Consolidation Monitor 

Use

The consolidation monitor provides a graphic presentation of the consolidation units and/or consolidation groups, as well as tasks.

It provides a central working environment:

·         Execute tasks (for collecting, standardizing, and consolidating all reported financial data)

·         Monitor the progress of the tasks for each individual consolidation unit or group

Prerequisites

The customizing settings for consolidation are complete except for the settings concerning the consolidation monitor. In particular, you defined the following customizing settings:

·         The consolidation units and consolidation groups with their hierarchies

·         The tasks with their task hierarchy (including task groups)

Features

Layout of the Consolidation Monitor

The consolidation monitor has a matrix-like structure. In general, the hierarchies of organizational units and the hierarchies of tasks are arranged as follows:

·         The rows of the consolidation monitor display the hierarchies of the organizational units.

·         The columns of the consolidation monitor show the task hierarchy (which includes task groups  and tasks ).

·         The status for the task groups and the tasks is shown for each node of the organizational unit hierarchy.

A legend (located in the menu of the monitor) explains the meanings of the symbols or texts.

Alternatively, you can change the layout of the consolidation monitor to display the hierarchies of organizational units in the columns and the hierarchy of tasks in the rows. To do this, choose:

·         in the context menu of the header row

Swap Characteristic with ... ® Consolidation Group/Consolidation Unit or

·         in the context menu of the header column

Swap Characteristic with ... ® Task/Task Group

Hierarchies of Organizational Units

The consolidation monitor displays all hierarchies of organizational units down to the level of consolidation units (the end nodes of the hierarchy).

For a better overview of the organizational units to be processed, consolidation monitor provides the following functions (listed in the menu and the standard function bar):

·         The end nodes of a hierarchy of organizational units (that is, the consolidation units) are only visible when the task is relevant. For example, only the consolidation groups are shown if you are not displaying the tasks for data collection, standardization of financial data, and currency translation – the consolidation units remain hidden.

·         You can show or hide the columns for lower-level hierarchy nodes of the task hierarchy.

·         You can search the organizational units in the displayed portion of the hierarchy.

·         You can set the focus on a hierarchy, a consolidation group, or a consolidation unit, allowing you to only see these organizational units with their lower-level units.

You can turn off the focus by choosing the function in the Edit menu or in the context menu of a node.

From the consolidation monitor you can go to master data maintenance for organizational units. To do this, in the hierarchy of the consolidation monitor you place the cursor on the node for the master data object, and then choose Goto -> Master Data; or you can double-click the object.

Task Hierarchy

You can display all tasks you defined in Customizing. In particular, the display of tasks depends on the following factors:

·         Which task hierarchy or task sequence you defined

The task hierarchy determines the sequence of the tasks to be executed in the consolidation monitor. The system ensures that certain tasks are executed in a required sequence.

·         Which permanent parameters you selected

Make sure that:

-         The task hierarchy is time and version dependent.

-         You assigned a consolidation frequency to a task in the customizing settings.

Accordingly, the task is only displayed in consolidation periods. Thus, if you chose yearly consolidation for a given task, the consolidation monitor only shows this task for period 012..

·         For the balance carryforward task: The consolidation frequency you assigned in customizing for the version combinations

The monitor only shows the balance carryforward task in the first period of the consolidation interval..

See the section Status Management in the Consolidation Monitor for information about processing the tasks depending on their status.

Layout of the Consolidation Monitor

The matrix in the consolidation monitor can become very large and somewhat unwieldy, depending on your corporate structure and consolidation requirements. Therefore, the consolidation monitor includes the following functions to modify the layout of the monitor:

·         In the hierarchy of the organizational units you can:

-         set a focus

-         hide the names of the organizational units, and thus only show the IDs.

·         You can manipulate the columns of the task hierarchy by:

-         fully or partially expanding or collapsing the columns

-         manually setting the width or automatically optimizing the width

·         You can set filters so that:

-         only certain statuses are shown – for example, to only show tasks that contain errors

-         the end nodes of a hierarchy are not shown

·         In the status display area you can display either symbols or texts that reflect each status.

·         You can save your user layout (see the menu Layout or the corresponding symbol in the standard function bar). Then your layout settings remain intact even after ending and restarting the consolidation monitor.

The following settings in particular are saved:

-         Focus

-         Hierarchy display

-         Status display

-         Task display

-         Names on/off

To display the default layout, and no longer your user layout, choose Layout ® Default Layout.

You should choose the default layout, especially if you previously made changes in hierarchies of organizational units or changes in the task hierarchy.

Performing the Tasks

Conditions for Processing Tasks

The following applies when processing the tasks:

·         All tasks that belong to the task hierarchy must generally be run for each and every consolidation unit. This does not apply to:

-         Data collection tasks

-         Manual posting tasks

-         Tasks that are irrelevant for a consolidation unit

·         There is a required sequence for certain tasks. This ensures that these tasks are run in the correct sequence as required by the system.

See the section Task Sequence.

Selection of the Organizational Unit

In the consolidation monitor you can execute tasks for a single consolidation unit or for a consolidation group. However, some tasks can only be executed for consolidation groups–for example, tasks for the consolidation of investments.

Start Mode

You can run the tasks in the following ways:

·         Test mode (Test button)

You can execute test runs regardless of a task's status at any time.

·         Update mode (Update Run button)

You can run a task in update mode if the task has been opened and the preceding tasks have been blocked (see the section Status Management).

·         Update mode with pendent tasks

When you run a task in update mode and preceding tasks are still pending (that is, not yet blocked), the system runs the task only tentatively (see the section Status Management).

·         With selection screen (menu path Tasks ® Execute with Selection Screen)

This lets you enter selection conditions, technical settings (update/test mode), and so forth in a dialog box prior to executing the task.

·         Run successive tasks without stop

This lets you execute the tasks of a task group in succession without stopping between tasks, as long as they can be executed automatically. This feature speeds up the creation of your consolidated statements.

When you run a task group or a task, the system indicates the task in process in the status bar of the consolidation monitor.