Extended Attributes

You can create extended attributes for these financial modules:

• Commitments
• Invoices
• Journal Vouchers
• Expense Items

Expense items are shared by items in commitments, invoices, and journal vouchers.

Groups

You can organize users into groups. You can designate a group to be a finance group. When you create a finance group, a fiscal year plan is created automatically for the finance group for each open fiscal year.

Integration Workbench

If your company uses an external accounting system, you can integrate the information in this system with the information in Aprimo by configuring the Integration Workbench.

Notification Service

You can enable the Notification service in the Services module for notifications to be sent automatically for significant events in these financial modules:

• Commitment Management
• Invoice Management
• Invoice Approvals
• Commitment Approvals
• Commitments in an activity
• Invoice Approvals
• Invoices in an activity
• Forecast Approvals
• Resource Approvals
• Funding Accounts

System Parameters

There are many system parameters that relate to the financial modules. If you choose to use notifications, for example, you can set many of the system parameters to notify the appropriate users of financial events. You can determine whether your company integrates financial information with an external system, and set threshold amounts for reviews.

System Types

Several financial modules use type classifications. The types appear in menu selections in these modules:

• Commitments
• Invoices
• Journal Vouchers

Users

Anyone who will use Aprimo or a portal is defined as a user. Users are created in the Users module by system administrators.

Your access to the financial modules and what you can do in the modules is primarily controlled by the rights defined in your user record.

Your default currency is also set in your user record. This might be different from the base currency in Aprimo.

Authorization Rules

Your company might base the reviews on authorization rules. This setting is determined in the System Parameters module in System Tools. You can set up authorization rules for commitments, invoices, or forecasts to determine, in conjunction with authorization trees, who needs to review these objects.

Authorization Trees

You can create authorization trees to define which individuals need to review a financial object based on the amount that is set. You can then assign an active authorization tree when you create an authorization rule.

Closeouts

The Closeouts module allows you to close fiscal periods and years, and to reconcile or carry forward pertinent financial data.

Currency Setup

You can determine the possible currencies your company might need to use for your marketing needs. If you have business locations in multiple countries, you can activate all pertinent currencies.

There is only one base currency for Aprimo that is defined in System Tools. Each user record has a default currency that does not need to match the base currency. This determines how some of the financial data is displayed.

Other objects such as activities, invoices, and commitments have a currency defined for the object. If the currency defined for these objects does not match the base currency, you might see both currencies.

In some cases, you can choose the currency in which to view the data. For example, on the Cash Summary tab in a funding account, both the budgeted currency and the base currency are displayed if the two do not match. You can then also choose to view the summary data in another active currency.

Exchange rates for currencies are managed in the Currency Setup module as well.

Expense Categories Setup

Expense categories are used to classify financial data. Your company can choose to use expense categories and determine whether they are required. The Expense Categories Setup module allows you to create expense categories.

Once they are set up, you can view expense categories from either the Expense Categories Setup module or the Expense Categories module in the Financials section.

Expense Hierarchies Setup

If your company uses expense categories, you can organize the categories into expense hierarchies. Each fiscal year plan can contain one expense hierarchy. You set up the expense categories into hierarchies in the Expense Hierarchies Setup module.

Once they are set up, you can view expense hierarchies from either the Expense Hierarchies Setup module or the Expense Hierarchies module in the Financials section.

Financial Hierarchies Setup

You can organize funding accounts into a financial hierarchy. You can assign the finance groups that are associated with the financial hierarchy. Associating a finance group with a hierarchy allows you to choose funding accounts associated with the same finance group for that fiscal year. You define hierarchies in the Financial Hierarchies Setup module.

Organizing your funding accounts into a hierarchy allows you to view rolled up data for accounts in both the Financial Hierarchies Setup module, and the Financial Hierarchies module in the Financials section. You can view data for a single account in the hierarchy, for the entire hierarchy, or any subset within the hierarchy.

You can choose to include draft account information, or information from unused accounts. The unused accounts branch contains the funding accounts for the finance group and fiscal year that have not yet been associated with a particular hierarchy.

Fiscal Periods Setup

You determine the periods for the fiscal year that your organization follows. You can create 12 or 13 periods and name them accordingly. In several of the financial modules, you can view financial data by period, quarter, or year. These views are determined by how you set up your fiscal periods.

Fiscal Year Plans

Fiscal year plans are created automatically when you create a group as a finance group. A fiscal year plan is created for each open fiscal year for each finance group. Fiscal year plans allow you to organize your budget into funding accounts by finance group and year. Organizing information in the fiscal year plan helps reduce some of the manual work for the annual closeout process as well. Fiscal year plans must be set up before you can use many other financial features such as invoices and commitments.

A fiscal year plan consists of the funding account plan, financial hierarchies, and an expense hierarchy if your company uses expense categories. Before you can activate and complete your plan, each component must be finished.

The list of fiscal year plans displays all plans across finance groups. You can open only the plans associated with the finance groups to which you have access.

