How I Built It: Creating functional P&Ls using line item subsets without COLLECT formula

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Author: Austin van der Linden is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Model Builder at Hubspot.

Hello Anaplan Community!

In this 'How I Built It' Tutorial, I show how you can build functional P&Ls using line item subsets as a mapping tool. One of the cool functionalities provided with line item subsets is that you can leverage them as a list for mappings. What is even more useful is that you can use a SUM formula to aggregate based on those mappings in the same module you used to create the line item subset. By doing this, you create a simple, dynamic, and flexible method of aggregating from base level data to a line item.

Key features:

Dynamic properties mapping.
Model cleanliness and efficiency by using SUM on a mapping.
Best of both worlds: structure and mapping ability of a list AND flexibility and formatting of a line item.
Solution does not need COLLECT() formula to work.

Check it out and let me know if you have questions!

https://play.vidyard.com/FEPf6mDiLebqicZtPpwwwd

Check out all the 'How I Built It' tutorials here.

Comments

JaredDolich

Brilliant @Austinv - I haven't had the opportunity to use LIS very often since most of my use cases are for supply chain. So, it came as a surprise to me that you can calculate and format line items when using a LIS. I really think system modules are underrated. There is no list I ever create where I don't create a system module to go with it. Now, I'll be adding system modules for LIS too.

jziemer

This is fantastic @Austinv ,Thank you!

adpinto

Definitely a proponent of this approach. Leveraging LISS and mappings is a great approach that is flexible and transparent. great video @Austinv . Example of taking core chart of accounts and forecasting at GL level then summarizing into a more reportable, functional P&L.

Marina Ketelslegers

I must say I not only prefer this approach, i use it all the time when budling P&L! thank you for sharing this video!

CommunityMember115752

Thanks @Austinv,

I am in favour of this approach too, but I am wondering if there is anybody who has a good approach to show variances (version vs version or year vs year) on the resulting output table? In Management Reporting we can leverage Variance columns, but then users lose the pivot functionality that they have in Boards, so I tend to use this approach:

1. Use COLLECT to pull the output table into a calculation module.

2. Create variance line items based on version or time period, which I then add to a LISS.

3. Add these to a Board to allow the user to pivot around/slice and dice. But then I get back to the issue that all items in the LISS are all summarised and formatted the same (but I ideally want different summary methods and formatting as I had back in the output table).

Does anybody have a solution to this? 🙏

Prince.Ayinde

this is incredibly valuable. Thank you for sharing Austin!

sreeharivijayan

This is a great approach. Thanks @Austinv for sharing

Spiritofthegorg

Hi @Austinv - great idea and also very well presented so even rookies like me can understand :)

may i ask the following - i guess this was filmed before the january 2025 release, so i suppose the topic around formatting has kind of solved itself due to the new UI/UX feature?

On top of that i would have the same question as @CommunityMember115752 - this approach seems to work very well for a single version without variances, is there a way to also use it for variance analysis without using anaplan native version feature?

Thx

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