understandably one of the first questions we get asked when it comes to Financial Reporting from Peoplesoft. This short article explains some of the ways that we ensure the integrity and security of your data in GL Wand for PeopleSoft.
Security in reporting essentially has four aspects:
1. Securing who can see which data.
2. Securing the data between Excel and PeopleSoft.
3. Ensuring integrity of the data.
4. Controlling how data is shared.
Securing who can see which data
Many tools like nVision require you to configure and manage a separate security model. In contrast, we have architected our solution to inherit the standard application security (i.e., Business Unit, Ledger and ChartField security). This reduces the effort and risk of maintaining security in multiple places, resulting in both a simpler and more secure user experience. We achieve this by ensuring a very closely integrated architecture with PeopleSoft—something that generic reporting tools can’t match.
Securing the data between Excel and PeopleSoft
We allow you to use an encrypted, HTTPs connection between our Excel add-in and your PeopleSoft Web server to ensure that the data cannot be intercepted. This is one of the reasons that companies like MasterCard, NATO and New York Stock Exchange run our products. Many other reporting tools use a less secure, Open Database Connection (ODBC) approach.
Ensuring integrity of the data
The primary way that we promote data integrity is the use of an intuitive Excel function over complex row/column intersection tags. This approach offers a few advantages. The first is the ability to very easily see what filters are being applied to the data using our Excel function wizard. The second is the ability to simply refresh the data in the reports from within Excel at any time rather than dumping static data into a workbook. The third is the ability to drill down sequentially from a balance on a report, right down to the Balance, Journal, and Subledger data, including the ability to open the actual transaction (e.g., Voucher) in PeopleSoft.
The combination of these advantages has resulted in decreased auditing costs for many of our customers, as they no longer need to explain how various data dumps are manipulated into final reports and auditors have the ability to very quickly analyze and audit the integrity of balances. Another useful feature is that you can password protect report templates from within our Reports Distribution Manager so that only authorized users can make changes.
Controlling how data is shared
The use of an Excel function over an nVision style "data dump" has another useful security benefit: data isn’t visible unless the person viewing has been assigned access to it and is logged into GL Wand. Viewers either get an error message indicating they need to log in or that they are prevented from seeing the data due to certain security restrictions configured in PeopleSoft. This significantly reduces the risk of the wrong person seeing the information.
When you are ready to share the data, the GL Wand Snapshot function will replace our functions with the hard-coded balances, allowing you to share the report with anyone who has Microsoft Excel on a device. We also provide a Shared Templates Drive that allows you to share report and drilldown templates with colleagues who have GL Wand. The ability to edit or delete the templates is limited, further ensuring the integrity of the reports and their data.
These four aspects of our approach ensure that your data is both secure and easy to to work with, which has been a big factor in the high adoption rate of the GL Wand tool by both Finance and Business. If you're interested in learning more about GL Wand, visit our GL Wand for PeopleSoft webpage or request a private demo.