I have seen two methods used to build financial statements and I am wondering what others have experienced in scalability/maintenance between the two or if there is a better approach.
Assume that we have a flat data source for our general ledger within Anaplan. Our line item we are focused on within the source data is the "General Ledger Account." At the end of the day "Account" whether at leaf level or an aggregation will be a part of our income statement and balance sheet modules. The two methods are as follows:
- Utilize a list for the Account which will then become a dimension of the income statement/balance sheet modules.
- Pros:
- Module looks a lot cleaner because there are fewer line item.
- Easier to understand for a newer builder
- Cons:
- Harder to handle exceptions to certain accounts. Select statements or lookups may have to be used to account for adjustments.
- Due to the signs that come across in the ledger data, adjustments have to be made in order to utilize a true "SUM" aggregation method across the account hierarchy (We found an interesting workaround for this on the community).
- Utilize line items and create a line item subset. Convert the "General Ledger Account" field to the line item subset format to be used in a SUM formula to bring the data to the appropriate account within the statements.
- Pros:
- Greater flexibility for adjustments
- Cons:
- Repetition of the same formula for multiple line items unless there is an exception.
*Additionally, approach #2 would have allowed for more flexibility with formatting in the past, but with the formatting flexibility of the current UX I don't see this as being worth consideration.
