Rules

• The consolidation scope can only include one year.
• The consolidation scope can include multiple periods. In this case, the consolidation engine first determines the starting period and the ending period and then consolidates all members in between plus all the ancestors (regardless of whether or not those members display on the grid or are included in the range). Although an ancestor is consolidated, the status may still be impacted if any of its descendants are impacted but not included in the consolidation. For example, if only March and Quarter 1 are consolidated, Quarter 1 remains impacted after the consolidation if January and February are impacted. These are examples of expected behavior when a monthly schedule is consolidated:
  • If the range is January-May (February and April do not display on the grid), nine members are consolidated: January, February, March, Quarter 1, April, May, Quarter 2, Semi 1, and Total Year. In this case, Quarter 2, Semi 1, and Total Year may remain impacted because June was not consolidated.
  • If the range is Quarter 1-April (the other members do not display on the grid), eight members are consolidated: January, February, March, Quarter 1, April, Quarter 2, Semi 1, and Total Year. In this case, January is used as the starting period instead of Quarter 1 because a monthly schedule requires a month as a starting/ending period. Quarter 2, Semi 1, and Total Year may remain impacted because May and June were not consolidated.
• If a unit (but not its ancestors) is consolidated, the ancestors show as impacted because the consolidation date/time for the descendants is more current than for the ancestors.
• If you run a consolidation for any member of the Period dimension, the consolidation date/time changes for all its ancestors and descendants. For example, if you consolidate Quarter 1, these periods are also consolidated: January, February, March, Semi 1, and Total Year.
• You can view the status of members for which you have no access or read-only access, but you cannot run a consolidation for those members. In this case, Run Auto Consolidation is disabled.

Best practices

• Use SQL tools to remove activity tracking data after a year-end close or when there is no longer a need for activity tracking.
• Do not manually run a consolidation for lower levels when no data has changed (all unit ancestors are impacted).