About Balance Attributes

A balance attribute is a user-defined attribute that contains additional information about the balances that are loaded into your application.

The balance attributes are available directly with the data and are also aggregated into any reconciliations associated with the data. Service Administrators can specify which balance attributes they want to load along with their balances and how to handle aggregating each one. Balance attributes can be displayed in the Reconciliation List, Transactions tab, Reconciliation Balances tab, and Detail Balances tab. Use Select Columns from Actions to specify which balance attributes must be displayed. Balance attributes can also be used when defining filters, format rule conditions, profile rule conditions, custom reports, and custom dashboards.

Note that you cannot use existing custom attributes or calculated attributes to load additional information about balances.

Balance attribute data is aggregated and stored at multiple levels:

  • Detail Balance (if specified): Transactional level data will be aggregated by Segments, Sub-segments, Currency Buckets, Currencies and Balance Types
  • Reconciliation Balance: Transactional level data or Detail Balances (if specified) will be aggregated by Segments, Currency Buckets, Currencies and Balance Types
  • Reconciliations: Reconciliation Balance data will be aggregated by Account ID.

You can view the balance attributes along with the sub-segment balances that have been loaded. You can use filter to display only the balances that you require and then export these rows to a Microsoft Excel file.

Balance attributes are associated with the data, not the reconciliation. Therefore, if a reconciliation is deleted, the data still exists in the balance attribute, and will be displayed in the Balance and Detail Balance dashboards. If the reconciliation is recreated, the balance attributes are included in it.

In the source file that you use to load balances, the balance attribute values must appear in the same row as the corresponding balance.

Note:

You cannot create a balance attribute with the same name as a system attribute.

About Using Balance Attributes

  1. Create one or more balance attribute. See Creating Balance Attributes.
  2. Classify the balance attributes as Attribute or LOOKUP.
    1. From Home, select Data Exchange.
    2. From Actions, select Applications, and click Reconciliation Compliance Balances.
    3. In the Dimensions tab, under Dimension Classification, select Attribute or LOOKUP for the balance attribute.
  3. Map the required balance attributes with your data integration.

    See Mapping Balance Attributes to an Integration in Administering Account Reconciliation.

  4. Load balances using Data Integration or Data Exchange.

    See Executing a Data Load and Viewing Results in Administering Account Reconciliation.

  5. Use the loaded balance attributes, as required:
    • View the balance attributes in the Reconciliation List, Transactions tab, Reconciliation Balances tab, and Detail Balances tab.
    • Include balance attributes in filters, format rules, profile rules, custom reports, and custom dashboards

      Balance attributes cannot be used with a Set Attribute Value rule.

Best Practices for Using Balance Attributes

  • Ensure that balance attributes are included in your balance load
  • When loading debit or credit activity (or any currency-based amount), load it at the Functional or Reporting buckets for multi currency applications
  • Most balance attributes are loaded from source systems. However, for the Balance Comparison method, you’ll need to include the attributes in your subsystem integrations.
  • Consider aggregation when designing attributes