Creating and Editing Dimensions

Getting Started

Global Functions

Administration

Extended Planning & Analysis (xP&A)

xP&A Video Tutorials

User Roles in Lucanet xP&A

Lucanet xP&A User Interface

All Steps at a Glance

Basic Concepts and Elements

Creating a Model

Integrating Data

Modeling Your Data

Creating and Editing Variables

Creating and Editing Formulas

Working with Time

Using Dimensions

Creating and Editing Dimensions

Dimensions, Variables, and Formulas

Aggregating Dimensions

Using Currency and Currency Translation

Viewing and Visualizing Data

Working with Models

Using Comments and Descriptions

Comparison: xP&A vs. Excel Performance

Consolidation & Financial Planning

ESG Reporting

Disclosure Management

XBRL Tagger

Lease Accounting

Banking & Cash Management

Data Collection

Tax Compliance & Reporting

Glossary

Dimensions are xP&A’s most powerful concept. Dimensions allow you to build your business’ structure directly into your financial models, removing the need for formula duplication and lookups.

With dimensions, you can:

Reduce the number of formulas in your models by 100x or more

Make it much easier to maintain and develop your models over time

Significantly reduce the chance of human error when working with formulas

Make it much easier to connect to historical data

Make it much easier to visualize and pivot data from your models

You have several options for creating a dimension:

Create a new dimension via the

icon in the

overview

of the model on the left.

Create a dimension

directly on a variable

:

You can also create a new dimension directly on a variable by clicking on the

Dimensions

button and

adding a dimension breakdown

Shows the Dimensions button on a variable — Add a dimension to a variable

If dimensions exist in your data sources, these will show up as options when you click the Dimensions button on a variable that is connected to integrated data. If you select these dimensions, this will automatically create the dimension in xP&A (if they do not exist in xP&A yet), and add it to your model/variables. See linking dimensions from data sources for more.

Create a dimension in the

Dimensions

workspace:

Open the

Dimension

workspace and click

New

Shows the + New button to be used to add a new dimension in the 'Dimensions' workspace — Create a new dimension in the dimensions workspace

How you edit a dimension depends on whether you are editing the dimension in the spreadsheet or in the Dimensions workspace.

To edit a dimension in the spreadsheet of a model:

Click the dimension you want to edit.

The dimension is displayed as follows, for example:

If necessary, edit the dimension items. The following functions are available:

You can

rename

duplicate

, or

delete

an item in the item's

three-dot menu

Change the order of the items by moving one or more items using drag and drop.
\

If necessary, edit the dimension and the item list using the functions in the upper right corner of the dimension area.

The following functions are available:

Sort, filter or search the dimension

Rename the dimension

Change the dimension icon

Show or hide sparkline columns

Remove the dimension from the model

Delete the dimension

Dimensions can also be edited in the Dimensions workspace. The Dimensions page shows you a list of all of the dimensions on your account, and any dimensions that are used in models that have been shared with you (shared dimensions).

If neccessary, click xP&A in the upper left corner.

Navigate to the Dimensions workspace.

The Dimensions workspace is displayed as follows, for example:

Configure the dimensions as desired (see Options for Dimensions).

If you want to edit the dimension items click on an empty space in the dimension line (see Editing Dimension Items).

On the Dimensions page you have the following options for dimensions:

Yours, Shared

Filters the list of dimensions

Search for a dimension

Open a dimension mapping graph

Create a new dimension

Give dimensions an icon to distinguish them, by clicking the icon next to the dimension name

Models (Tooltip)

Visualise how dimensions link to each other (if you have linked dimensions).

Hover over the models entry to display the tooltip:

Shows the tooltip showing the models a category used in that appears when you click on the models icon — Connected models

Opens a context menu where you can inspect or delete the dimension.

Edit a dimension item

To edit the items list in a dimension, click on an empty space in the desired dimension line (see Editing Dimension Items).

Add new dimension items in the bottom row by clicking New item.

Shows the button 'New item' to be used to add a new item to a dimension — Add dimension item

All dimension items for a dimension must be unique, i.e. you cannot have two duplicate dimension items.

