Glossary

Familiarizing with the BFC terminology is extremely important. We suggest to spend sometime to link your Company common expressions and terms with BFC's ones.

This will help your Board Consultant to speed up the customizing process and the know-how transfer.

The most relevant dimensions are listed below.

For the month of the account balance.  All balances are held as financial year-to-date values included the Budget and Forecast values.

The reporting Entity within the Group - normally a legal company or other entity, but may be a division or group depending on the individual requirements of the Group.

A Reporting Unit can be also a Consolidation Node : then it's identified as the Holding of the Consolidation Node.

Vice-versa a consolidation node if needs to be further consolidated within a staged model generates a Reporting Unit. Often mentioned as RU or LE (Legal Entity)

This can be considered a “Group” account as opposed to an underlying GL account, i.e. it is the level at which the Group wants to consolidate accounting information.  This may be an amalgamation of a number of underlying GL account codes.

Accounts belonging to different statements can be hold in this dimension.

This is used as an analysis code to hold the other Group entity with whom the Reporting Unit has a balance, for example inter-company receivables and payables, inter-company sales, etc.  Thus, for example, inter-company receivables of a similar nature will be held against one Account (irrespective of the underlying GL accounts structure) and this dimension is used to analyse by the other Group party.

As this is a dimension of the cube, then all data must be held against a member of this entity.  Therefore the first member of this entity is reserved for “Third party” balances, and all data which is not required to be analyzed by another Group entity is held against this entity member. It is possible to specify whether an Account (i) does not require inter-company analysis, or (ii) does require inter-company analysis but may have balances against the third party member, or (iii) does require inter-company analysis and may not have balances against the third party member. Often mentioned as IC.

This dimension is used to track the movement of balance sheet accounts for which a “flow” of data is required.  For example, fixed asset Accounts will be analyzed on this dimension to show such things as Opening Balance, Additions, Depreciation Charge, Disposals and Closing Balance on a monthly basis.  It may be that the underlying GL data structures have separate accounts for, for example, the opening balance and the year’s additions, but not withstanding that, the Account in BOARD will hold the total fixed asset balance, with this dimension being used to hold the movement.

All balance sheet accounts will have the Opening Balance and Closing Balance Movement populated.  If a “flow” is not required for the Account, then the difference between opening and closing balances will be held in the Short-term Movements entity member.  Profit and Loss Accounts have a Closing Balance only. Often mentioned as MOVs.

It is optional but it plays a relevant role during the automatic elimination of the Investment in Subsidiaries : it provides an additional level of breakdown for such Accounts (Investment in Subsidiaries) highlighting if and when the Movement is due to an Original Cost balance or a Depreciation/Revaluation.

The Layer entity is used to build up the various layers of the consolidation process.  The standard template contains the following layers:

01 Local Currency (input)

Normally this would be the underlying GL values from the reporting entity in its local currency.

02 Local Currency Adjustments (input)

This may be used, for example, by the reporting unit to process adjustments for reporting purposes which are not reflected in its GL.

03 Total Local Currency (local GAAP)

This is the sum of Layers 01 and 02, representing the final local currency figures accordingly to Local GAAP criteria.

04 GAAP adjustments (input)

This may be used, for example, by the reporting unit to  to make adjustments between Layer 03 balances and the Parent Company GAAP .

05 Total Local Currency (group GAAP)

This is the sum of Layers 03 and 04, submitted to Group on behalf of the Reporting Unit.

06 Translation to Group Currency

This is the translation of the figures in Layer 05 to the nodes' currencies of the Group (the “Node Currency”).

07 Parent Adjustments

This layer allows adjustments to be made to the Reporting Unit figures, if required, at Group level in the Node Currency.

08 Parent Currency Total

This is the sum of Layers 06 and 07.

09 Proportionalization

This is Layer 08 multiplied by the percentage of the Reporting Unit’s results which are consolidated by the Group Nodes (the consolidation percentage).

10-01 I/C Elimination

This layer contains the consolidation adjustments to eliminate inter-company balances.

10-02 Investment Elimination

This layer contains the consolidation adjustments to eliminate financial investments in subsidiaries.

10-03 Reserve Elimination

This layer contains the consolidation adjustments to eliminate equity in subsidiaries.

10-04 Profit Elimination

This layer contains the consolidation adjustments to allocate the profit o RU consolidates at equity method between group and minority interest.

10-05 IC Dividend Elimination

This layer contains the consolidation adjustments to eliminate the IC Dividends Amount.

11 Contribution

This is the sum of Layers 09 and 10s.

12 Contribution Adjustments

This layer allows a further level of adjustment if required, such as an overlay of “management” adjustments.  

13 Total

This is the sum of Layers 11 and 12 and represents the final consolidated Group figures.

Using the Parent Layer entity 10s layers may be grouped into a single Layer (Eliminations)

Additional Information are available at Database Tuning Section