If you need to do “bucketing” i.e. to show data by quarters or years, based on different base time characteristics, for example, creation date and posting date, you could consider using time hierarchies, and there are virtual ones already available for that purpose. Other alternatives include some virtual characteristics, or some solution with a join between a reporting object and a view in a composite provider, but this is one that is an easy implementation and may solve some simple requirements.
To read about virtual time hierarchies on the online help, click on “Activating Virtual Time Hierarchies”
The virtual time hierarchy gets activated in the IMG, transaction SPRO → SAP Reference IMG → SAP Netweaver → Business Warehouse → Settings for Reporting and Analysis → General Settings for Reporting and Analysis → Set F4 Help and Hierarchies for Time Characteristics / OLAP Settings. Or you can execute transaction RSRHIERARCHYVIRT directly.Once there, click on the tab “Virtual Time Characteristics”.
In the image below you can see the hierarchies for Calendar year / month (0CALMONTH). They show as green because they are already activated. To activate, double-click on a single one, change the descriptions if required and press on “Save”. You will not be able to see these hierarchies in RSH1 as they are virtual but they are available to use in the BEX Query Designer.
For example, if you activated hierarchy 0HYEA1_QUA_MON (this hierarchy shows the first or second half of the year as first level, then the quarter/year and finally the month, you can use it for calendar month in a query by selecting the presentation hierarchy as in the image below.
And the query execution will show the data in buckets as in the image below.
I still need to figure out how this setting is transported…