Lucanet Consolidation & Financial Planning

The previous functions of Lucanet. Web Client have been moved to the Lucanet CFO Solution Platform solution Lucanet Consolidation & Financial Planning. As such, Lucanet Consolidation & Financial Planning provides web-based data access to almost all the functions of Lucanet.Financial Client.

After modernizing the user interface of Lucanet.Financial Client, we also intend to redesign the Consolidation & Financial Planning solution to permanently close the remaining design gap between the two products. You can look forward to a smooth transition, and a standardized, modern user interface!

For more information on the Consolidation & Financial Planning solution, see Consolidation & Financial Planning.

Consolidation & Financial Planning and Lucanet.Financial Client work on the same underlying data, but access, administration, and parts of the user interface differ: the platform is accessed via a browser instead of being installed locally, several administrative functions (such as user management) are now configured at the platform level, and some functions have been renamed, redesigned, or moved to other solutions.

For a full overview, including the functional differences by area, see Differences Between Lucanet.Financial Client and CFO Solution Platform.

Lucanet Consolidation & Financial Planning and Lucanet.Financial Client work based on the same data. This means that when data are stored in Lucanet.Financial Client, these changes will take immediate effect in Lucanet Consolidation & Financial Planning, and vice versa. The changes are visible immediately in the CFO Solution Platform solution; you do not need to reload the page.

Both are configured per user in the Account menu, opened by clicking your avatar and name at the bottom of the main menu (see User Account):

Language

sets your preferred user interface language, see

Changing the User Interface Language

Formatting preferences

sets your preferred date and number format, see

Configuring the Date and Number Format

These settings apply across the entire Lucanet CFO Solution Platform, including Consolidation & Financial Planning.

Open Help and Documentation in the main menu and select About Lucanet; this displays the version information for your licensed solutions and platform services. For details, see Help and Documentation and Viewing Product Versions.

No. By default, all Lucanet users created in Lucanet.Financial Client have access to Lucanet Consolidation & Financial Planning. New users for Consolidation & Financial Planning can be created both in Lucanet.Financial Client and in the Lucanet CFO Solution Platform.

By default, all access permissions defined for a user in Lucanet.Financial Client also apply for the Consolidation & Financial Planning CFO Solution Platform solution. In addition to this, views created in Lucanet.Financial Client can be specifically activated for use in the Lucanet CFO Solution Platform (see Creating and Configuring Views).

Attributes let you add multilingual descriptions or customer-specific information to Lucanet elements. Create them in the Attributes workspace — specifying a type (String, Integer, Floating point number, Date, or True/False), name, key, and icon — then activate each attribute for the dimension(s) it should apply to. Only then does it appear on that element's Attributes tab, where you can configure its value.

To avoid entering values one by one, export all attribute values to an Excel file, fill them in, and import them again from the same Attributes workspace.

Every trackable element (e.g., items, accounts, postings, data imports, consolidation areas) has a Change log listing what changed, when, and whether a user or the system made the change (create, update, or move). For items and accounts, open Properties and click the Change log icon; for all other elements, click the purple Change Log icon at the top right of the detail view.

For manual and Excel Add-in postings, the change log additionally displays a Predecessor link that opens the previous version in a new window, so you can compare it against the current one.

For a list of which elements are tracked, see Displaying the Change Log.

The Journals workspace lets you view all postings and data imports for a given combination of data level and reporting entity or consolidation area (a journal), together with their underlying posting documents. It corresponds to the Postings workspace in Lucanet.Financial Client.

To import new data into reporting entities, use

Importing Data into Reporting Entities

To create planning calculations for a journal, use

Creating and Configuring Sheets

, which can be created directly within a journal.

To lock or unlock postings, data imports, and Excel transfers for a period, use

Configuring Period Locks

For a full overview of the workspace and its elements, see Journals.

Postings can be created in several ways, and all of them appear together in the Journals workspace for their journal:

Manual postings

: created directly from any cell in a ledger or schedule, for reporting entities, consolidation reporting entities, cost centers, consolidation areas, or consolidation units.

Postings via MS Excel

: automatically generated when Excel plannings or postings are imported using the

CFP Add-in for Excel 365

Data imports

: every import into a reporting entity is transferred to the database as a posting and displayed as a

Data imports

posting in the journal.

Postings created by apps

: generated automatically when an app is executed as part of Consolidation 2 or a directory structure.

Sheets

and

planning wizards

: postings automatically created as part of a Sheet or planning wizard configuration.

Translation with historical exchange rates

: a special posting type used to translate account values using historical instead of current exchange rates.

You can create a manual posting either in the Journals workspace (see Creating and Configuring Postings in Journals), or directly from a ledger or schedule (see Creating Postings in Ledgers and Schedules). Manual postings can later be reversed using Cancel posting in the Posting dialog.

For an overview of all posting types displayed in a journal, see Postings in Journals. To analyze, review, or share posting data, you can also generate a Posting Report.

Data can be imported into reporting entities from an Excel file, a script, or Lucanet.Financial Warehouse. The process has five steps:

Create an

assignment table

mapping the elements from your source system (accounts, reporting entities, cost centers, partners, and more) to elements in the Lucanet database.

Define the data source

Create and start the data import

Assign the data.

Finalize the import.

For the full sequence, see All Steps at a Glance – Importing Data into Reporting Entities. Once set up, an import can be executed again manually at any time, either individually or combined in folders (see Updating Data Imports).

For an overview of the workspace, see Importing Data into Reporting Entities.

