The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Definitive Guide to Dimensional Modeling, 3rd Edition

Chapter 7

Accounting

Financial analysis spans a variety of accounting applications, including the general ledger, as well as detailed subledgers for purchasing and accounts payable, invoicing and accounts receivable, and fixed assets. Because we've already touched upon purchase orders and invoices earlier in this book, we'll focus on the general ledger in this chapter. Given the need for accurate handling of a company's financial records, general ledgers were one of the first applications to be computerized decades ago. Perhaps some of you are still running your business on a 20-year-old ledger system. In this chapter, we'll discuss the data collected by the general ledger, both in terms of journal entry transactions and snapshots at the close of an accounting period. We'll also talk about the budgeting process.

Chapter 7 discusses the following concepts:

• Bus matrix snippet for accounting processes
• General ledger periodic snapshots and journal transactions
• Chart of accounts
• Period close
• Year-to-date facts
• Multiple fiscal accounting calendars
• Drilling down through a multi-ledger hierarchy
• Budgeting chain and associated processes
• Fixed depth position hierarchies
• Slightly ragged, variable depth hierarchies
• Totally ragged hierarchies of indeterminate depth using a bridge table and alternative modeling techniques
• Shared ownership in a ragged hierarchy
• Time varying ragged hierarchies
• Consolidated fact tables that combine metrics from multiple business processes
• Role of OLAP and packaged ...