Define a computation—Financial Report Writer

The Computations tab lets you define calculations that you use on the Columns tab of your financial report. You can add up to 20 calculations.

The Computations tab displays your account groups along the left side.

A Financial Report Writer computation is at its most basic “An account group, acted on by the selected operation, using the variable value.”

The Create computation dialog is where you specify the variable, operation, and value. Together, these selections create the computation.

1. Tab to Computations, optionally, enable Apply account group filters to computations.
2. Select Edit or anywhere inside the computation column line for the group that the computation applies to.
3. Ensure that everyone can immediately understand what the computation column does, include a Name and Description for the column.
4. Verify the account group selection.

   This is the account group on which you selected Edit. If you selected all account groups, All groups appears.

5. Select the variable.

   Your selection determines the list of available options in the Variable value dropdown. Choose from:

   • Account group: Sets the value to the total for an account group of your choice.
   • Account/Calculate amount: Sets the value to the amount for an account of your choice.
   • Constant: Sets the value to a number that you specify, such as 100.

6. Choose the operation.

   This is the action that’s taken on the variable. For example, choose Add to add something to the variable.

   The computation applied takes the amounts in an actual or budget column that you select on the Columns tab.

   Not sure what an operation does?

   Computation operations

   Operation	Description
   Add	Takes the actual or budget amount and adds the value that you specify as the variable value.
   Subtract	Takes an actual or budget amount and subtracts the value that you specify as the variable value.
   Subtract from	Takes the value that you specify as the variable value and subtracts the actual or budget amount.
   Multiply	Takes an actual or budget amount and multiplies it by the variable value.
   Divide	Takes an actual or budget amount and divides it by the variable value.
   Divide Into	Takes the variable value and divides it by the actual or budget amount.
   Hide report cell	Hides amounts for the selected account group. For example, you might want to hide salary amounts or other sensitive information from a report. Applies only to account groups that have not been expanded by dimension. See Expand computation columns for more.

7. Select the variable value.

   The variable value is based on the variable that you selected. For example, if you selected Account group, the list includes account groups to choose from. If you chose Constant number, you then enter the number to use in the calculation.

8. Save your computation.

You can now apply the computation to a column in your financial report.

Create as many computations as you need, and attach them to the relevant columns.

You only need to apply the computation to some columns, not all columns in the report need to user a computation