Business Segments Maintenance
- Adam Davis
- Ada atrajer
The business structure is reflected in Apliqo FPM using the Company dimension and up to four business segments that can be used flexibly. The business segments might by the Cost Centers, Profit Centers, Departments, Customers, Products or Locations of the business. The business segment dimensions will define the level of detail data that is stored in the General Ledger cube for reporting and analysis. And the level of detail that is planned for revenue, expenses and the balance sheet.
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 dimension have the default hierarchy. The business segment hierarchy 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 index. The Company hierarchy has must have the consolidated top node, “Total FIN Company” and the leaf element of “NA FIN Company”. Many other hierarchies use the same naming principle for the top node of the 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” 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. 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 leaf 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 becomes orphans in the hierarchy. These orphan leaf elements should be reviewed, wither the hierarchy definition 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.
Business Segments and Planning
Each business segment dimension has corresponding planning business segment dimension. The usage of the planning business segment for revenue, expense and balance sheet planning is set in the settings in the Plan Mapping tab of the Business Segment Maintenance page. The rollup of the planning business segment dimension is determined by the rollup in default hierarchy under “Total FIN BSEG x”. The leaf elements in the planning business segment hierarchy can be at any level of the business segment rollup. When defining the “Total FIN BSEG x” rollup please consider the impact the rollup will have on the planning business segment.
The planning business segment dimension uses the default hierarchy only. Alternate hierarchies are not used in the planning business segment dimensions.
At a minimum, a planning business segment dimension must have the consolidated element, “Total FIN BSEG x Plan” and the leaf element of “NA FIN BSEG x Plan”. Where x is the planning business segment index.
To migrate data between the General Ledger and the planning module a mapping between the business segment and the planning business segments are maintained when the planning business segment dimension is updated.
Related
Building the Business Segment Structure (deprecated)
Business Segments Security (deprecated)archived