creating transactional store of plan data

I have various modules which use numbered lists as children of cost centres. Users add items to these numbered lists to capture planned costs for different activities over time.

To export data to our reporting tool I've created a module which collects the values dimensioned by cost centre, gl and time. It is multidimensional but does not need to be in this case as there is a lot of sparsity between unused cc, gl and time combinations.

Are there are any ways I can combine the existing lists to create a transactional data store based on my planned values, with cost centre, gl and time as line items.

what options do I have to combine from multiple modules with different dimensions?

thanks,

Josh

Accepted answers

DavidSmith

@joshuastockwell

If you want a truely dense output module then you can use the source modules to create a unique code combining the various elements and then you can exports to a list using the unique code. This list can be updated/added to from each module to create the "export" transactions

I wouldn't add time into this unique code as we know that that is a less efficient strucutre than keeping time as a dimension.

Once the list is complete, create an export module (an O from DISCO), and either map in the data using the unqiue keys from each source module

An alternative to the mapping is, as part of the list creation, you could actually import the data from module to module (that will save calculations). This does assume that each source module contains unique combinations that don't exist in the other modules

One other point to mention, is if you need to export the attributes of the combinations, you can use List properties to hold these and then use the export labels as part of the export, rather than using line items

More details on this can be found here:

https://help.anaplan.com/anapedia/Content/Import_and_Export/Export_from_Anaplan.html

I hope this helps and gives you some options

David

All comments

tristan.colgate

Hi Josh,

Can you give some examples of the numbered lists rolling into Cost Centre and how you'd ideally like to present these in a transactional (flattened) module in order to export? It's a bit hard to visualise the issue.

All the best,

Tristan

Sheethal

Hi,

Create a new numbered list with the combination of cost centre, GL and time. Use this list (in a new module) to pull data from other modules. Export the data from this new module. This should solve your sparsity issue.

Sheethal N

paul.rosal

Hi Josh,

The export option "Tabular Multiple Column" generates a fairly good form of transactional data for downstream systems. You have the option to "Omit Empty Rows" so sparsity of data is handled. You can also use your own filtering logic instead of "Omit Empty Rows" if you have something more specific in mind.

joshuastockwell

Hi Tristan

The modules have line items for 'cost category' (which maps to a GL code) and other calculation line items, depending on the type of costs being captured as below etc.

I have a travel module to captue trips so

CC01

airfare to Germany
mileage to Nottingham

Also a module for other costs