Tasks to Configure for the Planning Module

Access the Configuration Task List page by navigating to Maintenance > Admin > Configuration Tasks.

1. Access and complete each task under General Financial Configuration.

   Define Financial Segments - Define the name and number of business segments for your Planful Planning application. Segments are the primary components in the Planful process. Segments defined here make up your Chart of Accounts. You must define at least two segments, but no more than eight apart from the system-defined segments (i.e. Time, Measure, Scenario). Out of the eight user-defined segments, one segment must represent a legal entity and the other segment must represent a natural account.

   Define Financial Budget Entity - Define business segments used for budgeting/planning. A budget entity is used to assign budget managers to specific components of a plan. Your budget hierarchy entity selections will be populated based on the segments selected here and cannot be changed once the task is complete unless you contact Planful Support. These segments comprise your default budget entity type.

   Define Fiscal Year Setup - Establish the start and end of your organization’s fiscal year, including the number of periods associated with the fiscal year. Define roll-up levels and quarter members. Roll-up levels allow for additional time frequencies in a calendar. The lowest level is month. You will not be able to edit the names of the levels unless the periods per fiscal year is greater than 12. 

   Define Budget Parameters - Define the number of years budgeted at one time and the number of compare scenarios accessible while entering a budget. Compare scenarios are important because they allow you to compare historical actuals and data from a prior period in the budget cycle.

   Define Currency Parameters - Define common currency and conversion basis. Interim currency is used in the Consolidation application. There are 3 currencies associated with a legal entity: Common Currency, Local Currency, and Interim Currency. Common Currency (CC) is your functional currency. The Local Currency (LC) is the currency for each member in the company hierarchy. You can view Report data in the CC or LC.

2. Now that you've defined the structure of your Planful application, you've got to decide how you will your load data to the Planful structure. Under the Define Data Integration task, configure the appropriate task based on your data load plan. There are several options to load data to Planful in addition to Web and Cloud Services. For information on all options, see the Loading Data Guide.

   Web Service Access - Configure to import data from an external source into the Planful application. Information on how to do so is provided in the Loading Your Data to Planful section.

   Cloud Services - Configure to load data from Box, Google Drive, or NetSuite. Information on how to do so is provided in the Loading Your Data to Planful section.

3. Define Reporting Areas (Reporting Cubes). Planful Reporting Cubes are multi-dimensional structures defined by a set of dimensions and measures used to analyze data for reporting purposes. For the Planning application, you'll use the Financial cube at the very least. You may also need the Workforce and Sales cubes.

4. Under Workflow Configuration, select the Enable Forward and Approve for Templates check box to enable workflow actions for templates to include Forward, Send Back and Approve. These actions work similar to the Forward, Send Back and Approve actions for budget entities. The ability to Forward and Approve templates is optional for existing customers. Existing customers can opt to enable this functionality directly from the Workflow Setup page. For all customers who are new to Planful as of the Spring19 release, this functionality is provided by default. If you are an existing customer and you choose not to have the Approve and Forward functionalities, you can mark templates as Mark Complete and Mark Not Complete after you input the data.