Author: Neeraj Agarwal is a Sr. Principal Product Manager at Anaplan.
Hello Anaplan Community!
If you've ever closed the books once for statutory purposes and then closed them again — manually — to get a segment-level view for leadership, you already know the pain point we're tackling: Matrix Consolidation.
This feature lets Anaplan Financial Consolidation and Reporting (FCR) consolidate your financial data across multiple dimensions at the same time, so legal and management reporting stop being two separate marathons and become one single seamless process with no additional efforts for reconciliation.
Let's unpack how it works, why it matters, and how to set it up.
🗝️ The Core Concept
Large, diversified organizations almost always need to answer to two different audiences at once. Legal Consolidation is the baseline — the statutory, by-the-book view that regulators and tax authorities require, built on your Entity and Intercompany dimensions. Whereas, Management Consolidation sits on top of the same data but is organized differently, evaluating performance by segment, business unit, profit center, or geography.
Historically, these two views required two separate consolidation processes, each with its own eliminations, and a manual reconciliation step to make sure they told the same story. Matrix Consolidation closes that gap by tracking a Segment (and optionally, Partner Segment) dimension alongside your legal Entity/Intercompany structure, so both eliminations post automatically, in the same run.
How Matrix Consolidation fixes this
With Matrix Consolidation, the system tracks Segment and Partner Segment on every transaction, in addition to Entity and Intercompany. When you run consolidation, it now performs two eliminations in parallel:
- The usual legal elimination, based on Entity/Intercompany
- A segment elimination, based on Segment/Partner Segment — calculated and posted automatically, with no separate process and no extra parameters to run
Configuration
Anaplan FCR provides two configuration paths, depending on how complex your landscape is.
Option 1: Segment + Partner Segment Dimensions
Best for: complex environments where a single entity can transact across multiple business segments.
Here, you build two dedicated dimensions — Segment and PartnerSegment (as Other-type) and capture both at transaction entry. This gives you full precision: the system always knows exactly which segment and which counter-segment were involved.
Setup at a glance:
- Create Segment and PartnerSegment as Other-type dimensions.
- Replicate the Segment dimension members into PartnerSegment (excluding elimination members).
- Setup segment dimension:
- Add an Elimination<DimensionName> property to Segment
- Add dedicated intra- and inter-segment elimination members (e.g., ElimSegmentA and Elim Inter Segment).
- Tag the top parent of each hierarchy with #AllSegments.
- Assign the Elimination member for each parent segment.
- Under Maintain>Settings, populate both MatrixConsolidationSegment and MatrixConsolidationPartnerSegment with the required dimension names.
Option 2: Segment Dimension Only
Best for: organizations where each entity belongs to a single segment, or where the source ERP simply doesn't provide a partner-segment details at transaction level.
This option only needs Segment dimension and Partner Segment is derived based on Intercompany ➡️ Entity ➡️ Segment property.
Setup at a glance:
- Add Segment as an Other-type dimension.
- Add a matching Segment property on the Entity dimension, mapping each leaf entity to its default segment.
- Build the Segment hierarchy with the same elimination-member logic as Option 1.
- Under Maintain>Settings, populate MatrixConsolidationSegment only, and leave MatrixConsolidationPartnerSegment blank.
Note: "Segment" and "Partner Segment" are the reference names used in this article, but the dimensions themselves don't have to be named that way. You can implement Matrix Consolidation using any dimension pair that fits your reporting needs — for example, Business Unit & Partner BU or Profitcenter & PartnerProfitcenter — as long as the same setup logic and the MatrixConsolidationSegment / MatrixConsolidationPartnerSegment settings are applied to whichever dimensions you choose.
Under the hood: The Elimination logic
Regardless of which option you choose, the consolidation engine follows the same rule at run time:
- If Segment and Partner Segment sit under the same main segment ➡️ the system posts to the intra-segment elimination member.
- If they sit under different main segments ➡️ the system posts to the inter-segment elimination member, typically at the top of the hierarchy.
No manual trigger required, as long as your dimensions and elimination members are configured correctly, segment eliminations post the moment you run consolidation, right alongside your legal eliminations.
🙋 Common questions (FAQ)
Do I need both Segment and PartnerSegment dimensions?
Only if entities in your organization can transact across multiple segments (Option A). If each entity sits in a single segment, Option B — Segment only — is simpler to maintain.
What happens if I don't use Matrix Consolidation?
Nothing changes. Leave MatrixConsolidationSegment and MatrixConsolidationPartnerSegment blank, and the model runs standard legal consolidation only.
Do I need to run a separate process for segment eliminations?
No. As long as the dimensions and elimination members are set up correctly, segment eliminations post automatically whenever you run the regular consolidation process.
Can I support more than one segment reporting structure at once?
Yes, the Segment dimension supports multiple hierarchies using shared members.
Want to dig deeper? The full configuration guide, including master data requirements, is available on Anapedia.