To edit dimension items:

Click on an empty space in the dimension line.

The Dimension detail view is displayed as follows, for example:

Configure the dimension items as desired.

The following functions for dimension items are available:

Add

delete

rename

dimension items using the

three-dot menu

behind the name of the dimension item.

Create

and

update dimension-level links

and

item-level mappings

Set the dimension

icon

Search

sort

filter

, or

reorder

dimension items.

See which

data sources

the dimension is linked to (by hovering over each item).

Configure a

default currency

for the dimension item by adding the

currency column

using the

button. For more information on currency translation and currencies at dimension item level, see

Using Currency and Currency Conversion

In the spreadsheet, you can navigate to the dimension to which a dimension item belongs by clicking the arrow icon:

Shows the button with a purple arrow that is used to open the dimension details from a variable — Navigate to dimension

If your dimension has an inherent hierarchy, e.g. you dimension is Group and contains Divisions, Branches, and Shops that are rolled up, you can build your dimension in order to display and aggregate data at the corresponding level.

To create this hierarchy in the dimension settings, simply grab a dimension item on the left and drop it under the dimension it belongs. This automatically assigns levels (top items are level 1, their children Level 2, and so on).

In the following example Division 1 is level 1, Branch A is level 2 and Shop 1, 2 and 3 are level 3:

Shows the detail view of a dimensions. Highlighted is the hierarchy Division 1 -> Branch A -> Shop 1, 2 and 3 — Hierarchy of a dimension

In the spreadsheet, you can group your dimensions by a certain hierarchy level. To do so, click the Dimensions button and select the level at which your data is grouped:

Shows the dimensions menu. Highlighted are the sections where you can select the levels according to whihc you want to group your dimension — Grouping by levels

When you import a dimension from a spreadsheet (CSV, Excel, or Google Sheets), you can define the hierarchy directly in the cells of the spreadsheet using the > separator. xP&A reads the hierarchy path, creates each dimension item at the correct level, and links it to its parent item automatically – there is no need to rebuild the hierarchy by drag-and-drop after the import.

This is the recommended approach when you are setting up a dimension with a large number of dimension items.

Example

In the dimension column of a spreadsheet, write the full path to each item, separating levels with

The last segment is the item itself

Everything before the last segment defines the ancestors

Shows a dimension hierarchy in a spreadsheet using the > — Dimension hierarchy in the spreadsheet

After the import, the dimension appears in the hierarchy in xP&A with the same structure you would get from organizing the dimension items manually:

Shows the Dimension hierarchy from the spreadsheet in xP&A after import — Dimension hierarchy in xP&A after import

Once the dimension has been imported, you can continue to adjust the hierarchy manually with drag-and-drop in the dimension settings, as described in the previous section.

The two methods can be combined; i.e. first bulk-import the structure from a spreadsheet, then finetune individual items in the dimension details in xP&A.

Please note

Deduplication:

Items with the same path are treated as the same item.

Revenue > Product Sales

in two different rows resolves to one item

Product Sales

under

Revenue

Automatic creation of parents:

You do not need a separate row for every level. If your file only lists leaf items (for example,

Revenue > Product Sales > Licenses

), xP&A creates

Revenue

and

Product Sales

automatically. Auto-created parents have no values of their own; values roll up from their children.

Whitespace:

Spaces around

are ignored.

Revenue > Product Sales

and

Revenue>Product Sales

produce the same result.

Maximum depth:

A hierarchy can have up to 128 levels.

Backwards compatibility:

If no cell contains

, the import behaves exactly as before and the dimension is created as a flat list.

Invalid path

: xP&A shows a warning if a path is malformed — for example, a trailing >, a leading >, or empty segments between two separators (Revenue > > Licenses). In this case, fix the path in your source file and re-import.

In addition to levels, dimensions may also have types, which are classifications you can assign to items.

Types may align with levels, but don’t have to.

For example, you could have a Shop type where Shop 5 and Shop 6 are grouped under Shop 4.

In models, you can group the dimensions either by types or levels.

Navigate to the detail view of the dimension and click the + sign in the Types column on the right-hand side:

Shows the detail view of a dimension. Highlighted is the Types area where new types can be added. — Adding a new type to a dimension

Enter the name of the type and click Save.

