Consolidations

Adaptive Planning is especially well-suited for companies with consolidation requirements, because it helps them automatically consolidate unlimited entities, dimensions, and currencies. With our centralized database and automated data integration capabilities, plus driver-based modeling capabilities, and flexible reporting and analysis tools, users can easily create and audit consolidation adjustments such as intercompany eliminations and minority interest calculations.

• Automatically and dynamically consolidate data across multiple entities, accounts, dimensions, currencies, and fiscal years
• Facilitate intercompany adjustments, eliminations and minority interest calculations
• Expedite multi-currency, multi-location consolidated reporting
• Enhance administrative control with workflow and auditing

Department, Account, and Custom Dimension Tree Consolidation

A company’s business model in Adaptive Planning contains customized hierarchical structures for departments, cost centers, or other key organizational units, charts of accounts, and unlimited custom dimensions such as projects, products and customers. There are several types of account trees, to hold financial data, non-financial data, assumptions, and metrics. All accounts and dimensions are organized in a tree fashion, designed and customized when the model is built. These trees are easy to create via import, are easy to modify via import or drag-and-drop or point-and-click, and can look like you want them to look.

Once the account and dimension trees are established, Adaptive Planning automatically rolls up and consolidates data using the tree structures, with no formula writing required.

For example, one account tree holds the natural account structure from your GL. This is organized primarily by assets, liabilities, equity, revenues, expenses, etc. Within those primary groups, there are typically multiple levels of accounts and sub-accounts, as in your GL. Adaptive Planning automatically rolls up data using this structure, without requiring any formulas to be written. Creating income statement and balance sheet reports is simply a matter of dragging the account structure into the rows or columns of reports. Users can open and close groups of accounts by pointing-and-clicking in sheets and reports.

Another hierarchical tree holds the organizational structure of your company, such as departments, cost centers, or business units. As with the GL accounts, this tree is entirely customizable and easily created. The tree can be dragged and dropped into rows or columns of reports, and data will be automatically rolled up along the structure of this tree. Groups can be opened and closed by clicking.

Furthermore, this tree can be reorganized in an unlimited number of other ways. For example, the tree may be organized by business unit, and within each business unit reside similar functions and departments, e.g., Sales & Marketing, Engineering, Finance. The tree can be also be arranged in other ways, e.g. the primary organization being function. In this alternate organization you could see, for example, total Engineering across all business units. Your organizational structure can have unlimited alternate rollups, each of which automatically consolidates data up the structure of that tree.

In addition to the GL account tree and this organization tree with its alternate rollups, other types of accounts and other custom dimensions are also arranged in a customized, hierarchical fashion, and automatically consolidate data up the structure of the trees.

These trees can be combined or nested on reports, and Adaptive Planning automatically consolidates data according to the combination of trees. For example, a report can be designed to display profit by product by region. This is created by simply dragging the product and region dimensions into the rows of the report builder. Adaptive Planning automatically rolls up and consolidates the data by product and region.

Multiple Entity Consolidation

Adaptive Planning’s Multiple Instance functionality is designed to support the complex planning and reporting requirements of companies that manage autonomous organizations or functions.

An Adaptive Planning instance is a self-contained financial model that includes all elements necessary to plan, report on, and analyze a business. This includes the hierarchical trees for accounts, organizational units, and dimensions. The Multiple Instance functionality enables companies to set up, link together, consolidate, and manage an unlimited number of Adaptive Planning instances.

Using Multiple Instances, a centralized headquarters organization of a complex company can provide each entity or function with an individual Adaptive Planning instance. Each organization can then create and administer its own independent model, complete with its own unique organizational hierarchy, chart of accounts structure, fiscal year end, user base, data entry requirements, and back-end integration. Alternatively, headquarters can create and administer these separate models.

Within the broader organization, multiple instances can be linked together and automatically consolidated. Data designated as to be shared automatically consolidates from “child” instances to the “parent” instance. Unshared data remains private at the child instance.

However a company chooses to use Multiple Instances, whether for separate functions with unique planning needs, or for different business lines or subsidiaries, data is automatically consolidated from the child instances to the parent instances.

Multiple Currency Consolidation

Companies with entities in multiple countries can plan, integrate data from other systems, and report in their local currencies, and in the currency of parent entities, and in the total company (headquarters) currency. When entities’ data is rolled up to their parent entities, financial data is automatically converted from their local currency to the currency of the parent entity. All data is ultimately converted to the currency for the total company. As data is consolidated up account and dimension trees, and from child entities to parent entities, currency data is also automatically converted from local currencies into the parent company currency.

Consolidation Related Modeling

Companies that have multiple business units, subsidiaries or other entities frequently have intercompany adjustments and eliminations that need to be made as a result of intercompany business. Adaptive Planning facilitates modeling of intercompany eliminations, minority ownership, transfer pricing, and other consolidation-related requirements, with its centralized database, driver-based modeling capabilities, and flexible reporting and analysis tools.

Intercompany adjustments and eliminations are unique to each company, but what they typically share are calculations that refer to intercompany data, which then drive debits and offsetting credits to different business units or subsidiaries. Adaptive Planning has several features that make these kinds of calculations easy to create and audit.

• Unlimited Custom Dimensions. Create as many dimensions as you need to track intercompany revenue, expense, and balance sheet items, e.g., intercompany entities, products, customers, accounts, etc.
• Dynamic Formulas. Create formulas in any data cell; the Formula Assistant makes this easy with point-and-click. Reference data from anywhere in the model, subject to user security.
• Driver Based Planning. Use Adaptive Planning’s powerful modeling capabilities to drive intercompany activity into elimination accounts, or to calculate minority interest impact on the P&L and balance sheet, for example.
• Customizable Sheets. Create customized audit sheets to check intercompany eliminations and adjustments.
• Drag and Drop Report Builder. Use filters and parameters to view company data with or without consolidation adjustments.
• Workflow. Automatically manage the plan submission and approval process, for visibility into completion of intercompany data submission.
• Audit Trail. Search to find changes to data, filtering on such fields as users, time ranges, departments, accounts, custom dimensions, etc.