Enhanced interface

Why dimensions are important

A dimension is a classification system used to organize, sort, and report on your company information in meaningful ways. Dimensions can give visibility to underlying details for faster, more incisive business decisions.

Think of a dimension as a tag with a set of values related with transactions and entries. Every transaction you enter can be tagged with multiple dimension values to identify and report on it.

Video: Dimensions - what they are and how they work

This video introduces dimensions and how they can help you gain insight into your organization's financials:

What are dimensions and how do they work?

Show relationship values

Dimensions are interrelated in a way that lets you preset dimension values 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 against that customer.

Dimension relationships can be a helpful way to simplify data entry by autofilling related values between dimensions. These relationships automate and speed up data entry. They can also help avoid possible data entry errors.

Leverage reporting, security, and workflows

Dimensions affect your reporting, security, and workflows. To leverage dimensions for optimal impact with your company, consider the following

Reporting	Security	Workflow
Yes or No? Multiple Entities Consolidation Detail the Current Chart Structure & Plan for Change Common Chart of accounts External Reports: Tax Filings Published Financials Other Compliance Guidelines Internal Report Audiences: Executive & Board Reports Internal Reporting Centers Reporting Basis Needs Discreet Start & Stop Dates	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	Areas of Approval Desired: Purchasing Employee Expenses Timesheets Project & Grant Costs General Journal Structure of Approvals for Each Area Budget Checking

Customize reports

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.

Use dimensions in reporting

Almost all reports support the use of dimensions. However, in some cases dimension use is limited to specific dimensions, as listed in the following table.

Application	Page name/functionality	Supported dimensions
Accounts Payable	Apply Payments (Overpayments)	Department Location
Accounts Payable	Bill Backs	Department Location
Projects	Project Information	Class Customer Department Location Task
Consolidation	Advanced Ownership Consolidation	Department Location Affiliate entity
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.