Forecast Snapshot History

Forecast snapshot history shows the history of a particular financial snapshot.

You can view the forecast snapshot history from the Financials tab in an activity, the Cash Details tab in a funding account, and in the Snapshots module in Financial Administration.

Snapshots

Snapshots are records of how a forecast looked at a given point in time. The finance group determines the data included in each snapshot. All activities that are associated with the selected finance group that contain data in open periods or in the current fiscal year are included in the snapshot. All periods for activities that qualify to be included are in the snapshot even if some of the periods are already closed.

Snapshots can be taken for any open current fiscal period. You can have multiple versions of a snapshot for a given period, but only one snapshot can be designated as the official snapshot.

Funding Accounts

Funding accounts represent the marketing funds you have to spend. Funding accounts are associated with activities. You can assign multiple funding accounts to an activity. You can have as few or as many as you need.

Before a funding account can be created, the finance groups and fiscal year and periods must be created. If your company uses an external accounting system, you can set up an accounting integration between the funding accounts in Aprimo and your external accounting system.

Funding accounts can be organized into financial hierarchies. Financial hierarchies allow you to view funding accounts in a hierarchical view by finance group.

Financial Hierarchies

You can view rolled up data for funding accounts in a hierarchy format in the Financial Hierarchies module. You can view data for a single account in the hierarchy, for the entire hierarchy, or for any subset within the hierarchy.

You can choose to include draft account information, or information from unused accounts. The unused accounts branch contains the funding accounts for the finance group and fiscal year that have not yet been associated with other branches in the hierarchy.

Expense Categories

You can use expense categories to organize how money in your organization is categorized. Each expense category is associated with a particular fiscal year. Expense categories can be organized into expense hierarchies in the Expense Hierarchies Setup module in Financial Administration.

Expense Hierarchies

Expense hierarchies contain expense categories that have been organized into a hierarchical format by fiscal year. The Expense Hierarchy module enables you to view rolled-up views of how money in your organization is categorized.

The data displayed in the expense hierarchy can be associated with multiple finance groups. However, each finance group can have only one expense hierarchy.

Forecast Approvals

The Forecast Approvals module allows you to approve or reject forecasts. A forecast is created in an activity to project expenses for a given fiscal year and period.

You can access the Forecast Approvals module from either Financials or My Reviews in Aprimo, or from the Reviews Portal.

Resource Approvals

You use the Resource Approvals module to review resource change requests.

If your organization requires resource approvals, each significant change to the estimated costs for an activity must be reviewed by the controlling funding account contact for the activity.

If an activity spans multiple fiscal years, there might be multiple controlling funding account contacts. In this instance, each of the contacts must review the request.

You can access the Resource Approvals module from either Financials or My Reviews in Aprimo, or from the Reviews Portal.

Period Status

The Period Status module allows you to see the status of each period by finance group. Period statuses are updated automatically during the closeout process.

Commitment Approvals

The Commitment Approvals module allows you to approve or reject commitments.

You can access the Commitment Approvals module from either Commitments and Invoices or My Reviews in Aprimo, or from the Reviews Portal.

Commitment Management

Commitments represent funds that are committed to a specific supplier but have not yet been invoiced or paid. Each commitment can contain multiple commitment items, which might belong to different activities.

The supplier and all associated activities must be associated with the same finance group. Invoices and journal vouchers can be associated with commitments.

Use the Commitment Management module to view, create, edit, and delete commitments.

Commitments in an activity

The Commitments module in an activity provides a central location for managing all of the commitments in an activity. You can use this module to view, create, edit, and delete all of the commitments that are associated with the activity.

Invoice Approvals

The Invoice Approvals module allows you to approve or reject invoices.

You can access the Invoice Approvals module from either Commitments and Invoices or My Reviews in Aprimo, or from the Reviews Portal.

Invoice Management

An invoice is an itemized list of goods or services for which a payment is due. Invoices are sent to your organization by the supplier who provided the goods or services.

Use the Invoice Management module to view, create, edit, and delete invoices.

Invoices in an activity

The Invoices module in an activity provides a central location for managing the invoices that are associated with a particular activity. You can use this module to view, create, edit, and delete invoices.

Invoices in a commitment

The Invoices module in a commitment lists all invoices that are associated with the commitment. Both paid and unpaid invoices appear.

Journal Voucher Management

Journal vouchers are used to modify financial data for an invoice that has already been paid. You can associate a journal voucher with an activity, a commitment, or most commonly, directly with the affected invoice. Journal vouchers enable you to keep accurate accounting records without modifying an invoice that has already been paid.

You create and manage journal vouchers from the Journal Voucher Management module.

Journal Vouchers in an activity

From within an activity, you can view journal vouchers; you cannot edit them. You create journal vouchers in the Journal Voucher Management module.

My Reviews

Reviews Portal

From the My Reviews module in Aprimo or from the Reviews Portal, you can access these types of financial reviews:

• Commitment Approvals
• Forecast Approvals
• Invoice Approvals
• Resource Approvals