Consolidating Data

You can launch the Consolidation or Translation process from a form, and you can view the data status in a data grid. Financial Consolidation and Close provides a predefined Data Status grid, which contains entities in the rows, and periods in the columns. The data in the grid is based on the Scenario/Entity/Period/Currency information from the form.

Note:

Translation is performed as part of consolidation. For details on the translation process, see Translating Data.

To consolidate data, you must be a Service Administrator, Power User or User, and must also have Write access to the Parent entity to be consolidated.

Selecting Entities

When you select a base entity to consolidate, the system performs the calculation for the entity only. It does not consolidate to its parent entity.

When you select a parent entity, all active descendants of the parent are also consolidated.

How Periods Are Consolidated

If you consolidate data for a period and the data for prior periods has not been consolidated, the data for the prior period is also consolidated. If you select to consolidate the last period and any prior periods are impacted, the system starts consolidation from the first impacted period. The system will also impact all future periods of the next year.

The consolidation process runs for entities that are Impacted. When the process is complete, the status of each successfully consolidated entity changes to OK.

Selecting a Cube

If you enabled additional cubes in the application, the Business Rules list displays the rules for the additional cubes. You can select the cube for which to run consolidation, for example, Consol2. The list of forms also displays the forms for the enabled cubes. The consolidation process will be limited to the selected cube. By default, the cube is Consol. For information on enabling cubes, see Adding Application Cubes.

Using Force Consolidate

You can use the Force Consolidate option when you need to rerun consolidation for selected cells regardless of their current consolidation status.

For example, if the consolidation process did not properly complete due to an external factor (a database crash, or the user stopped the process), it will leave entities in a processing status. The system may also display an error message that a "Failed consolidation needs to be reset". In these cases, you use the Force Consolidate option, which consolidates all entities with data.

To run Force Consolidate, you must be a Service Administrator.

Monitoring Consolidation Progress

You can view the real-time status of the Consolidation job in the Jobs console. The console provides this real-time information about the job: and the

  • The level currently being processed

  • The period being consolidated

  • The total number of entities processed relative to the total number of entities for the processing period.

You should periodically refresh the screen in the Jobs console to view the latest status while the job is running.


Consolidation job processing status

Note:

The real-time status won’t be displayed if you are running a consolidation on multiple exclusive entities selected by comma separation (example: E1, E2), or if you are running a consolidation with the EnableYearlyConsol substitution variable enabled.

Limiting the Number of Concurrent Consolidation Jobs

Service Administrators can set Consolidation Settings to define the Maximum Number of Concurrent Consolidation and Translations, Maximum Concurrent Consolidation and Translation Jobs Per User, and the Maximum Number of Queued Jobs that may be executed. You can limit the total number of concurrent jobs for an application and define limits for individual users or user groups. Restricting the number of concurrent jobs can increase application performance by eliminating the length of time multiple jobs are queued and executed. To specify limits for concurrent consolidation and translation jobs, see Available Consolidation Settings.

Consolidation Steps

To consolidate data:

  1. On the Home page, click Data.
  2. From the Forms list, click Data Status.
  3. Optional: If you enabled additional cubes in the application, from the Cube dropdown, select the cube for consolidation.
  4. Select the point of view.
  5. Select a cell for which to run consolidation.
  6. From the Actions drop-down menu, select Business Rules.
  7. From the Business Rules dialog, click Consolidate.
  8. Optional: To force the consolidation process to run for all selected cells, click Force Consolidate.

    You can also run Force Consolidate from the Rules card. See Consolidation and Translation Rules.

    If running from a form, you can add Force Consolidate to the Business Rules option of the Form design. See Selecting Business Rules.

  9. When the consolidation process successfully completes, the system displays a confirmation message. Click OK.
  10. To check consolidation status, open the Jobs console. See Viewing Consolidation Progress.