Overview of the link between financial statements and dimensions

If you have permission to manage financial statements, before you start customizing your statements, it is important to understand the link between each of your statements and the dimensions in your financial database. It is also important to understand that the financial database can be viewed in both the Financial Statements and Analytics modules.

Statement details and their impacts

In Financial Statements, when you click the Customize statements link in the Statements menu, you open the Statements window, where you get a grid with the following details about your statements:

• Name - The name of the financial statement. This is the name that displays in the Statement menu when you open the database in Financial Statements.

• Type - The type of statement, which can be a Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow or Trial Balance.

• Top Level Dimension - This is how the accounts are mapped or grouped for each statement. You use these dimensions to analyze the underlying data in Analytics. Learn more about this important link in the next section. Whereas you can rename the statement later, you cannot rename the dimension. The reason for that is, as soon as that dimension is used in Phocas, changing the dimension name would break things, such as a budget workbook or dashboard.

• Is Default? - Whether or not the statement opens by default when a user selects the statement type from the Stream menu in Analytics. There is only one default for each type of statement. This setting is for reference purposes only, you cannot change it.

• Enabled - Whether or not the statement is available in the Statements menu for users. If the checkbox is selected, the statement is available. Clear the checkbox to hide the statement from users.

The following image matches the details in the Statements window with their corresponding elements in the Financial Statements and Analytics modules.

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Above the grid in the Statements window is the Account Restrictions button, which allows you to restrict access to accounts. This removes the ability for users to drill down to view transactions for the accounts. See Restrict access to accounts.

Top level dimensions

In Phocas, a dimension is a data set comprising individual data elements from a database. To put it in Financial Statements terms, it is a group (dataset) of accounts (data elements). In other words, a dimension is an account grouping.

As explained in the previous section, each statement is linked to a top level dimension which determines how the accounts in that statement are grouped.

The Category dimension is the default dimension for the Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet statements and Classification is the default dimension for the Cash Flow. The Trial Balance is not linked to a dimension. As illustrated in the image above (green box), the Category dimension displays in the dimension list in Financial Statements. If you add custom dimensions, they do NOT display in the dimension list in Financial Statements but they do display in Analytics (along with Category).

When you create a financial statement:

• A new custom dimension is automatically created for you with the same name as the statement. In Analytics, the new statement, called New statement and dimension is linked to its own, new dimension.

• You can select an existing dimension from the list instead. For example, you might want to use Category. In Analytics, the new statement is linked to the existing Category dimension. You can have more than one statement link to the same dimension.

Mapping accounts in a statement to a dimension

When you create a financial statement, the dimension you select is carried through to the next screen in the statement setup process, where on the Accounts tab, you get a grid with the account code and name, and these two columns:

• Category - Relates to the Profit and Loss statement and the items in this column will not change. This is for information purposes to help you map accounts to your selected dimension. When you do the mapping, you are NOT mapping to this column, unless it's the default Profit and Loss statement that you are mapping.

• Mapping - Represents the selected dimension and this is where you map the accounts in the statement to the corresponding groups in the dimension. We recommend you customize these mappings to meet your needs rather than leaving them as they were created during the Phocas implementation process. The Mapping column does not give the dimension name so you should keep note of the dimension you are using.

  • If you selected Category or another existing dimension as your dimension, you will be mapping into that dimension. Later, when you open up the statement setup, you will see two columns next to the account name, Category and Mapping. If you use Category for two statements, you will only be able to change the mapping in the primary statement.

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  • If you are using a custom dimension, you will be mapping into that dimension, even though you see the Category column in the grid. This is just for reference purposes only. This becomes more clear after you complete the statement setup and rebuild the database, when you reopen the statement setup, you will see an additional column for the dimension next to the Category column.

Statement details and mapping post-build

After you complete the financial statement setup process and rebuild the database, you will see some subtle changes in the statement setup.

Firstly, your new statement displays in the list in the Statements window, along with the top level dimension you selected. Secondly, when you open the account mapping screen, a new column displays for the new dimension. This is not the case if you selected the Category dimension.