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Dimensions are the components that label, store, and arrange data. Each dimension contains a hierarchy of related members grouped in a parent/child structure. In Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud (PBCS), there are seven dimensions out of the box which are Account, Currency, Entity, Period, Scenario, Version, Year. (See the links for each of the Oracle Docs for information on each of these dimensions.)

You can also create up to 13 user-defined custom dimensions. One of the user-defined dimensions that should be essential for any organization that loads data from multiple sources is the Source dimension.

The Source dimension allows users and administrators to readily identify the location from which the data originated. Common types of sources are:

• Input - data that input to the application via Smartview or Data forms by the Planning users
• Adjustment - data that top-sides the calculated or source system data
• Calculation - data that is calculated in the system, usually through a business rule. More detailed calculation options are below
• Rollover - data that is copied or "rolled over" from prior periods or years. The generally applies to Balance Sheet data. You could also use the "Calculated Source" for this purpose but Rollover adds more clarity
• Allocation - data allocated from one member to across many members, usually based on an Allocation_% across Entities or Products
• Source Systems - data that is loaded from another system or systems to the PBCS Target application, usually via Data Management
• PBCS Source - data that is transferred between PBCS plan types via XRef, XWrite, Data Map, or Data Management
• FCCS Source - data that is transferred from FCCS to PBCS

Source dimensions are especially useful for data reconciliation. It is often difficult to reconcile slices of data to a specific source once data is aggregated in the database. With a source dimension, users can refresh the dataset with the specific source member and compare to source information.

For reporting, "Total_Source will combine all of the data at the aggregated level.

So, does your organization use a "Source" dimension in the application? If not, I strongly recommend this during your next upgrade.