Dimensions overview

A dimension is a classification system used to organize, sort, and report on your company information in meaningful ways. Think of a dimension as a tag with a set of values related to transactions and entries. Every transaction can be tagged with multiple dimension values to help you identify the transaction and report on it.

Dimensions allow you to customize financial reports around specific business activities to capture key metrics central to your business, such as:

• Your most profitable or most costly items or customers.
• The return on investment of a project or department.
• Whether and to what degree a new product or product line is successful.
• Which way a particular aspect of your business is trending.

Dimensions drive visibility into the parts of your business that matter most.

Dimension relationships

Think of dimensions as having relationships that let you preset dimension values in a transaction based on other dimension values in the same transaction. For example, if you always use the same location for a customer, you can create a relationship between the Customer and Location dimensions. This relationship sets the Location value to autofill every time you create a transaction for that customer.

Dimension setup considerations

When you set up dimensions for your company, there are considerations that will make the most of your dimensions. As you set up dimensions, keep in mind your reporting needs, security, and workflows. You can ensure that your setup is aligned with your organization's needs.

Consider the following.

Reporting

• Yes or no?
  • Multiple entities
  • Consolidation
  • Detail the current chart structure and plan for change
  • Common chart of accounts
• External reports
  • Tax filings
  • Published financials
  • Other compliance guidelines
• Internal report audiences
  • Executive and board reports
  • Internal reporting centers
• Reporting basis needs
• Discrete start and stop dates

Security

• Data entry (yes or no?)
  • Independent entity access control
  • Internal departmental access control
  • Employee users control for project time or expenses
• Reporting access concerns
• Drill-down access restrictions

Workflow

• Areas of approval desired
  • Purchasing employee
  • Expenses
  • Timesheets project and grant costs
  • General journal
• Structure of approvals for each area
• Budget checking

Standard vs. user-defined dimensions

Sage Intacct gives a set of standard dimensions right out of the box, ready to be enabled. You can use them as is, or repurpose them, as needed.

You can create user-defined dimensions and add your own business logic and custom fields to tailor them to your specific business needs. User-defined dimensions become available throughout the company wherever dimensions are displayed. You use your user-defined dimensions in the same way as any standard dimension.

For example, if you’re a software company with various product lines, you might create a user-defined dimension called Line of Business that uses the values Direct Customers, Channel Partners, and OEM.

Another example might be a user-defined dimension for Facility that uses values specific to the facility types Hospital, Day Care, and Residential.

Mix and match standard and user-defined dimensions to report on all aspects of your business.

Standard dimensions + user-defined dimensions = your unique operational and strategic insights.

Standard dimensions

The following standard dimensions are available in Intacct:

• Affiliate entity (with multi-entity environment with subscription to Consolidation)
• Asset (with subscription Fixed Assets Management)
• Class
• Contract (with subscription to Contracts)
• Cost type (dependent on Project and Task dimensions and subscription to Construction)
• Customer
• Department
• Employee
• Item
• Location
• Project (basic or with subscription to Project applications)
• Task (dependent on Project dimension and subscription to Projects)
• Supplier
• Warehouse (with subscription to Inventory)

Examples of how to use dimensions

Examples of what you can do with dimensions

Dimension	What you can do	Example
Location	Create a hierarchy of locations to reflect how locations are organized within your company.	West Coast Division California Northern Southern Nevada Utah
Department	Create a hierarchy of departments to reflect how departments are organized within your company.	East Coast Division Engineering Software Hardware Sales Marketing
Distribution Method	Create a user-defined dimension.	Reseller Direct

What happens when I implement dimensions?

After you implement the standard dimensions and create any new dimensions, Sage Intacct distributes your dimensions everywhere that you need to access them:

• Transactions: On the transaction entry pages, you can select the dimensions that you want to propagate to the general ledger. By selecting dimensions in transactions, such as AP supplier invoices or AR sales invoices, you organize operational and financial information to be sliced and diced any way that you need to gain insight into your business.
• Reports: Dimensions are a core component of reporting. They let you instantly track performance by different business drivers as your strategies and operations change. By using dimensions in reporting, you can create almost limitless ways of viewing your information and capturing key metrics.

Which reports support the use of dimensions?

Almost all reports support the use of dimensions.

Are there any pages where dimension use is limited?

In some situations, dimension use is limited to specific dimensions, as listed below.

Application	Page name/functionality	Supported dimensions
Accounts Payable	Apply Payments (Overpayments) and Bill Backs	Department Location
Projects	Project Information	Class Customer Department Location Task
Consolidations	Advanced Consolidations	Department Location
Construction	Construction	The Construction subscription enables the project, task, and cost type dimensions. While use is optional, you can't disable these dimensions. As a WBS best practice, use the dimensions together to build the project hierarchy. The project is independent of tasks or cost types. Tasks are unique to a specific project; and cost types depend on the existence of the project and task dimensions. The uniqueness of a cost type is bound to a specific project and task, meaning you cannot select a cost type without first identifying the project and task in that project.

What happens when I deactivate a dimension value?

When you deactivate a dimension value, it does not appear in your dropdown lists. To change this, ensure that your user preference is set to Show all values. This helps prevent the creation of new transactions using that dimension value. Your dimension value still exists within Intacct. Deactivating a dimension value will not affect your financial reporting; the dimension value still rolls up to the top level of the hierarchy at the time the report is run.

Example: deactivate a location dimension

Your California location dimension has a Northern California and Southern California child dimension related with it.

Your Southern California location closes in June, so you deactivate the dimension value. Users can no longer create transactions against that dimension value. However, at the end of the year, you still need to see how you did at that location while it was open.

You cannot run a report on Southern California because it’s deactivated, but you can run a report on California for the year. Intacct automatically rolls up all transactions including the Southern California location and displays in your California report.

What happens when I make a dimension member Active non-posting?

Some dimensions include an extra status option: Active non-posting.

Defining a dimension member with the Active non-posting status, that dimension can no longer be used for transactions. Setting this status prevents anyone from posting a transaction entry to that dimension.

It’s similar to the Inactive status but is easily selectable for reporting.

When the status becomes Active non-posting, it no longer appears in the transaction selection dropdown.

Dimensions that can use Active non-posting are:

• Department
• Location
• Class
• Customer
• Supplier
• Project (if subscribed)

Example

Suppose that you have a Department named Management that includes cost centers (departments) for Accounting, HR, Executives, IT, and Shared Costs.

Transactions are recorded into the correct cost center area. But for reporting purposes, it makes sense to roll these other departments up to the Management department, showing a single combined management cost centers figure.

You want each department value to be part of the Management department, but you do not want anyone posting directly to the Management department. Set the Management department to Active, non-posting, and add the other departments as children.