Planning Parent Values and Rollup Groups
After determining your needs and organizing your summary account structure, define your parent values and your rollup groups.
Note: If you installed the Account Hierarchy Editor, you can use it to create and edit your account hierarchies graphically. You can use the Account Hierarchy Editor to define parent and child segment values, as well as rollup groups.
To determine the parent values and rollup groups you need to define:
1. Plan your parent segment values. When determining the values of parents for each account segment, consider the structure of values within that segment. If your segment values are logically organized and the child values for your parent are all in a contiguous range, a logical value for the parent is the first or last value in the range. For example, if all of your Assets are between 1000 and 1999, an appropriate value for your Total Assets parent is 1999. If you want to use parent values like this, reserve the first or last value in your ranges for a summary value.
If your segment values do not follow a particular structure, and your segment allows alphabetic characters, you can use alphabetic characters for parent values. The alphabetic characters not only distinguish your parent values from your detail values, but they can also provide some description for the parent value.
For example, you could group your United States companies, companies 07, 12 and 18 into a parent with a value of "US."
2. Define the parent segment values, and enter meaningful segment value descriptions. For example, for rollup groups that summarize districts into states and regions you might use descriptions for your parent values such as "Washington State," and "Western Region."
3. Choose a naming or numbering method for rollup groups that is similar for all segments to establish a more memorable and logical rollup group structure. This consistent rollup group structure helps you know the approximate level of detail the parents in rollup groups provide. For example, where districts are your detail segment, states would be rollup group name States, regions would be rollup group name Regions, and so on.
See Also
Using the Account Hierarchy Editor
Defining Summary Accounts
Designing Your Accounting Flexfield
Parent and Child Values and Rollup Groups
Defining Segment Values
Defining Rollup Groups
Planning Summary Account Templates
Entering Summary Account Templates