Add the Type column to the dimension table by clicking the + sign on top of an empty column and choosing Show type column:

Shows the detail view of a dimension. Highlighted is the + sign and the option 'Show type column' — Adding the 'Type' column

In the Type column, assign the types to the relevant dimension items by choosing them from the dropdown menu. You can also click Create new to create a new type during this assignment step.

Shows the detail view of a dimension. Highlighted is the Type column and the fled to select the type to be assigned to the dimension item — Assigning a type to a dimension item

Once the types have been assigned, you can group your dimensions by type in the spreadsheet. To do so, click the Dimensions button and select the types you want to use for breaking down your dimensions:

Shows the dimensions menu. Highlighted is the Dimension button and the section where you can select the types according to which you want to group your dimension. — Grouping by types

The following additional functions for dimensions are available:

To include an existing dimension in a model, choose one of the following options:

Navigate to the dimension under the + icon in the overview of the model on the left. You can include multiple dimensions at once by clicking multiple dimensions while the picker is open:

Adding a dimension from the overview

Click the Dimensions button on a variable, to add that dimension to the variable (and to the model):

Adding a dimension from a variable

You can show or hide indirect dimension mappings in the data tables, or in the detail view of the dimension in the Dimension workspace.

Example:

If each

Employee

has a

Title

, and each

Title

sits within a

Team

, then each

Employee

sits within a

Team

via their

Title

The indirect dimension mapping is from the

Employee

to their

Team

When in the

Employee

dimension, you can reveal the

Team

of each employee by clicking the

in the column header.

1-to-1 vs. 1-to-many relationships

Linked dimensions have a 1-to-1 relationship, i.e. each dimension item in the primary dimension links to only one dimension item in the linked dimension. Each employee may only have one job title, for instance.

xP&A's dimensions are not designed for 1-to-many relationships, i.e. one job title cannot sit within multiple departments.

Often, there will be a relationship between dimensions. For example, assigning each Employee to a Job Title, or assigning each Deal to a Sales Representative.

To link dimensions, click the + in the far-right column (in the data tables, or in the detail view of the dimension in the Dimensions workspace) and select the Link dimension option.

Shows the link to be used to link dimensions that appears when you click on the + sign in the last column of the dimension details — Link dimensions

This will create an extra column in the data table, allowing you to map the two dimensions together (e.g. giving each Employee a Location).

Shows the dropdown to be used to map dimensions when clicking into a column of a dimension item — Map dimensions

In hierarchical dimension with levels, only the lowest dimension items can be linked.

Example: In Group A → Branch 1 → Shop New, only Shop New can be linked.

Dimension linking can have an impact on your cell count and thus the performance of your model. Always verify your dimension relationships before implementing your model to avoid exponential cell growth and potential system performance issues.

For more information, see Cells and Limits.

To paste data in (e.g. from a spreadsheet), simply copy your data, then select your row/s), and paste (Ctrl/Cmd + V). xP&A will "paste over" whatever row(s) you had selected.

If you do not want to paste over what you have already in the data table, then create a new item at the bottom of the table (you may have to take off alphabetical sorting if you have that applied), select that new item, and paste over that new item (see Adding a dimension item).

Last updated on Aug 16, 2023

Creating and Editing Dimensions

Overview

Creating a Dimension

Editing a Dimension

Options for Dimensions

Adding a Dimension Item

Editing Dimension Items

Structuring Dimensions in Hierarchies

Importing Dimensions From a Spreadsheet

Adding Types to a Dimension

Additional Functions for Dimensions

Overview

Creating a Dimension

Editing a Dimension

In a Spreadsheet

In the 'Dimensions' Workspace

Options for Dimensions

All,

Adding a Dimension Item

Editing Dimension Items

Structuring Dimensions in Hierarchies

Importing Dimensions From a Spreadsheet

Adding Types to a Dimension

Additional Functions for Dimensions

Bringing Existing Dimensions Into Models

Indirect Dimension Mappings

Linking Dimensions

Pasting Dimension Items Into xP&A

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