The business structure is reflected in Apliqo FPM using the Company dimension and up to four business segments that can be used flexibly. The Company serves as the balancing entity and determines the currency of the Local currency. The business segments might be; Cost Centers, Profit Centers, Departments, Customers, Products or Locations of the business. It will depend on the requirements of the Apliqo FPM implementation. Both the Company dimension and the Business Segment dimensions will define the level of detail that data is stored in the General Ledger cube. The FIN General Ledger cube is the main cube for reporting and analysis.

To set up the Business Segment setup navigate to Administration > Business Segments.

General Considerations

Dimensions and Hierarchies

The leaf elements of a dimensions store the business data in the cube. This this smallest level of detail of the business data stored in Apliqo FPM.

The company and business segments dimensions will contain at least one hierarchical structure that rollups up the leaf elements to a total consolidated element. The total consolidated element knowns as the top node. The top node may contain intermediary consolidated elements that are sub-totals of the leaf elements that are the members of the intermediary consolidation. Within a hierarchy there can be multiple top nodes that rollup the leaf elements differently to express different sub-totals that are used for business reporting and analysis.

For example, a business segment is used to represent the Cost Centers of the business. One rollup of the Cost Centers may be by locations. The top node of the rollup would be ‘Total Cost Centers by Location’. The sub-total consolidations would the different locations of the cost centres. Another rollup of the Cost Centers may be by General Manager. The top node might be ‘Total Cost Centres by General Managers’. The sub-totals would be the General Managers. Each General Manager consolidation would have the cost centers the General Manager is responsible for. Both top nodes the same leaf elements with different sub-total/consolidations of the leaf elements. The limitation of multiple rollups in a single hierarchy is that they cannot be combined for reporting and analysis.

Alternated hierarchies can be created in the company and business segment dimensions that can be combined for reporting and analysis. Each alternative hierarchy contains one or more rollup of the leaf elements of the dimension as described above. Using the previous example two hierarchies would be created in the Cost Center business segment dimension, one hierarchy to contain Cost Centers by Location, the other to contain Cost Centers by General Manager.

Rollups verses hierarchies. Rollups are relatively simple to implement and understand, making them suitable for straightforward for your reporting needs. Hierarchies provide greater design flexibility and provide new insights. Using our example above, having a Cost Center by Location and Cost Centers by Managers hierarchies mean that these two hierarchies can be cross-tabbed in the same report to see the performance of the Cost Centers by Location and General Manager.

Required Elements

All dimensions have the default hierarchy that is the same name as the dimension. Every business segment dimension must have the consolidated top node, “Total FIN BSEG x” and the leaf element of “NA FIN BSEG x”, where x is the business segment dimension’s index. The Company hierarchy has must have the consolidated top node, “Total FIN Company” and the leaf element of “NA FIN Company”. Many other dimensions/hierarchies use the same naming convention for the top node of the dimension/hierarchy and the default leaf element. Do not delete these elements as they are important to the operation of Apliqo FPM.

The “Total FIN BSEG x” and the “Total Accounts” consolidations are used to reconcile the balancing entity. The “Total FIN BSEG x” rollup in the business segment hierarchy must include all the leaf elements of the business segment. Other rollups and alternate hierarchies do not have to include all the leaf elements. They will be defined by the business requirements. The “Total FIN BSEG x” rollup is considered the correct total that all other totals are compared to. The same applies to the FIN Company and other dimensions in Apliqo FPM.

Elements and Attributes

The principal name of the leaf element cannot be changed once the leaf element has been created. For this reason, it is recommended that system keys are used for the principal names of the leaf elements instead of business descriptions. These system keys may already exist within the business source data. An Alias Attribute or a String Attribute are used to give the leaf element a business description.

Deleting a leaf element can lead to a loss of data. When updating the hierarchy the elements of a hierarchy are unwound from the rollup instead of being deleted. The rollup is rebuilt from the hierarchy definition defined stored in Apliqo FPM. Any leaf elements that are not part of the new hierarchy definition become orphans in the hierarchy. These orphan leaf elements should be reviewed, after the hierarchy definition has been updated in Apliqo FPM or the leaf elements can be manually deleted from the hierarchy.

Generally, consolidated elements can be deleted. Numeric data cannot be stored against a consolidated element. String data, such as comments, can be stored against consolidated elements.

Elements can have Alias Attributes that can be used to give the element a business description. Aliases must also be unique within hierarchy between the prinicpal name of the elements of hierarchy, and other aliases. The default alias used in Apliqo FPM is “Code and Description”. “Code and Description” is a concatenation of the element’s principal name and the business description. Elements can have other attributes beside aliases.

There are two other types of attributes. Attributes that store string data and attributes that store numerical data. All business segment dimensions have “Description” which is a string attribute that stores the business description of the leaf element. String attributes do not have to be unique. Attributes are managed in the business segment maintenance pages.