Validation 

Purpose

You use this component ensure the consistency of the following data:

·         Reported financial data

·         Standardized financial data

·         Consolidated data

·         Additional financial data

Integration

You apply validation within the consolidation process as follows:

·        Before any consolidation entries are posted you need to ensure that the reported financial data (and additional financial data if applicable) you have collected is consistent.

·        After posting standardizing entries, you need to check the consistency of the standardized financial data.

·        After posting the consolidation entries, you can check that the consolidated data is consistent.

Features

Validation of reported financial data, standardized financial data, and consolidated data

Validation of this data uses check expressions, which you can define in customizing. To do this, you establish selection conditions (usually with items and subitems), which you then use in a formula. Then the system tests whether the check expression is true or false for a given data set.

You can also perform multilevel checks: First, as a precondition the data is tested with a Boolean expression you have defined If the expression is true, the values are checked using another Boolean expression (check expression).

·        If the check expression is true, then the subsequent tasks may be executed.

·        If the check expression is false, then the system displays a message (which was defined by the customer).

Validation of additional financial data

Validation of additional financial data uses check expressions that are predefined and fixed in the system. The predefined fixed messages can be output as either error messages or warning messages.

Consequences of validation

Whether the system executes downstream tasks depends the type of message displayed.

The validation is performed prior to the downstream tasks to ensure that only valid data can be posted.

Example

You can check the reported and the standardized financial data of a given period to see if the following expressions are true:

·        Total assets = total liabilities (see also the detailed example)

·        Net profit = appropriation of retained earnings

·        Retained earnings on balance sheet = annual net income on income statement