Creating Financial Reports

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Copyright © 2015 Information Builders

This documentation describes how to use the Financial Report Painter. It is intended for application developers and others who are responsible for creating financial reports.

Note: The WebFOCUS toolset generates the rich FOCUS fourth generation language. While this language is very extensive, the WebFOCUS toolset only supports a subset of the language and specific syntax constructs. While the user can manually modify the content of these WebFOCUS procedures and files, there is no guarantee that the user will be able to open the modified procedure in the tool.

How This Manual Is Organized

This manual includes the following chapters:

Chapter/Appendix

Contents

1

Financial Reporting and Analysis for the Enterprise

Introduces the WebFOCUS Financial Reporting Platform, Information Builders single vendor enterprise business intelligence solution, and describes the role of the WebFOCUS Financial Report Painter. The Financial Report Painter is designed for the special needs associated with creating, calculating, and presenting financially oriented data, such as income statements, balance sheets, consolidations, profit and loss statements, budgets, and certain government mandated financial reports.

2

Creating Reports With the Financial Report Painter

Describes how to create a report to accommodate the special needs associated with creating, calculating, and presenting financially oriented data.

3

Tutorial: Creating a Financial Report Using the Financial Report Painter

Provides step-by-step instructions for using the Financial Report Painter to create an income statement, through a pre-consolidated data mart that defines a Chart of Accounts hierarchy. The tutorial introduces basic concepts in financial reporting and presents a methodology for when you are working with your own data.

4

Tutorial: Creating an Income Statement Using Unconsolidated Data

Provides step-by-step instructions for creating an income statement using joined data sources: a Chart of Accounts hierarchy and a General Ledger of accounts that contains unconsolidated detail-level data. This tutorial introduces a variety of consolidation methods, as well as a technique that resolves differences between internal data storage conventions in a typical General Ledger system and user expectations for how those values should be displayed in a report.

A

Creating Financial Reports With Financial Modeling Language (FML)

Describes the Financial Modeling Language (FML) used to create and present financially oriented data, using inter-row calculations.

B

Describing Data for an FML Hierarchy

Documents the syntax required in a Master File to support FML hierarchies. It provides the syntax for manual coding, as well as the corresponding entries in the Synonym Editor.

C

Glossary

Describes key terms found in this manual.

Documentation Conventions

The following table describes the documentation conventions that are used in this manual.

Convention

Description

THIS TYPEFACE

or

this typeface

Denotes syntax that you must enter exactly as shown.

this typeface

Represents a placeholder (or variable) in syntax for a value that you or the system must supply.

underscore                  

Indicates a default setting.

this typeface

Represents a placeholder (or variable), a cross-reference, or an important term. It may also indicate a button, menu item, or dialog box option that you can click or select.

Key + Key

Indicates keys that you must press simultaneously.

{  }

Indicates two or three choices. Type one of them, not the braces.

[  ]

Indicates a group of optional parameters. None are required, but you may select one of them. Type only the parameter in the brackets, not the brackets.

|

Separates mutually exclusive choices in syntax. Type one of them, not the symbol.

...

Indicates that you can enter a parameter multiple times. Type only the parameter, not the ellipsis (...).

.
.
.

Indicates that there are (or could be) intervening or additional commands.

Related Publications

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