Use Workspace configuration (at the bottom left of the overview) to add custom folders for grouping items, edit general ledger properties, and create or configure subledgers, statistical ledgers, and schedules.

You can also create directory structures there — dedicated workspaces used to create and edit elements such as Next Generation Apps, scripts, workflows, connections, and Lucanet.Excel-Reporting files. For each directory structure, you configure on its Elements tab which of these object types can actually be created within it, so you control what belongs in each part of your overview.

For details, see Workspace Configuration and Creating and Configuring Directory Structures.

Dimensions are the core building blocks you configure to model your organization and its data. Each dimension is managed in its own workspace:

Reporting entities

– the accounting units that postings and data imports are made to.

Organization elements

– structural views built from references to reporting entities and consolidation areas, e.g. to model your org chart.

Currency translation

– transaction currencies, display currencies, and exchange rate tables.

Partners

– partners you create and assign to organization elements so that intercompany relationships can be mapped.

Data levels

– separate actual data from planning data.

Adjustment levels

– separate the accounting/valuation basis a value was posted under.

Transaction types

– explain the reason for a change to an account, enabling cash flow statements.

Fiscal years

– the fiscal years available for account hierarchies and schedules in the dimension bar.

For an overview of these workspaces, see Dimensions.

Reporting entities are where you actually post data — they are the accounting units that data imports and postings target, and every posting always belongs to one. Organization elements do not hold postings themselves; they are a flexible structural view built from references to reporting entities (and consolidation areas). This lets you model your organization chart, or build several different structures from the same underlying reporting entities, without duplicating any data.

For details, see Reporting Entities and Organization Elements.

Although both are called "levels," they model different things:

Data levels

separate

actual

data (there is exactly one actual data level) from

planning

data (up to 254 planning data levels, each based on the actual data level from a defined point in time onward).

Adjustment levels

determine the accounting/valuation basis a value was posted and measured under, within either data level. There is always one default adjustment level for saving data imports, unless another adjustment level is specified; data can also be imported directly to other adjustment levels. Separate adjustment levels are typically used for standard-specific adjustment postings (e.g., HGB, IFRS, US-GAAP, or corporate valuation), so the original import data stays untouched. To view a combined result — for example, IFRS-compliant consolidated statements — you group several adjustment levels into an

adjustment level group

and select it in the dimension bar. If

Consolidation 2

is used, consolidation postings are made on a dedicated adjustment level for consolidation postings.

For details, see Data Levels, Adjustment Levels, Creating and Configuring Adjustment Levels, and Creating and Configuring Adjustment Level Groups.

Currency handling is managed in the Currency translation workspace. There, you can create transaction currencies (the currency a posting is made in) and display currencies (the currency values are displayed in), and define exchange rate tables with average, closing, and year-to-date exchange rates.

Exchange rates can also be imported from an external source or exported for further use, and can be queried directly into Excel using the CFP Add-in for Excel 365.

The CFP Add-in for Excel 365 lets you query data from the Consolidation & Financial Planning solution directly in MS Excel, and transfer planning or posting data from Excel back into Lucanet. It is the successor to the integrated Lucanet.Excel.Add-in from Lucanet.Financial Client and can only be used with Consolidation & Financial Planning on the Lucanet CFO Solution Platform.

For installation, formulas, and step-by-step instructions, see Lucanet CFP Add-in for Excel 365, which covers installing the add-in, querying data, and transferring data to Lucanet.

If you previously used the integrated Lucanet.Excel.Add-in in Lucanet.Financial Client, see Migrating From Integrated Excel.Add-in to CFP Add-in for Excel 365 to convert your existing formulas.

Consolidation & Financial Planning offers two consolidation options: Consolidation 1 enables wizard-based intercompany debt elimination, intercompany income and expense elimination, and inventory consolidation, while Consolidation 2 automates the entire consolidation process through apps, providing maximum transparency, accuracy and user-friendliness.

In both options, the dimensions must be set up, the group structure defined and the relevant period locks applied before the actual consolidation can be configured and executed.

For a complete walk-through, see All Steps at a Glance – Consolidation 1 or All Steps at a Glance – Consolidation 2.

Ledgers and schedules are all built from the same five element types: items (used for structuring; an item's value is the total of its sub-items or accounts), accounts (where all postings are made), references (links to items or accounts elsewhere, used to build derived structures such as a derived IFRS balance sheet), formulas (calculated items based on a user-defined formula referencing other items or accounts), and total lines (sums of all elements at the same level above them).

By default, ledgers and schedules are located in the Reporting and analyzing folder, but they can be moved to any other folder within the structure as needed.

For details, see Elements in Ledgers and Schedules.

Several functions let you configure the display of ledgers and schedules: Changing the Display switches between available views, Configuring Display Settings controls general display options, Formatting Numbers and Dates sets how values are formatted within the ledger, and Configuring the Dimension Bar controls which dimensions (e.g., period, reporting entity, currency) you can select at the top of the view.

For an overview, see Display in Ledgers and Schedules.

This depends on what you need:

To view the balance sheet, P&L, cash flow statement, or other parts of the annual financial statements as they are updated live in Lucanet, use the ledgers, schedules, and directory structures in

Reporting and analyzing

— the default folder for these elements, which can be renamed and its contents moved elsewhere.

To create standard reports that can be distributed and displayed without a Lucanet account or an internet connection, use

Lucanet.Excel-Reporting

, which generates Excel files from reporting templates.

To pull figures ad hoc into a working Excel file instead, use the

CFP Add-in for Excel 365