Hi Ravi,

In Fusion we can have upto 30 segments out of which the Primary balancing segment and natural account is mandatory.
The question you have asked depends on the requirement. We can perform the reporting in GL mostly if we have to track the sales per cost center or per BSV.
We can create hierarchies in your situation, where we can create pen sales as the parent and different color pens as the child values. So if any data is posted in child values it will automatically rollup to the parent.
In this case if you want to know the total sales for pens you can run the report for the parent account.
and if you want to know the sales for each color pens then you can run the report for each color pen.

In sub modules like inventory you can run the reports for knowing the on-hand quantity etc.

Thanks,
Ashish

Thanks Ashish,

Question 1-A:
To make sure I understood you correctly, if you wanted different colors of pen, is it a common practice to get this from the G/L segment or hierarchy, as opposed to from the sub module Sales Ledger (Which is what I am used to in JD Edwards)

Question 1-B
The Concern Ashish is that the chart of accounts can become very large if all the reporting is derived from the G/L.
If a company wants to have multiple dimensions captured and end up having 8 segments, data entry can take too long and be prone to error. Do you agree? Are clients concerned when you have numerous segments.

Question 2:
What is the common practice. Do clients tend to use all the 240 characters available in the chart ( I understand it depends on the requirement :-) but was curious to know the common scenario

Question 3:

What is generally the common practice , for the number of segments used ( I understand it depends on the requirement :-) but was curious to know the common scenario )

Question 4:

During the procure to pay training, when the catalogue was defined , segments were defined in the Item as well, do you know if Essbase can be configured to report on the Sub Module for example if the color was defined as a segment in the Item (Inventory)

1A -
Yes this is a common practice, you will run the reports from GL. You need not have a separate sales segment. You can use hierarchies in this case.

1B -
Yes I do agree with you if the no. of segments increase then it takes longer for data entry and is prone to errors. But if the business wants to capture multiple dimensions then we have to create multiple segments.
Having 6-9 segments is a normal scenario.
We can tackle the data entry errors by defaulting the values, by creating aliases. Also we can configure cross-validation rules and security rules to tackle the data entry errors that the users can do at the time of data entry.

Q2 -
No generally we don't use up the full 240 character available.

Q3 -
In general we use 5-9 segments. Depending on the nature of business and in what sector they are operation. However I have seen business using more segments as well.

Q4 -
No essbase cannot be configured for sub modules. It is only available in GL.

Thanks Ashish for the detailed response.

Can you kindly elaborate on your following statement please , I remember hearing cross validation rules, but I don't recall learning about alias in training

"We can tackle the data entry errors by defaulting the values, by creating aliases"

Hi Ravi,

Alias can be defined in setup and maintenance. You can give a name to a particular combination. Basically you can pre-define the combination and use it at the time of data entry for eg in your Journal screen.
So instead of entering the combination manually, you can select from the alias list to populate the values automatically.

I am attaching the screenshot of the same.

Thanks,
Ashish