Applies to: IT Planning & Financial Management Project (ITP, ITFMF), Financial Planning (PFP)

Apptio Uplifted Content These topics were contributed by the following Apptio Experts: Customer Success Manager @Harrison Wiener, Project Coordinator @Alex Choi, Sr Program Manager @Nick Ling.

Symptom: Variance Analysis feature does not display when clicked

When you click the Variance Analysis button in the Variance Analysis page, you receive one or more of the following error messages:

• "Variance analysis requires that Account Category and Variance Driver are configured in the Reference Data module." 
  
• "Variance analysis requires a Forecast containing at least one month of actuals."
  

What's going on:

One or more of the following may not be properly configured:

1. Variance Driver dimensions have not been set up.
2. Reference data is not published.
3. Reference data has not been updated in a plan or spend management.
4. The comparison plan is not in the Final state. 

Solution

Follow the checklists below to ensure your environment is configured properly:

Update and publish reference data dimensions

1. Update your Account Category dimension (Manage Account Category reference data)
2. Update your Variance Driver dimension (Manage Variance Driver reference data)
3. Update your Account Reference data with the new account category code (Manage Financial Dimensions reference data)
4. Publish your changes in each of the prior dimensions (Edit and publish reference data tables)

Update your plans and actuals

1. Update the reference data in your Forecast and Baseline Budget (Force a plan to use updated reference data)
2. Ensure at least one budget is in the Final state (Finalize a plan or forecast)
3. Verify that your actuals are loaded for the correct month, and that your reference data is updated in Spend Management.
4. Try creating and publishing a net new forecast to test the Variance Analysis feature (Create a budget plan or forecast)

Symptom: Variance Analysis thresholds do not flag or highlight spend

When using the Variance Analysis tool, no variances are flagged upon selecting your desired thresholds. No accounts within your variance thresholds are marked with a red dot in the Drivers column, even if your data has no errors and matches your criteria.

What's going on:

1. Each individual account in your Account Reference Data must have a valid Account Category.
2. Your thresholds may be too high.

Solution

1. Validate that you have Variance Driver Data and Account category data imported from Cost Transparency.
2. Edit your Account Reference Data to ensure that every account has a valid value in the Category column.
   

NOTE: For more information, refer to the following articles:

• Analyze budget variance 
• Manage Financial Dimensions reference data

Looking for more? Check the IT Planning and Financial Management KB. Still can't find an answer? Post your question to the Apptio Community.