Tip of the Week: Dimension Structures in Sage Intacct

Sage Intacct Dimension Structures

The final step that you need to consider when setting up dimensions is dimension structures.

Dimension structures are used to build dimension-based reports. You can set up as many as you like to cater for the different types of reports that you need.

In this tip of the week, we’ll provide an overview of dimension structures and a few ways they can be used in your reporting.

Before we begin, what is the difference between dimension groups and dimension structures?

Dimension groups allow you to group together dimensions for filtering data in reports or dashboards, whereas dimension structures are specifically used to build reports and can combine multiple dimension groups to be included in reports.

When setting up dimension structures, you’ll see fields for ‘Display on report as’, ‘Display total line as’ and ‘Roll up child amounts’ which is similar to the fields you see when setting up account groups.

Underneath that, we select the class groups we want to include in the dimension structure, you can select multiple class groups here.

In Sage Intacct, navigate to: Reports > Setup > Dimension structures > Class.

For example, let’s select ‘Edit’ next to this class group named ‘Conferences group’.

In this example, we want to make this include other class groups too. So, click into the ‘Class group’ field, select the class group you want to include and click ‘Add’. This will allow us to include all of them in a single report.

When you’re all done, click ‘Save’.

Back to the class report structures list, click ‘Members’ next to the group to see which classes are included in the group.

Here, we can see which classes are included in the dimension structure.

To use the dimension structure to build a financial report, navigate to: Reports > All > Financial reports.

Let’s jump into setting up a new report by clicking ‘Add’.

As you can see here, when we initially set up a report, the report structure can either be accounts based or dimensions based.

If it’s accounts based, it’s pulling in information based on account groups but if it’s dimensions based, it’s pulling in data based on dimensions.

From there, you can go on to build you report. But in this tutorial we’ll look at some existing reports, so we’re going to click ‘Cancel’.

From the Financial reports list, we’ll click ‘Edit’ next to the first report we’re going to be looking at.

This is just a standard report we’ve set up based on accounts. Click on the ‘Rows’ tab.

Now click ‘Select account groups’. This is where you can choose which account groups to include in the report.

In the ‘Account group’ field select the account groups and click ‘Include in report’ and then ‘OK’.

To see how the report will look, click ‘Preview’ and select from the following options:

• Live report (HTML)
• Print version (PDF)
• Excel

This is the live HTML view of the report we were just looking at.

The different dimensions are across the top row.

Going back to the Financial Report Writer, if we move to the ‘Columns’ tab and click ‘Column 2’.

We can click the ‘Expand by’ field to change how much data is displayed. Choose from:

• Classes – All levels, with summary balance
• Classes – One level down, with roll up
• Classes – All levels, with roll up
• Classes – All levels, with individual balance
• Classes – All levels, with summary balance

We’re going to select ‘Classes – One level down, with roll-up’.

Once you’re happy, click ‘Set’ and ‘Save & done’.

Here’s how the report looks now when previewed. As you can see, that has made the report more concise.

Next, we’ll look at another type of report to show you.

Note that this report has ‘Filter by dimension structure on rows’ ticked.

Now, let’s navigate to the ‘Rows’ tab. In this report, we’ve opted to filter by dimension structure. To change which dimension structure you’re filtering on, click ‘Set dimension structure’.

Select the dimension from the ‘Dimension’ dropdown and select the dimension structure from the ‘Dimension structure’ dropdown and then click ‘OK’.

Now we’re previewing the live HTML view of the report.

As you can see, the expenses are grouped by class based on the dimension structure we filtered on. If we go back and change the dimension structure, we’ll get different results.

For the third and final example, we’ll show you how dimension structures can be used for another report type.

As you can see under ‘Report structure’ the ‘Dimensions’ box is ticked, meaning this report is based on dimensions. ‘Filter by account group on rows’ is also ticked.

On the ‘Rows’ tab, we can see the button ‘Select dimension structures’ and we’ve currently got 2 dimension structures selected.

Under ‘Detail level’ we’ve got both set to show leaf amounts, this can be changed to one level down or all levels as needed. Leaf level is the lowest level and the active level you’re posting transactions to.

Here’s how that report looks when previewed.

We’ve got all the account groups split out for more detail.

Let’s try out some edits so you can see how it affects the final report.

On the ‘Rows’ tab we’ll change the ‘Section and row type’ field and ‘Dimension structure’ field and then click ‘Include in report’ and then ‘OK’.

On the right hand side, we can click the bin icons to remove the dimension structures we don’t want.

Then, under the ‘Account group’ column we need to select an account group.

Select the account group from the dropdown and then click ‘OK’.

We’ll also make some changes to the ‘Format’ tab under the ‘Row formatting’ column.

To remove all headings from the report, click ‘All’ under ‘Hide headings’.

Here’s a live HTML preview of the report with the changes we made.