User-defined business rules

With User-defined business rules (UDBR), you can add calculation steps that are not part of the pre-defined consolidation process.

This is useful for special consolidation requirements, for example to handle structural changes in a company structure during the year.

Note: This functionality is intended for an experienced IBM® Cognos Controller user, such as an administrator or an IBM Cognos® consultant only.

The rules you set up can be added before or after any of the existing pre-defined parts of the consolidation process.

Figure 1. User-defined business rules
Boxes representing 14 consolidation steps. 7 of them represents the normal workflow steps. In between each of them there is a UDBR step, which gives, in total, 14 possible steps.
  • U-n: UDBR
  • CT: Currency translation
  • AL: Allocations
  • IC: Intercompany elimination
  • IP: Intercompany profit
  • ACQ: Acquisition calculations
  • CNS: Consolidation
  • AFC: Advanced formula calculations

UDBR jobs can be executed as part of a consolidation with status or independently in a consolidation by steps. They can be used in both legal and management consolidation.

For detailed descriptions on how to use User-defined business rules for structural changes during the year, go to the IBM developerWorks® web site, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/analytics/practices.html.

The user-defined business rules process

To create and run User-defined business rules, follow the steps below:

  • Create an automatic journal and define a control table, only if the result must be booked in an automatic journal. For more information, see Create Automatic Journals Manually.
  • Create and validate a UDBR script (Maintain > Business Rules). For more information, see Creating business rules.
  • Define a UDBR job (Maintain > Jobs > Define), where you specify which UDBR calculations should be included and in which order and for which companies. The company selection is made with company subsets (Maintain > Subset Define). For more information, see Define jobs and Define subsets.
  • Map your UDBR jobs to consolidation types and decide where in the consolidation the calculations should take place. For more information, see Define mapping tables for jobs.
  • Run your UDBR jobs (Group > Consolidate With Status or Group > Consolidate by Steps). For more information, see Consolidating Values with Status and Consolidate User-defined business rules.

You can analyze UDBR script changes by clicking Maintain > System Audit Log > Administration and Maintain > System Audit Log > Overview. For more information, see Analyzing Metadata with the System Audit Log Report.