EPM Cloud Tips & Tricks - #1

The first EPM cloud product was released in 2014 and it's been six years till date. I was recently part of an FCCS implementation project. I know what you might be thinking. Coming from completely essbase and planning background and been working on it for almost 12 years and doing an FCCS project? Well, it turned out that way and it was a change for me too than being in my comfort zone and took it as a challenge. 

I have been very busy for over the past one year and I didn't really had a chance or time to get back to my blogging and sharing my knowledge. The project finally went live and I am going to share my bit of learnings. Some of it you might alread know

The first tip is going to be an easy one and those who have worked in FDMEE / Data Management in the cloud, you might already know it. But, this is very important when it comes to FCCS as zeroes are valid from Balance Sheet standpoint

Data Management by default doesn't load zeroes. Below is a excerpt from the documentation

Disabling Zero Suppression (NZP)

The NZP expression is used to disable zero suppression during the data-load process. By default, Data Management bypasses accounts in the trial balance that have zero balances. In certain circumstances, you may want to load all accounts, to ensure that values that should be zero are replaced. You enter NZP in the Expression column of the Amount field to disable zero suppression.

The parameter is NZP.

Link: https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/enterprise-performance-management-common/diepm/integrations_expressions_disabling_zero_144xd9f89fe4.html

 The NZP expression can be used both for the data load and for the data extract. There could be many reasons why you would want to load the zero balances. Below are a few possible use cases that we encountered in our project where we had to enable the NZP

Scenario #1

For Balance Sheet accounts, zero balance makes sense and you have to load the zero balances. As the default load method in FCCS is Periodic, this would not be a problem as your YTD numbers would be right. It makes sense to have zero balances when you push the data to downstream systems. For example, if you are pushing periodic numbers to system like Hyperion Planning / PBCS and YTD is calculated dynamically with Skip Missing enabled, then your YTD numbers would be wrong

Scenario #2

We send the consolidated Closing Balance for all Balance Sheet accounts from FCCS to the account reconciliation tool. We push the data on a daily basis during the close process, there would be balances that would have become zero during a period of time / reclass could have happened where the balances would become zero

For example, the Intercompany accounts may have balances at the beginning of the close and as you progress during the close, those balances may become zero

Our account reconciliation tool uses an insert/update process where new balances are inserted / change in balances would be updated. If you don't send zero balances then the previous balances would remain in the account reconciliation tool

Scenario #3

Any journals in EBS primary ledgers that cause the periodic balances to become zero during the close. We load STAT units which get reversed during the day-5 of close and get posted for the current period on day+1 of the close. If the periodic units become zero, those will not get loaded and the reversal of units from prior period remains. For this purpose, we enabled the NZP to load the zeroes