Question on switchover dates

Hi all,

We are having some slight issues with switchover dates in our financial model. We have outlined the issue in detail below:

Background

The structure of our model is that we have 5 different versions, of which 4 are currently being used (Actual, LIVE Forecast, Previous Forecast and Budget). The screenshot below gives a summary:

The LIVE Forecast has a switchover date of June 2020 since that signifies the point at which our Q1 forecasting process started.

We are now going into Q2 and will need to change the switchover date on the LIVE Forecast version to allow an additional three months of actuals to come into the model.

At the same time, we want to store our Q1 Forecast on Previous Forecast version and an updated budget (Q1 forecast + a few additional transactions) in the Budget version. We thought that both can be achieved by taking bulk copies and changing the switchover date to June 2020 however we ran into difficulties as outlined below.

Issue

Actuals are posted retrospectively. So for instance something may be posted in Q2 forecast period that relates to April (which is in Q1). These new actuals come into our model from the data hub and are causing prior period changes to the Budget and Previous Forecast versions.

Possible fixes

Ideas on possible fixes we have come up with include:

Doing a true up say in the month after a given forecast period. The issue with this is that subsequent adjustments to actuals may cause our true up to change / have to be recalculated.
Creating a static view of the budget / previous forecasts however this could be quite labour intensive.

If anyone may have had similar experiences / come up with any novel solutions, we would be very happy to hear from you!

Many thanks,

Vivek

Accepted answers

nathan_rudman

Due to the nature of Anaplan (live calc), in any finance model, it is essential to have a snapshoting system to copy the values of versions into a module were these valus will not change.

Typically, I'll have a snapshot module with the important dimensions (Cost center, accounts, time etc) and a "snapshot version".

Once you have done your forecast, you copy the results of it into that module.This way, the chances for the numbers to change are very limited (only deleting list items will have an effect).

Your final reporting should then be a mix of the native versions where you do the calcs and these native versions.

All comments

SandeepB

@VNagarajan,

Have you tried creating a separate module(acts as staging) with a custom version list to store all the previous forecast or budget version and then you push this to the version dimensioned module based on some import action?

Thanks,

Sandeep

nathan_rudman

Due to the nature of Anaplan (live calc), in any finance model, it is essential to have a snapshoting system to copy the values of versions into a module were these valus will not change.

Typically, I'll have a snapshot module with the important dimensions (Cost center, accounts, time etc) and a "snapshot version".

Once you have done your forecast, you copy the results of it into that module.This way, the chances for the numbers to change are very limited (only deleting list items will have an effect).

Your final reporting should then be a mix of the native versions where you do the calcs and these native versions.

VNagarajan

@nathan_rudman thank you so much for your reply! We were unaware of this till quite recently but will be sure to give this a go.

Thanks again,

Vivek

VNagarajan

Thanks very much @sandeep_bk for the advice - we haven't given this a go but will definitely give this a go!

Thanks,

Vivek

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