Creating Ranking and Exception Reports

Definition: Ranking and Exception reports

Ranking and Exception reports apply ranking criteria, exception criteria, or both ranking and exception criteria to a dimension. The criteria is applied to each page of data.

Types of Ranking and Exception reports

There are four types of ranking and exception reports:

• Ranking report -- Displays data in an order that meets a set of criteria that you specify. For example, you might rank products by volume within a market area and time period.

• Exception report -- Displays data associated with dimension values that meet cutoff values within parameters that you specify. For example, you might display expense items for which variance is greater than 10% within a cost center and time period.

• Ranking-then-exception report -- Displays data in an order that meets a set of criteria that you specify, then displays a subset of the ranked data that meet cutoff values within parameters that you specify. For example, you might rank the top 100 products by volume for a year in the U.S. and then display a ranked subset of those products for which sales exceeded $1.5 million in the U.S. for the year.

• Exception-then-ranking report -- Displays data associated with dimension values that meet cutoff values within parameters that you specify in an order that meets criteria that you specify. For example, you might display products for which sales exceeded $1.5 million in the U.S. for the second quarter and rank the top five of these products by volume change from year ago in the U.S. for the second quarter.

Process for creating a Ranking/Exception report

Follow these general steps to create a Ranking/Exception report.

1. Open an existing report or choose New from the Report menu.

2. From the Report menu, choose Ranking/Exception.

   Note: The Ranking/Exception menu item is not available if the report that you create or open has more than one dimension in the down position, or if the dimension in the down position is the FinData dimension.

3. In the Ranking and Exception dialog box, choose the report type. For information on report types, see "Types of Ranking and Exception reports".

4. Drag the dimension tiles to the down, page or across positions to determine the report layout. For more information, see "Page layout for Ranking and Exception reports".

5. Specify ranking, exception, or ranking and exception criteria.

6. Choose OK.

Page layout for Ranking and Exception reports

The Layout area of the Ranking and Exception dialog box enables you to position the dimensions on the page so as to determine the focus of a Ranking and Exception report.

The following list describes the effect of the down, page, and across positions in Ranking and Exception reports:

• Down position -- Only one dimension can be in this position, which the system uses to rank dimension values or to select a subset of values. Do not put Financial Data Item in the down position. Also, if the report is both a ranking report and an asymmetric report, the asymmetric edge cannot be on the down position. The values of the down dimension populate the row labels of the report.

• Page position -- Determines the separate pages of the report. The ranking, exception, or ranking and exception criteria are applied to each page.

• Across position -- Determines the criteria for the ranking, exception, or ranking and exception criteria. The values of the across dimension populate the column labels of the report.

Example: Ranking and Exception report setup

The following illustration shows the Ranking and Exception Setup dialog box. In this example, Exception then Ranking is selected as the report type. The selections will create a report that displays products for which Actuals exceeded $1 million in the year 2000 for specified organizations. The report will also rank the five top products.

Display of ranking numbers in report output

Ranking numbers appear in a ranking report and in an exception-then-ranking report next to the values for the down dimension. Ranking numbers are not displayed in a ranking-then-exception report.

Related information

For more information about ranking and exception reports, search for the following topics in the Financial Analyzer Help system:

"Dimensions of Ranking/Exception Reports"

"Expanding the Base Selection for Ranking/Exception Reports"

"Using Ranking/Exception Reports"