News flash! This just in: Financial data can be user-friendly! Whether your accounting information resides on an old mainframe or in a sophisticated new ERP suite, specialized portal software can make finding and analyzing reports a snap for users throughout your enterprise.

A portal is a Web-based gateway to software and files, as well as a consolidator of information from internal and external sources. Some portal applications, which I’ll call reportals, specialize in managing financial reports and associated documents, then making these files available to users via a Web browser. These reportals are not database report writers such as Seagate Crystal Reports, financial statement report writers such as FRx V6.0, or financial consolidation reporting systems such as Hyperion Enterprise. Instead, they present the reports produced by those — and many other — systems in a way that improves the effectiveness of the information publishing end of the reporting process. In essence, these portals are specialized file managers that securely present reports to a wide audience.

A reportal gets its information from the electronic version of reports and documents that other software applications create. These files can be stored as ASCII print files from a mainframe accounting system or in any of a variety of file formats that today’s popular best-of-breed and integrated financial report writers produce. Reportals can even use document and spreadsheet files created by desktop applications such as Microsoft Word and Lotus 1-2-3.

A reportal can either provide access to report files in their native format, or it can convert the files into special report "objects." A report object stores the report’s data in a format that lets the portal software interrogate and manipulate the information. Storing reports as objects enables the portal to add value to the files it displays. For example, the software might create a table of contents for each report on the fly to facilitate report navigation. Currently, report object formats are proprietary, so one reportal application can’t access another’s objects. However, in the future all reportals will probably create report objects using extensible markup language (XML), so they will be able to read one another’s reports.

These specialized portals store reports in a digital library structure. Many companies base their library structure on a hierarchical tree that reflects the organizational chart, geographic territories, departments or product lines of the business. Other companies’ library structures are based on categories of the reports they contain, such as income statements or balance sheets. The portals store individual reports in folders that represent the tree nodes or categories.

Each time a report file is added to the reportal, the portal administrator creates certain "metadata" — i.e., data about the report’s data — to describe it. This metadata includes information such as the date and time the report was created, the report title, the author’s name, the application that created the file, and keywords that describe the report’s content.

A reportal may store only one version of each report at a time, or it might support report versioning so that users can review a report’s history. Report versioning is often useful at the end of the month to trace changes between early and final statement versions. Reportals may also let users link a report file to other documents that supplement the report’s information, such as work-up worksheet files. The software’s digital library includes these files and loads them in their original applications for viewing and manipulation by users.