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Introduces you to the high-level steps of building a financial plan, including links to in depth articles. Get familiar with the overall steps to build a basic financial plan.
Choose Security Structure
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By default, the security structure of your instance is level-based. You can manage user access to data and areas of your model with a combination of permissions, level ownership, version access controls, and settings for levels, accounts, and sheets.
You can also request rule-based security as an additional layer.
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Build Your Model Structure
Set Up Your Fiscal Calendar
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The fiscal calendar of your instance begins with June and ends with May. The calendar periods are years, quarters, and months. You can set up your calendar differently with Flexible Time Modeling.
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Create Versions
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All financial plans have at least one actuals version and one plan version. You can create multiple plans and also use the version access controls for your security structure.
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Create Levels
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Levels generally mimic your organization structure. You can create levels or import them.
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Create Custom Dimensions
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Custom dimensions and attributes are optional. Custom dimensions are unique to your business model, such as products, customers, and regions. They're an additional dimension to levels, accounts, and versions. Attributes group dimensions outside the confines of your standard hierarchies. You can tag levels, accounts, and any custom dimension with attribute values.
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Model Your Business
Prepare for Formulas
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Formulas are the backbone of your planning model. Use formulas to generate forecasted data, calculate metrics, and connect parts of the model. You can use them several ways:
- Metric accounts: Formulas in metric accounts calculate financial ratios and non-financial metrics. Ideal for accounts like Gross Margin % .
- Default Formulas: These suggested formulas are the only system formulas that appear in editable cells on the sheet. You can edit or override them when you're entering data. They calculate general ledger and custom account values at specific levels and versions. Ideal for accounts that vary, like travel expenses, which uses different formulas for different levels.
- Master Formulas: This account setting lets you create formulas for general ledger and custom accounts. Unlike default formulas, master formulas calculate the value across all levels and all versions. Ideal for consistently calculated accounts, like Net Income.
- Calculated Accounts: Create these accounts when you build modeled and cube sheets. Ideal for specialized calculations, like salary and headcount on a workforce planning sheet.
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Create Accounts
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Your instance comes with standard general ledger accounts, metric accounts, cube accounts, and account codes. You can create more general ledger accounts or custom accounts.
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Build Sheets
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There are three kinds of sheets: standard, modeled, and cube. You can build different sheets for different accounts and different use cases.
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Import Data
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You're ready to import your data which feeds into your model's formulas and links. You can import actuals and plan data using a spreadsheet.
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Start Planning
Enter Data
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Once your plan is ready, your team can update data using sheets or Excel for Planning.
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Analyze Data
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The best part: you have all the data you need so your team can start building reports and charts for real time planning.
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Other Resources
Watch this series of videos to see how to set up a basic plan structure: Model Management and Administration Tutorial.
Check out the Customer Journey for Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting. These videos walk you through the most common sheets for a financial plan, including:
- Expense Sheets
- Capital Expense Sheet
- Balance/Cash Flow Sheet