Comparing Plans with Actuals

You can compare your budget data from your plans from Extended Planning and Analysis with your actuals data from the Financial Balances dataset. You can compare the data by creating custom lenses of the Financial Balances dataset or custom dashboards that use this dataset. For more information about how to create lenses and dashboards, see the Salesforce Help and Salesforce Trailhead. More information about how the data is combined is provided below.

Financial Plans Dataset

The Financial Plans dataset includes information about your plans from Extended Planning and Analysis. It includes fields that matches some of the Financial Balances dataset fields and several system fields that relate to the plans itself.

For more information, see:

You can update the data from the Financial Plans dataset by sending plans to this dataset from Extended Planning and Analysis. For more information about how to send a plan to Analytics, see Send Plans to Analytics.

Warning:

If you delete the Financial Plans dataset, the data about the plans already sent to the dataset is lost. You must manually resend the plans after you have created the dataset again.

Financial Analytics Dataflow

After you have created the Financial Plans dataset, it is included in the Financial Analytics dataflow when you upgrade your app, create a new app, or reconfigure an Financial Analytics app.

The dataset is loaded into the Financial Analytics dataflow. The data from the dataset is then processed by the dataflow to:

  • Exclude the placeholder row on the dataset included by default when the dataset is created
  • Combine the dataset's data with data from the Financial Balances dataset
  • Populate the Financial Balances dataset with the combined data

For more information, see Setting up Business Analytics with Extended Planning and Analysis.

Financial Balances Dataset

The data from the Financial Plans dataset is combined with actuals data from the Financial Balances dataset. This is data from transaction line items and reporting balances from Accounting. The combined data is then used to populate the Financial Balances dataset.

As a result, the Financial Balances dataset includes rows that correspond to the following records:

  • Plan records included in the Financial Plans dataset
  • Transaction line item records and reporting balance records

For more information about the Financial Balances dataset fields, see Financial Balances Output Fields.