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Financial Statement Templates: basic concepts

Definition

A financial statement template (FST) is a structure used to aggregate accounts or custom dimensions; FSTs are used to create standard financial statement formats, but also KPIs and other indices that are useful for reporting purposes.

Characteristics of a financial statement template

A financial statement template is a hierarchy with two levels:

  • the first level includes elements, called FST items; there are three types of FST item:
  • parent item, i.e. this can be related to one or more accounts, as is the case for a hierarchy node. This item shows the sum of the amounts of the relative accounts.
  • formula, defined based on a parent item or on other formulas.
  • description, this does not represent an account but a 'description’ custom header.
  • the second level consists of the accounts related to the parent items.

Unlike the case for hierarchies, for financial statement templates it is possible:

  • to have ‘formula’ and 'description’ FST items in addition to parent items (which define the concept of grouping nodes)
  • to recall FST items from other financial statement templates.

Note: the latter functionality is very useful for building KPIs, as FST items from various templates can be used as components.

CAUTION! It is not possible to use financial statement templates for matrices designed in the Analytical Workspace.

Elements of a financial statement template

A financial statement template is made up of the following elements:

  • a header
  • the FST items in the template, with specific properties
  • the relative accounts/custom dimensions/control types relationships