Need ideas: Waste of Space to Accommodate Simple Report - Dynamic totaling, User Dim
Seeking some brainstorming ideas!
The situation: We have a full final P&L module where one single line item is 17 gigabytes (and has to be, don't bother questioning this please - it is due to us doing ultra granular reporting, in Polaris, no combo-list is not on the table).
We need to create a second line that is IDENTICAL except that simply 2 P&L GL Accounts in the Account list get zeroed out - that is their “Non GAAP.”
Ultra simple to build and calculate that! But complete waste of another 17 Gigabytes for almost an identical line.
IF Anaplan let users filter stuff and then dynamically changed the parent levels based on the visual filter, this would be easy! But that isn’t an option yet (right? is this roadmapped?) - so the only option I can think of is to use a filter that changes the values - but then you need User Dimension! Otherwise 50 users might be checking and unchecking the filter box.
And User Dimension…takes us right back to waste of size.
I know it’s a weird one and likely no solution to find - but curious if anyone has any wild ideas.
(One that we did in the past was settle for a User dimension, but make users click a button to add themselves to a subset that resets every hour, so it only eats storage while ppl are using it. But this is worst case user experience and frankly, embarrassing to have to do.)
Answers
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FYI @AlejandroFernandez @MitchMakela @ulzhan (Don't have Alikhan's tag..)
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You can have a single line item to lookup which will select if it is a GAAP/ NON GAAP in the system module. Publish this as a field card. Have a system module that identifies the 2 GL accounts as true/Hardcode the 2 GL. Then write the formula in existing LI which says IFnon-gaap and selected GL then 0 else the original formula. Not sure if this will work with your use case but you can give it a try without adding another LI
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Hey @SanjanaNayak thank you for the idea - we considered this but unfortunately there are dozens of users who will be switching between the data, so we can't afford to use this approach as they would be stepping on eachother's toes
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I'm not across your hierarchy or use cases, but would introducing some form of elimination account/s solve for your problem?
If you expect to zero-out the balance in the account itself, this won't work, but if you were ok with having the amounts zero-out as part of a consol, you could introduce a new parent with elimination accounts which offset the balances.
It would be dynamic based on the parent/node you choose and wouldn't require a new list/user list being introduced.
However, as I noted, won't solve for if you need the account itself to zero-out and of course, this is a bit of a hack as you need to adjust your hierarchy to suit this use case.
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Wow @luke_e that is creative - because if I combine that idea, with as well a filter (just simply hiding the account is just as good as getting it to 0) that could be interesting
Though - the downside is where to stick that elim account. Because the Account list is a deep ragged hierarchy, there are quite a few subtotals at the parent level. If I stuck the elimination account as a peer of the Non-GAAP accounts I need to filter out, and then hid all of them, it would be perfect - but now users can't go back to seeing GAAP from before the elimination was added….I will think through this though and see if there is some adjacent angle.
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