Understanding the Analysis and Monitoring Tools

This section provides an overview of the available inquires that you can use during each phase of consolidation and explains how the system uses reporting trees.

Global Consolidations Inquiries

PeopleSoft Global Consolidations provides many tools that enable you to view different aspects of consolidations, including monitoring the status of each phase of consolidation, ledger enrichment, and ledger preparation, viewing a trial balance of the consolidation ledger—either prior to (proforma) or after posting consolidation-related journals, and navigating through an interactive audit trail of the consolidation ledger data.

By using Global Consolidations inquiries, you can view the information during each phase of processing in many ways, such as viewing a trial balance of the consolidation ledger — either prior to (proforma) or after posting consolidation-related journals, and navigating through an interactive audit trail of the consolidation ledger data. This table lists the available inquiry tools, describes in which phase of consolidation they are used, and describes the type of information that they provide:

Inquiry	Consolidation Phase	Description
Ledger Inquiry	Ledger Preparation Consolidation	View ledger balances hierarchically, with amounts grouped by a reporting tree. Optionally, show trends, limit the view to only a filtered subset of the entire ledger, if desired filter by the book code dimension, and generate a chart of the data. If book code functionality is available, you can select this option and the Ledger Inquiry report displays separate amounts by book code when drilling down from inquiries on the consolidation audit.
Variance Inquiry	Ledger Preparation Consolidation	Compare ledger balances from different scenarios or periods of time. Optionally, show trends, limit the view to only a filtered subset of the entire ledger, if desired filter by the book code dimension, and generate a chart of the data.
Trial Balance	Ledger Preparation Consolidation	View the consolidation ledger, incorporating only source data and posted journals. Summarize the data by account, with an option to navigate to details of additional dimensions such as book code.
Proforma Trial Balance	Consolidation	View the consolidation ledger, incorporating source data for posted and journals that have not been posted. Enables you to check the impact of consolidation processing prior to posting any journals. Summarizes the data by account, with an option to navigate to details of additional dimensions such as book code.
Consolidation Audit	Ledger Preparation Ledger Enrichment Consolidation	Navigate through an audit trail of the consolidation ledger data, viewing the history of activity from the consolidation ledger level back to the source ledger level, or allocation source, if applicable, or view journal data. Use this tool to determine how the system arrives at a particular balance. If book code functionality is available, you can select this option and the Ledger Inquiry report displays separate amounts by book code when drilling down from inquiries on the consolidation audit.
Flow Inquiry	Ledger Enrichment Consolidation	View data for journal and source flow amounts.
Ownership Inquiry	Ledger Preparation Ledger Enrichment Consolidation	View ownership hierarchies for a ledger business unit and its subsidiaries, and the percent of direct and indirect ownership and control belonging to the parent.
Run Difference Analysis	Consolidation	View differences between consolidation runs.
Impact Analysis	Consolidation	Determine which consolidation tree nodes need to be rerun if any changes occur after consolidations are initially processed. This information can help you determine which entities within a consolidation may be impacted by changes to any of the supporting rules.
Journal Publish History	Consolidation	View the history of which journals have been published.
Match Results Inquiry	Consolidation	Preview the outcome of intercompany eliminations by viewing the balances that are matched among business units for an elimination rule set.

Global Consolidations also provides several reports that you can use to analyze consolidation results.

Using Reporting Trees with Inquiries

Both the Ledger Inquiry page and the Variance Inquiry page use a reporting tree to group ledger balances. Often the consolidation tree is based on business units, and when running inquiries it is more informational to specify a reporting tree based on your account rollup structure. This provides you with a view of the ledger balances summarized by account.

Optionally, you can limit the view to only a certain set of records, by specifying criteria for which objects to include. As you view the inquiry results, you can navigate through the reporting tree, viewing summarized totals for each node. When you reach an end node—a node that has no levels beneath it—you can view the details that comprise that amount.

You can specify additional dimensions to include with the details. Using the example of a business unit-based consolidation and an account reporting tree, if you select ledger business unit and department as the additional dimensions, when you click a ledger balance for a particular account, the information is grouped by ledger business unit, then department.

Note: If the reporting tree is a detail tree (also referred to as a summer tree), rather than a node-oriented tree, you must set the use of levels to either strictly enforced or loosely enforced. You cannot have detail values (or ranges) at the same level as nodes.

Note: To improve performance of the inquiry pages, run tree flattener on the dimension trees used in your inquiries.

See Running Tree Flattener.

See PeopleTools Documentaion: Tree Manager

Consolidation Data Sources

On some inquiry and report pages, the GC_SOURCE field displays the consolidation ledger data source—the process from which it originates. The system captures this information when processing consolidations, processing ledger enrichment, running ledger preparation, and generating the consolidation audit . On some of the consolidation pages, the field's numeric value appears instead of its translate table description.

See Global Consolidations Source Codes.

Understanding Amount Options for Viewing Ledger Balances

When viewing ledger balances, several options control how to display the amounts. The available options depend on the consolidation ledger format and whether the account type is balance-forward. Balance-forward accounts (balance sheet accounts) are displayed as period-end balances. For non-balance-forward accounts (income statement accounts), you can choose to view amounts as either period activity or year-to-date (YTD) amounts.

This table summarizes the available amount options:

Amount Option	Description	Availability
End of Period / Period Activity	View end of period balances for balance sheet accounts, and period activity for income statement accounts.	Available for trial balance and financial statement ledger formats.
End of Period / Year to Date	View end of period balances for balance sheet accounts, and YTD activity for income statement accounts.	Available for trial balance and financial statement ledger formats.
Period Activity	View period activity for all accounts.	Available only for trial balance ledger format.

These definitions apply to the different amount options:

End of Period

Amounts reflect the account balances as of the end of the reporting period. Prior period balances are irrelevant.

Period Activity

Amounts reflect the activity on an account over the duration of an accounting period.

Year to Date

Amounts reflect the accumulated activity on an account from the beginning of the fiscal year through the specified period.

Saving Inquiry Preferences

The parameters initially displayed on inquiry selection pages default to the values that you specified on the User Preferences - Inquiry page.

See User Preferences - Inquiry Preference Page.

You can also save named preferences for individual inquiry selection pages on the Save Preference page. To save a preference, enter the parameters that you want to save on the inquiry selection page, then select Save Preference, and on the Save Preference page enter a name for the preference. You can save multiple named inquiry preferences. You can also select a named preference to be the default preference for an inquiry.

After an inquiry preference is saved, you can select it again whenever you run the inquiry by using the Get Preference button and selecting the named preference. The saved inquiry preferences for a specific user ID.

When you access an inquiry parameters page, select Get Preference and on the Select Inquiry Preference page, select the saved preference that you want to use. The inquiry parameters page is then loaded with the parameters stored in the preference.