Outlining the Concept of Allocations

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to Describe the business purpose to use allocations.

Allocations Overview

In SAP Analytics Cloud, you can create complex multistep allocations with ease. You can:

  • Define the specific source and target dimensions for each step
  • Define the specific source elements, allocation driver, and target elements for each step
  • Execute allocations against a selected dimension members from within a story
  • Schedule allocations in the calendar
Diagram representing the example of a HR as an overhead function with Finance, Sales, Manufacturing, and IT as divisions.

Allocations Overview

The planners at ABC Corporation have finished their labor and expense forecast.

Watch the following video to find out more about they plan to use allocations to burden the cost centers who receive the services.

Allocations in General

Allocations are used to assign overhead costs to operating units so that they know their full cost of operations. For example, you want to allocate:

  • the cost of HR to departments based on the number of employees,
  • annual values to period values based on historical trends, or
  • overhead, based on the relative amount of manufacturing cost.

To do this, you can create data actions with multiple allocation steps. As you add allocation steps to the data action, you can easily visualize the entire allocation process. You can then execute the allocation data action in a story and see the impact in the data table.

Note

To create new allocations, data actions must be created. It isn’t possible to create legacy allocation processes or steps. The legacy allocation objects can be migrated into data actions if needed. Legacy allocations can still be run from stories.

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