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Setting Up Periods


Periods are time periods that are used in your business, such as Q1 2002 or Jan 2001. Periods are used extensively in the Siebel application, such as in forecasting, time sheets, incentive compensation, and expense reports.

Be sure to set up periods far enough into the future that forecasting will work. For example, the default forecast is for seven months ahead. Therefore, if you keep this default, you must create periods defined for at least seven months from the current date for forecasting to work correctly.

After setting up a period, you can associate Period Units with it. Period Units allow you to define one time unit in terms of another. For example, day periods can be associated with week periods for use in Timesheets. When a new timesheet is created, based on a week period, each day in that week is also added to the timesheet. This functionality requires the day periods to be associated as Period Units with the week period.

To set up periods

  1. From the application-level menu, choose View > Site Map > Applications Administration > Periods.
  2. In the Period Definition list, add a new record and complete the necessary fields.

    Some fields are described in the following table.

    Field
    Comments
    Period
    Enter a name for the period, such as Q1 2001.
    Closed
    Select this to indicate that the period has already closed.
    Start
    Enter the start date for the period.
    End
    Enter the end date for the period.
    Type
    Select the type of period, such as month, quarter, or year.
    Description
    Enter a description of the period. For example, this text appears in the column headers of the Line Items list in the Time Sheet screen, Line Items view.

To associate period units with a period

  1. From the application-level menu, choose View > Site Map > Applications Administration > Periods, and select the appropriate period.
  2. In the Period Units list, click New.
  3. In the Period Units dialog box, select all the period units to associate with this period, and then click OK.

 Applications Administration Guide
 Published: 09 September 2004