Creating and Using Reporting Hierarchies

You can create hierarchies for a number of information types, including each of the G/L dimensions, jobs, activities, customers, vendors, and more.

Reporting hierarchies are created in the Reporting Hierarchies, Reporting Hierarchy Nodes, and Node Attributes workspaces. In the Reporting Hierarchies workspace, you can create and name each hierarchy, specifying the type of information to which it pertains for instance whether the current hierarchy is for accounts, locations, jobs, and so on. The name, description, type, and so on are not necessarily for information only the reports may use the information to find out which hierarchy to apply to the current report. For instance, a chart of accounts can be structured differently from country to country. Therefore, a report for printing a chart of accounts could use the contents in the Description field to identify the hierarchy reflecting the structure in the country in which the current user is employed. The criteria used by each Maconomy Universe report to find the hierarchy to apply is indicated in the report specific manual of the report in question.

In the sub-tab of the Reporting Hierarchies workspace, you can create the individual nodes in the structure. For each node, you can specify a parent node and if the node is a leaf the specific dimension value, job number, and so on (depending on the type of reporting hierarchy) whose figures should be included in the leaf. This means that if you are creating an account hierarchy, each leaf can be assigned to a specific account, and the figures for this account are included in the leaf.

While creating a hierarchy, you can use the Reporting Hierarchy Nodes workspace. In this workspace, the tab shows one node at a time, and in the sub-tab, you can create nodes which will automatically become children of the node shown in the tab. While it is possible to build the whole hierarchical structure in the Reporting Hierarchies workspace, the Reporting Hierarchy Nodes workspace provides a better overview, as you work with one parent node at a time.

If you have both workspaces open at the same time, you can use the sub-tab of the Reporting Hierarchies workspace to mark the node to which you want to assign children, as the Reporting Hierarchy Nodes workspace will automatically change to the selected node. However, this only applies if “Automatic Find” has been selected in the Find menu.