Specifying Dimensions and Attributes for G/L Accounts

If you assign dimensions to accounts, your G/L data becomes multi-dimensional. For example, not only can you drill down to detail about an account, but you can also drill across to details about the customer or the item involved in a particular A/R transaction posted to that account.

To support this, predefined dimensions related to Customer, Item and Vendor information are included in the SyteLine initialized data and can be attached to an account. Each dimension has a predefined set of attributes. (Your system administrator can modify or add dimensions and attributes, and set up additional joins between database tables, to meet your company’s needs. For more information, see Creating Dimensions and Attributes for Extended Data Analysis.)

Overview of the Process

Typically, the process includes these steps:

1. You tell  the system administrator how you want to analyze the Chart of Accounts and posted ledger transactions. Be specific about the information you need to see, including any functions or calculations.

   For example, for an account related to employees, you might want to see employee-specific information. The system administrator can join the employee database table in the dimension, so that employee-related fields are made available for your reports. You do not need to see all of the fields in the employee table, so unwanted fields can be hidden. You might also want to see some fields from other tables. The number of possible joins and dimensions that are applicable to an account is unlimited; the predefined data only includes a small sample.

2. The system administrator finds the appropriate information in the database and builds any additional calculations based on that data, creating dimension attributes. For more information, see Creating Dimensions and Attributes for Extended Data Analysis. The system administrator then makes the attributes available to you through the Chart of Accounts Dimensions form.  
3. Use the Dimensions tab on the Chart of Accounts to assign one or more dimensions to an account. The same dimension can be added to any or all G/L Accounts.
4. Click Dimensions to open the Chart of Account Dimension Details form, where you can review, and possibly resequence, the attributes in that dimension.

   Note: The Joins and Attributes buttons on this form by default require System Administration permission. We suggest that you preserve this requirement. The system administrator must ensure that the selected fields are the ones the user expects to see, and that the fields made available are within the available permissions of the user who will define a dimension that uses those fields. In a Sarbanes-Oxley environment, the creation of table joins and fields should be in the control of the service provider who maintains the certification. Also, by default the Dimension Attributes form, where you assign predefined attributes to a dimension, is restricted to the MGR-General Ledger permission. You can change this so that users with the General Ledger permission can also access the form. This is dependent on your company structure and is independent of Sarbanes-Oxley requirements.

   You can perform these actions on the attributes in this form:

   • View the name and description of the attribute.
   • View the underlying database schema and/or calculation used to produce the output data.
   • See whether the attribute is read-only or hidden in the output, and whether a mask is used to display the data (for example, display a date as MM/DD/YY or DD/MM/YYYY). If you have the appropriate permissions, you can modify these options for an attribute.
   • Resequence the order that the attributes are displayed in the output. To do this, change the numbers in the Sequence column and click Resequence.
5. Click Details to view the actual output data for the dimension on the Dimension Details form.
6. Export the Dimension Details grid to Excel for further analysis and reporting.

Related Topics

Example: Dimensions and Attributes

Creating Dimensions and Attributes for Extended Data Analysis