Creating Allocation Rules

You create allocation rules by specifying source dimension members, drivers, and target dimension members.

Context

You have created an allocation step and now want to create allocation rules for that step.

Procedure

Open an allocation process that you want to work with. To browse allocation processes, select the Main Menu () and choose Browse Processes Allocations.
In the allocation process window, select an existing step to add rules to it.

You can also select Load Steps to add existing steps based on the same model, or Create Step to start a new step. For more information, see Creating an Allocation Step.

The rules for the allocation step are displayed in a table view. You can add rules one at a time in the Create Allocation Rule window, or copy and paste multiple rules directly into the table.
Follow these steps to create a single rule:
1. Choose (Create new allocation rule).
  
  The Create Allocation Rule dialog appears. You can select to choose whether to display the Description, ID, or ID and Description of dimension members.
2. Select a Source member, a Driver, and one or more Target members.
  
  If you select Direct Assignment as the driver, select only one leaf target member. All of the source member's value will be assigned to that target member.
  
  Note
  
  If you run an allocation rule that doesn’t have any driver values for the source member, the value stays on the source. If Keep Source is enabled too, the source value doubles.
  
  Your selections are listed in the Selected Allocation Rules section.
3. If you want to create an override, and you selected one or more Overwrite Dimensions for the step, expand Overwrite in the Source column, and select a member for each overwrite dimension.
  
  The rule will apply only to that member of the overwrite dimension, as well as its child members.
  
  For example, if your step assigns costs from an account to a product dimension, you may have added cost center as an overwrite dimension. In this case, you can create one rule with travel costs as the source member, revenue as the driver, and all products as the target. A second rule could use travel costs as the source member and the North American cost center as the overwrite member, and directly assign the costs to the laptop member. In this case, the first rule would not affect travel costs for North America. Instead, they would all be assigned to the laptop product.
4. Choose Create.
  
  The new rule is now listed in the table.
To copy and paste multiple rules, follow these guidelines:
- You can copy data from an Excel spreadsheet or from existing allocation rules.
- Copy the IDs of the dimension members and accounts, not the descriptions.
  
  (The table will display the corresponding descriptions by default. To change this display setting, select Show Description and choose Show ID from the list. The Show ID setting allows you to copy and paste data within the table.)
- Cells with errors are shown in red. Select the cell to see a description of the problem. You can correct them by selecting the rule and choosing (Edit allocation rule), or by copying new data to cells with errors.
Use the toolbar to edit the rules as necessary:
- To edit the selected rule, choose (Edit allocation rule).
- To create a new rule based on the selected rule, choose (Copy allocation rule).
- To delete the selected rule, choose (Delete allocation rule).
When the rules are complete and no errors remain, select (Save Allocation rules).

Results

The allocation step now includes your new rule. You can continue adding steps to the allocation process if necessary, or begin applying the process to model data in a story.