Hi TBM Community

Question 1: How does Journal ID impact reporting? E.g., what specific reports?

I am trying to figure if us only having Internal Order in the Journal ID impacts the granularity in reports somewhere. I have read in the Data Advisor that we should containt "the date, the account name and amount to be debited or credited in the General Ledger". Effect If Missing: "Lose report granularity".

Right now we have

• Journal ID: Populated with Internal Order ID (which the client uses quite a lot).
• Journal Line Description: Internal Order ID and Name as well as Document Number and Document Description from SAP
• Journal Line ID: Empty

Question 2: Is the fact that we have filled in Journal Line Description with so much info mitigating the lack of detail in the Journal ID field?

BTW: We don't use any of the fields above to generate the UID Metafield.

Thanks!

Michael

Michael,

Question 1: How does Journal ID impact reporting? E.g., what specific reports?  Ryan:  The Journal ID and the Journal Description ID will populate when you are on the Financial Reports and/or any of the reports that drill down to the Cost Source Object.  This will give you the extra layer of granularity of seeing what those exact transactions may be.

Question 2: Is the fact that we have filled in Journal Line Description with so much info mitigating the lack of detail in the Journal ID field?  Ryan:  Typically, you would have the Description populated with contents that would be making up that ID from the Journal ID so outside of a number you'd have the description.  

Note:  If they are not included in the UID field in the Cost Source Master Data you may not see the full details when you drill into the Financial Reports.  You may see the three dots (...).  However, if you add that detail be careful of how many rows it creates in the model at the Cost Source object.  The higher the number rows the more it could affect performance as you allocate throughout the model.

Cheers,

Ryan

Hi Ryan

I appreciate the answers! I'm not sure I completely understand everything you wrote, I'm afraid.

You mention a "Journal Description ID", but there is no such field. Question 1a: Did you mean to write (1) Journal Line Description or (2) Journal Line ID?

If I go to IT Financials -> Financial Review -> Choose a specific Account Group -> Drill down to Account in the pop-up and click. At this point I will get to "Current Month Transactions" for a certain account.

Question 3: What is defining each new row - the Journal ID, the UID Metafield or something more/else? Based on your description it sounds like Journal ID.

BTW, we populate the UID Metafield with lots of other information (org., amount, etc.), so it's close to unique.

Kind regards

Michael

Michael,

for Question 1, I meant the Journal Line Description.  When you go into the Current Month Transactions if you've added more granularity to the UID Metadata Field it will show all the transactions down at the Journal ID and Journal Line Description fields in the modal. 

In regards to the Question 3; the report would have it's own column (e.g. Journal ID and Journal Line Description) that would show up in the report, but the UID Metafield (which extends the granularity of the Cost Source Object in this case) would allow for those values to be seen instead of the "..." for various.

In regards to putting the Amount and some of those other things word of caution would be to watch allocation lines going up the model because the bigger the bottom of the model (e.g. Rows in Cost Source) can impact Assignment Ratio Tables (e.g. Table that is created in the background between two objects with a sample being Cost Source to Labor). 

Cheers,

Ryan 

Got it, Ryan! And I think I have also finally grasped UID Metafield now!

And thanks for the word of caution.

Cheers

Michael

@Rayan Paul - will you be kind to elaborate a bit more on the UID Metafield functionality please? I can only deduce

- it informs allocation process and determines how granular are the transactions created in the model tables ("background tables"?) as a result of allocation

- it is then possible in the reports to allow for that level of drill down to that level of granularity. This seems to be a Reports built in capability? At this stage UID Metafield is not used as such as you have the model table listing your transactions in the breakdown required.

Could you confirm / infirm the above please and add anything extra to help absorb the UID Metafield please.

Will remain obliged!

Vas

#UID

Hi Vasile,

The UID field is an optional field that is leverage to help populate the Unique Identifier for the Cost Source, however, this field is available in every object in the model (it may be OID Metadata or UID Metadata), but both are there for increasing the granularity of an object.  The reasons that you could leverage this is for the following reasons:

1. Reporting - you may want to increase the granularity of an object to include data that may not be captured in the object identify or unique identifier (so it shows as a various in the model or report).  An example of this would be at the IT Resource Towers where we have combined Servers (it used to be Windows and Linux), but we can now leverage the IT Resource Tower Sub-Element to expand the granularity of this out to do reporting on the breakout of Windows and Linux.
2. Allocations - you may be able to get to a more direct allocations.  Let's say you have Application ID within your IT Resource Towers and you could leverage the Application ID to help allocate your Applications Tower to the Applications object.  You'd increase the granularity of the Object Identifier to include this Application ID in order to support that allocation, else you may see a various.

Let me know if this helps

Cheers,

Ryan

Hi,

You may want to consider an Off Model Report if this is the detail your customers are looking for. i.e. not impact performance on the model down the line.