Balance Groups

Balance groups represent a collection of balance definitions, including their dimensions that you can use to retrieve balance values for reports, archives, and balance views. Balance group usages determine which reports, pages, and processes use the group to display or process balance information.

Use the Balance Groups task to manage your balance groups.

Balance Group Level

You can define a balance group at the employee or organization level. The balance group level determines the group level at which you can include the balance dimensions.

Employee level applies to balances at a payroll relationship level or lower. Organization level or Group level applies to any dimensions higher than the payroll relationship level, including Group Person dimensions.

Balance Definitions

On the Balance Definitions page of a balance group, you can see the balances associated with the balance group. The information includes the balance name, balance dimension, balance category, unit of measurement, and legislative data group. A balance category groups together similar balances. It is similar to the element classifications, for each element classification there is a corresponding balance category. You can also use this page to search for and add balance definitions to your own balance groups and to certain predefined balance groups.

Use Select and Add to add multiple balance definitions at a time.

Tip: You can select multiple balance definitions in the Select and Add window. Hold down the Shift key to select a group of consecutive balance definitions. To select individual balance definitions hold down the Control key and select the balance definitions that you want to add to the balance group. Click Apply and keep the dialog window open to add the query to search the selected balance definitions . Click OK to add the selected balance definitions and close the dialog window.

Restrictions

Restrictions limit the balances that you can add to the balance group. You can add a list of balance categories, a list of balance dimensions, or a combination of balance categories and dimensions.

The Included Balances Restricted by Category and the Included Balances Restricted by Dimension check boxes are automatically updated on the Balance Group Details page as you add restrictions on the Restrictions page. For example, the standard earnings category means that the balance group is restricted to all balances based on the standard earnings category.

You can also define a balance group without any restrictions.

Note: In some situations you can update a restriction if it's not used by balance definitions and default inclusions. The Edit button on the Restriction page is enabled if the selected row can be updated. A balance group may be defined without restrictions.

Default Inclusions

Default inclusions are combinations of balance categories and dimensions that are automatically added to the balance group. This means that any balance definition you define (manually or through the element template), or existing already for the specified category and attached to the specified dimension, is included in the balance group by default. However, if you need to include any other balance definition outside of those in the Default Inclusions, you must manually add the defined balance to the balance group.