Understanding the Planning Model

This section provides an overview of the planning model and discusses common elements used in this topic.

A planning model is your framework to develop plans and budgets. It includes the time periods and activities that are used during your budget cycle, sources of data available to users, rules (including methods and formulas) that apply to line item budgets, and other budget options and control parameters. The planning model synthesizes all earlier defined budget parameters and establishes the beginning and end of the overall planning and budgeting cycle. Creating a model involves collecting the necessary parts by business unit.

Define and stage a planning model for activities and scenarios using the coordinator role. When you define the model, you specify data requirements such as position, asset, and line item activity data. You select data sources and the source to seed the base budgets. Finally, you stage the data and release the activities and scenarios in the model to distribute the plans and budgets to users.

Common Elements Used in This Topic

Account Category

A set of related accounts grouped together to facilitate and serve as a filter during budget preparation, inquiry, and reporting.

Planning Model ID

The name of a planning model used to perform budget and plan development of scenarios and activities for a business unit.

Scenario

A set of attributes that determines the financial data used in the planning model. A planning model contains a collection of scenarios as defined by the scenario group that is associated with the model. Each scenario definition includes a ledger ID, GL scenario, start and end budget period or start and end fiscal year, and accounting periods, calendar, scenario type, and rate combination name.