When working on financial planning and analysis, the ability to forecast a year's financial outcome is crucial for decision-making. Expanding columns come into play when using current expenses to predict budgets in the future. To accurately illustrate what lies ahead, it is crucial to extend the report by a specific dimension to encompass actual expenses, while also incorporating budget projections for the upcoming periods.
1. Create a report looking at the current year.
(In this example, it was from January to September)
2. add the budgets to the remaining months for a projected total.
After compiling the report, input the budget estimates for the upcoming months for a whole year analysis.
3. Expand columns by department.
In my example below I expanded the second column to display the data by department (Column 2). I added three future columns to the right with a Summary of columns adding columns 3:5. These columns serve as a consolidated summary, combining the information from columns three to five for streamlined review. See below:
When looking at the summary column above, you may notice that the total was not correct. While the example report above involved adding the data from columns three to five, it failed to take into account the number of expanded columns.
4. Change the summary to 11:13.
Remember that Column 1 is the account groups. Formatting the columns to 11:13 correlates to the visible columns in the report post-expansion. The summary then accurately captures the intended data.
5. Keep in mind: The summary of columns is not the columns as they appear in the report builder, but on the report itself.
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