Task Overview

In general, you'll build your Financials plans and forecasts in this order:

1. Define your user variables. See Setting User Variables. For information about specifying other preference settings, see Working with Planning Using the Simplified Interface .

2. Review and adjust driver values for recurring line items. These drivers, enabled by your administrator, determine how you will set, track, and analyze accounts. You can specify driver values using trend assumptions or by direct entry. Then enter, adjust, and calculate your expenses and revenues. You can:

   • Set and adjust drivers

   • Set and adjust trends

   • Manually adjust accounts

   See:

   • Planning Revenue and Expense
   • Planning Using Balance Sheets
   • Planning Using Cash Flow

3. Depending on your type of planning, review internal financial statements such as Balance Sheets and Cash Flow statements.

4. Ask your administrator to run the Rollup rule.

5. Get a status of your department’s or the total business financials, key trends, and KPIs using the interactive dashboards on the Overview tab. See Analyzing Financials with Dashboards.

6. Evaluate your financials using the provided dashboards and analysis forms. See Analyzing Your Financials.

   To include Workforce, Capital, or Projects in your dashboards, have your administrator define data maps to make your other types of planning data and details available.

7. If you are working with budget revisions, you can start the revision process. See Task Overview for Budget Revisions.

Note:

You might not see all the features described in this section, depending on what your Administrator has enabled.

Note:

In a 13-period application, for artifacts labelled with Month, such as Current Month Actual, Month does not represent a calendar month but the period defined through the 13 period calendar.

To get started, from the Home page, click Financials and then select a component.

Table 4-1 Financials Tasks

Goal	Perform These Tasks	For More Information
Expense or Revenue	Prepare revenue-driven or expense-driven plans and forecasts. For driver-based planning: While you can use the direct entry forms to which you have access, leverage the intelligence provided by the driver- and trend-related forms. If applicable, specify values for the drivers that derive your revenue or expenses. You can specify values: By referencing and adjusting trends (using assumptions). By making manual adjustments. View, and if necessary adjust, the values of the accounts calculated by your drivers. Evaluate patterns of planned values against historic actuals using any of the provided trends. Enter revenue or expense values for miscellaneous accounts or those that aren’t calculated by drivers. If you use income statement, review your income statement.. See Planning Revenue and Expense.	See Planning Revenue and Expense.
Balance Sheet	Plan and manage financials using balance sheets. Specify your asset and liability driver values such as days sales outstanding (DSO), and days payable outstanding (DPO). You can specify drivers: By referencing and adjusting trends. By making manual adjustments. Enter and adjust revenue-based asset accounts such as receivables, cash in bank and other assets. Enter and adjust expense-based liability accounts such as payables, accrued compensation, and accrued expenses. See Planning Using Balance Sheets. Note: If you also use cash flow and find that your balance sheets don’t balance, see About Using Cash Flow and Balance Sheet Balance.	Planning Using Balance Sheets.
Cash Flow	Plan and manage financials using cash flow statements. Direct method only: Define cash flow and cash timing assumptions that specify how you receive and use cash. Enter your financing and investing activity such as purchases of fixed assets or repayments of borrowing. See Planning Using Cash Flow.	Planning Using Cash Flow.
Budget Revisions	Plan using budget revisions, along with expense planning. If integration with Budgetary Control is enabled, you can also perform a funds check, get funds results, and reserve funds. See Working with Budget Revisions and Integrating with Budgetary Control.
Analysis	Graphically evaluate actual, plan, and forecast financials at any business level. Analyze key revenue, expense, balance sheet, and cash flow metrics over time. Access grids. Review all of the available forms.	Analyzing Your Financials

Tutorials

Tutorials provide instructions with sequenced videos and documentation to help you learn a topic.

Table 4-2 Tutorials to Learn About Financials

Your Goal	Learn How
Learn how to enter data in Financials.	Entering Planning Data in Financials in Oracle Enterprise Planning Cloud
Learn how to plan using driver-based data in Financials. See how you can create business plans and models that focus on key factors or criteria in your organization that impact and drive performance.	Driver-Based Planning in Financials
Learn how to perform trend-based planning in Financials. See how to enter trend-based assumptions that let you plan and forecast based on trends.	Trend-Based Planning in Financials
Learn how to leverage KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in Financials by using out-of-the-box KPIs or adding your own. KPIs enable you to collect objective, quantifiable data or data that indicates progress toward a performance or strategy target. Use KPIs to reflect the health of key areas in your organization.	Leveraging KPIs in Financials
Learn how to calculate actuals, and prepare plans and forecasts. After enabling Financials, you configure and set up the starting point of your planning and forecasting cycle. See how to leverage out-of-the-box calculations to aggregate and prepare actual, plan, and forecast data.	Calculating Actuals and Preparing Plans and Forecasts in Financials