Monday, January 11, 2010

QTD/YTD Views and Financial Review Screen

QTD/YTD Views


The Heat Map, BU, Function, and Metric Contributors screens have a new "Time Frame" tab that switches the view from Monthly (the current view which will still be the default) to QTD (Quarter-To-Date) or YTD (Year-To-Date).

Your administrator may want to revisit which metric types are declared Cumulative because that setting now affects many more screens. Checking the Cumulative box on a metric type tells the system to calculate QTD (for monthly metrics) and YTD values by adding up the values in that quarter or year. If the Cumulative box is not checked, the end-of-period value will be shown instead.

Use Cumulative for metric types like Gross Sales, Units Produced, and Number of Defects are generally cumulative (the quarterly number is the sum of the three monthly numbers). Do not use Cumulative for Call Rate, Customer Satisfaction, and Sales Growth over Prior Year because these numbers cannot be meaningfully added together and the end-of-period number (last month of the quarter, or last quarter of the year) tends to be the most relevant.

Financial Review


The new Financial Review screen shows shows how financial forecasts changed over time, shows future forecasts, and lets you update the latest forecast for all financial metrics in a business unit. Only users with financial permission can access this screen. It shows 15 months of data, similar to the other screens, but instead of showing the months prior to and including the current review month, it shows the months for the prior quarter, the current quarter, and the three upcoming quarters. Access this screen from the button at the top of the Business Unit screen.

The layout of this screen is similar to the BU view, except extra data is shown for each metric.

Any metric marked financial will not display current or future data on any screen except the Financial Review screen. This is for security so that only people with Financial privilege can view the forecasted values. Everyone will still be able to see the historical (ROFO) targets and actuals.

Full details of this feature can be found in the on-line help.