Working With Templates

When creating financial models, you select a template as the basis. Templates contain predefined financial, reporting, and modeling standards. You can customize templates to meet analysis and reporting needs. After you customize templates, use access control to restrict modifications and ensure standardization.

Saving Files as Templates

You can save any Strategic Modeling file as a template to use the modeling standards it contains in your own models.

To save files as templates:

1. Click , select the file, and then click Open.

2. In Strategic Modeling ribbon, click Save As.

3. In File Name, enter a name.

4. In Save as Type, select Template Models (*.alt).

5. In Template Name, enter a name.

   Note:

   Template Name is only for internal reference.

6. Click OK.

Customizing Templates

In templates, you can customize financial accounts, forecast methods, time periods and input values. You may want to customize account descriptions, specify input, print and group settings, and add subaccounts for additional detail. Templates also specify forecast methods, which you change to reflect user preferences and standard company or industry practice. Change time periods to represent your company's standards. There may even be cases where you want to save financial data values in a template.

To customize templates:

1. Click , select the template file, and then click Open.

2. In the Strategic Modeling ribbon, click Save As.

3. In Save As, enter a filename followed by.alt.

4. Click Save.

5. In Template Name, enter a name.

   Note:

   Template Name is only for internal reference.

6. Click OK.