Using Time Balance Tags in Aggregate Storage Accounts Dimensions

You can set Time Balance properties on aggregate storage Accounts dimensions to provide built-in calculations along the Time dimension. This saves time and performance overhead of using member formulas to achieve time-balance functionality.

The following time-balance properties are supported on stored or formula-bearing Accounts dimension members:

Consider a stored measure such as Headcount in a human-resources application. Within a Year-Quarter-Months hierarchy, Headcount data is loaded at the month level.

This image shows an outline in which Headcount is tagged with the TB Last and Skip Missing time-balance properties.

The desired yearly or quarterly Headcount value is not the sum of its months; rather, it should be the last recorded value within a time period.

Tagging Headcount as TB Last with SKIPMISSING means that, for Year 2005, its value is the last nonempty value of the headcount for its months. If Dec has a nonmissing Headcount value, then that value will be returned; otherwise, the Nov value will be checked and returned if nonmissing.

If a formula-bearing member has a time balance tag, the formula is executed only for level 0 Time members, and the Time dimension is aggregated according to the time balance tag.

The time balance tags provide a built-in calculation along the Time dimension. To perform other time-based calculations using formulas, such as period-to-date and rolling averages, you can create a dimension called TimeView and write all time-based formulas on that dimension. Doing so enables you to use Time Balance calculation functionality without losing the ability to perform other time-based calculations.