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Emtec, Inc. Copyright © 2016. All Rights Reserved.
Presented by Christie Koza
December 2016
Make Financial Reports Do What You
Want Them To Do

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Oracle Focus
20Year Oracle Focus
Platinum Partner
2,500+ Projects
100+ Cloud Clients
Run Cloud Internally
Offshore Lab & Support
Center

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CONFIDENTIAL | © 2016 Emtec, Inc.
WhatWe Do
Advisory
Strategy,
planning and
process
improvements
that ensure
measurable ROI
Applications
Mission critical
applications that
empower your
employees,
partners and
clients
Infrastructure
Optimized IT
architecture to
deliver powerful
user experiences
and extreme
performance
Analytics
Integrated data
for powerful
insights and more
informed decision
making, on any
device
Services that deliver rapid, meaningful and lasting business value.

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Agenda
• Introduction
• Design Considerations
• Metadata Structures
• Text/Commentary
• Charts and Reports
• Creative Solutions

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CONFIDENTIAL | © 2016 Emtec, Inc.
Introduction
o Frustrated with making Financial Reporting do exactly what
you want it to do?
o Capability of financial reporting.
o Methods to make your FR reports look and behave the way
you would like.
o How to make your reports as dynamic and flexible as
possible.
o It CAN be done!

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CONFIDENTIAL | © 2016 Emtec, Inc.
Design Considerations for Enterprise Report Development
o Create standardized report templates that can be re-used
 Get formatting standards from client – font sizes, headers, footers, etc.
 Report writers can take these templates as starting points and not have to create every report from scratch.
o If your rows or columns contain multiple dimensions, put the dense dimensions first.
o Minimize the number of dimensions in the grid.
 Single-member dimensions should be in the Grid Point ofView (POV) or the Report POV.
 Hardcode (and hide) dimensions that are for system use and may not make ‘sense’ to the user.
o Use substitution variables to minimize selections for the user.
o Use Same As instead of selecting member / sub var in each row/column.
o Use Grid POVs to limit Page members that can cause long run time.
o Use Prompts to allow users to select members from a limited list.
o Use Related Content to guide the user interaction with reports (summary to detail links).
o Consider user experience – setting Preferences, selecting POV, Prompts.

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CONFIDENTIAL | © 2016 Emtec, Inc.
Grid
o Standard P&L grid – Period andYTD
o Formatting
 Gray font for hidden rows/columns or some other visual indicator.
 Insert a space to align positive numbers when using ( ) for negative.
 Be conscious of “overlapping” formats that may cancel each other out – not
always evident in format editor.
o Dynamic References
 Same As….
 Current POV
 SubstitutionVariables
 Functions (e.g. Relative Member)
o Dimension Layout
 Use Grid POV for single members and “system” members.

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CONFIDENTIAL | © 2016 Emtec, Inc.
Add Metadata to Facilitate Reporting
o Ever find yourself in report building situations where metadata structures do not
easily support constructing reports?
o So what do we do in FR?
 Workarounds
 Complex report formulas
 Hardcode reports – potentially causing large quantities of reports
o A better solution ?
 Leverage your metadata structures to make reports dynamic.
 This requires a holistic approach to report design and creation.
o Examples
 Dynamic member formulas on dimension members instead of report formulas
 Percent of Sales, StatisticalAccounts
 UDAs, attributes, alternate hierarchies, Smart Lists

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CONFIDENTIAL | © 2016 Emtec, Inc.
Text / Commentary
o Situation – need to include variance comments or other text information on a report.
o Solution
 Use a metadata member to hold information – Account dimension in example.
 Create Planning web forms for user commentary entry (can also use this method to load any other
supplemental text)
o Pull the comments into the Financial Report
 Create a column with the correct intersection. Format to use white font or Replace (with a blank space) to
mask the column data. OR
 Hide the column and use “GetCell” function in FR Studio to pull the text information/commentary into
the grid.

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CONFIDENTIAL | © 2016 Emtec, Inc.
Financial Reports – Charts
o STRENGTHS
 Visual aid to support grid data
 Variety of chart formats (line, bar, pie,
etc)
 Show data from one data source in
chart and another data source in grid
 Re-use chart object once you get it set
up/formatted
o WEAKNESSES
 Functionality not as robust as Excel
 Limited format /customization
capabilities
 Sizing / positioning is manual
 Resolution is not as advanced as other
cutting edge tools
 Legend members can only be stacked
(client)
o Graphs are not often used in Financial Reports due to lack of training and
perceived complexity.
o However, charts can be leveraged to make them do what you want them to.

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CONFIDENTIAL | © 2016 Emtec, Inc.
Chart – Line Drops to Axis in ‘Empty’ Months
o Situation - in a line or combo chart, the line drops to the axis when there is no data
o Solution
 Use conditional formatting on row/cells to replace Zero/NoData/#Missing with ‘Null’

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CONFIDENTIAL | © 2016 Emtec, Inc.
Dual Grids / Cross-Reference
o Situation – you want to show data from another cube, or a different dimension
layout than the main grid
o Solution
 Insert a hidden grid that pulls the correct intersection of data.
 In the main grid, add formula rows to reference the hidden grid row/column/cell.
 Syntax = GridX. ( row, column, page reference ) e.g. Grid2. ( [ 1 ] ) or Grid2. ( [ B ] ) or Grid2. ( [ B,1 ] )

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CONFIDENTIAL | © 2016 Emtec, Inc.
Report Books: Add a Cover Page to a Book
o Often, a client wants a cover page before theTable of Contents
o Add a cover page in the Book Editor
1. First, import intoWorkspace > Explore theWord or PDF that will be the cover page.
2. InWorkspace Explore, right click the book name and select Open In > Editor.
3. Select the PDF file orWord file you imported.
4. In the lower pane containing the object settings, find theValue column.
5. Click the arrow in the row for Cover Page, and then selectYes. It is moved to the top of the book objects
list and is marked with a star to indicate that it is the cover page.

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CONFIDENTIAL | © 2016 Emtec, Inc.
Other Creative Solutions for Client Specific Requirements
o Changing decimal precision in charts – single or dual axis
(modification of xml
o Multiple charts in a report
o Multiple grids with different data sources
o Aligning color schemes in a combo chart
o Use of special characters to display symbols (on premise)
o Conditional formatting to evaluate results against targets or other
comparisons
o Rolling month/quarter reports using trigger columns and conditional
suppression
o Auto Calculation feature to provide dynamic subtotal, average, etc.
o Related Content – setup and flow

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Q&A

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Get inTouchLet’s get started!
20 N. WACKER DR.
SUITE 2050
@EMTECINC WWW.EMTECINC.COM 800 - 800 - 8805
Christie Koza – Christie.Koza@emtecinc.com

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Thank You