Workflow Guide

Start by confirming the organization workspace, subscription, user access, and permission model.

ForecastFix starts with a controlled organization workspace so finance, accounting, and reviewers work from one governed environment.

• Open Organization and confirm the subscription is active for the plan you intend to use.
• Invite users and assign roles before sharing company data.
• Give administrators control of billing, invitations, permissions, and organization settings.
• Use editor roles for people who load or change data, and viewer roles for report-only users.
• Confirm forecast versions and organization settings before building reports.

Set currency assumptions before loading trial balances or refreshing consolidated reports.

Currency setup is handled before data loading so translated balances and reports use transparent assumptions.

• Review the reporting currency for the consolidated chart.
• Confirm each company currency before importing balances.
• Use market rates for standard workflows, or create a custom rate set when the client has approved a controlled rate source.
• Review monthly rates for every reporting period that will be refreshed.
• After changing rates, refresh reporting data before relying on translated statements.

Create the consolidated chart first, then create local charts that match each source system.

Local charts map into a consolidated reporting chart, with closed-period controls before account structures affect live data.

• Create or import the consolidated chart that will appear on final reports.
• Create a local chart for each accounting system or entity account structure.
• Set account categories, FX methods, and CTA behavior on consolidated accounts.
• Map local accounts to consolidated accounts before loading production data.
• Do not delete or remap accounts used by closed periods; reopen the period first if history must change.

Add departments, cost centers, regions, products, or other reporting views before distributing templates.

Dimensions keep department, segment, and custom reporting views consistent across trial balances, journals, and reports, with locked-history controls.

• Decide which dimensions are required for management reporting and financial statements.
• Create clean dimension values before trial balance upload templates are used.
• Keep optional dimensions out of simple company workflows when they are not needed.
• Use dimension values consistently on trial balances, journals, and statement mappings.
• Reopen affected periods before changing dimension values used in closed history.

Create each legal entity and connect it to the right chart, currency, ownership, fiscal year, and access rules.

Entity setup connects companies to charts, currencies, ownership, and access controls before data is loaded.

• Create every entity that will provide trial balance data or appear in consolidation.
• Assign the correct local chart, fiscal year end, and functional currency.
• Confirm ownership percentage, consolidation method, and parent relationships where applicable.
• Grant company access only to the users who should view or edit that entity.
• Confirm company setup before loading actuals, forecasts, or journals.

Import actuals and forecasts, then resolve validation issues before refresh.

Trial balances are loaded, validated, mapped, and refreshed into the reporting engine with clean issue resolution and locked historical cycles.

• Choose the company, year, scenario, level, and chart before creating or importing a trial balance.
• Download or use the expected import format for that company's chart and dimensions.
• Import the file, then review validation messages immediately.
• Fix out-of-balance totals, unmapped accounts, duplicate rows, missing dimensions, bad periods, and year-continuity issues.
• Use edit mode for controlled corrections and keep the audit trail intact.
• Reopen the related period before replacing or editing a closed actual trial balance.

Confirm the loaded data is complete, balanced, mapped, and ready for consolidation.

Validation checks help users resolve source-data problems before reporting outputs are refreshed.

• Check that every expected company has trial balance data for the reporting period.
• Confirm debit and credit totals balance where the source format requires it.
• Resolve unmapped local accounts before report refresh.
• Review dimension completeness if reports depend on departments, products, regions, or segments.
• Confirm actual and forecast versions are loaded into the intended periods.
• Use Data Explorer or trial balance views to spot unexpected balances before consolidation.

Connect consolidated accounts and dimensions to the financial statement lines users will review.

Statement mappings connect consolidated accounts to report lines, so every report can drill back to source detail.

• Create statement lines for the report structure: balance sheet, income statement, cash flow, or management views.
• Map consolidated accounts to the correct statement lines.
• Add dimension-based rules when a line depends on department, segment, product, or region.
• Resolve unmapped and duplicate mapping warnings before refreshing reports.
• Keep mapping rules simple enough for reviewers to understand and audit.

Post adjustments, eliminations, CTA entries, and close entries after source data and mappings are ready.

Use journals for posted consolidation entries such as intercompany eliminations, manual adjustments, acquisition entries, equity eliminations, opening NCI, and CTA. Local retained earnings carry-forward updates local beginning balance; consolidated retained earnings presentation and NCI attribution can also include reporting facts, not only journals.

• Confirm the approval policy before preparing or posting journals.
• Create balanced journal entries with company, period, account, and dimension detail.
• Use intercompany journals for elimination workflows that need paired company context.
• Use consolidated manual journals for acquisition accounting, including goodwill, fair value step-ups, opening NCI, and opening consolidation entries.
• Review automatic CTA journal entries because they post FX translation movement to AOCI/CTA.
• Treat NCI share of CTA/OCI as attribution between parent AOCI and NCI, not as operating income.
• Reopen closed periods before changing or deleting journals that feed historical reports.

Understand the three consolidated equity categories with special handling: retained earnings, AOCI, and NCI.

Retained earnings starts locally. Each company carries forward its prior-year close into the next-year local retained earnings beginning balance. Consolidation does not recalculate that local balance; it maps and translates the local retained earnings balance, then separately presents parent retained earnings, parent current-year income, AOCI, and NCI so outside-owner shares are not posted into parent retained earnings.

• Use one local retained earnings account per local chart when the company needs a local year-to-year carry-forward.
• For non-consolidated reporting, current-year income is shown separately during the year, then close or carry-forward updates next-year beginning retained earnings.
• Do not treat local retained earnings as a consolidation recalculation; it is a local beginning-balance update.
• Translate and map local retained earnings into the consolidated chart, then apply consolidation entries and reporting allocations separately.
• Use one consolidated retained earnings category for parent-attributable accumulated earnings only.
• Do not post the NCI share of profit, loss, CTA, or OCI into parent retained earnings.
• Use consolidated AOCI for the parent share of OCI and CTA, not the full subsidiary CTA when NCI exists.
• Use one consolidated NCI account for outside-owner equity; opening NCI is usually a consolidated manual journal, while ongoing NCI profit or loss allocation can be a system roll-forward fact.
• Record opening NCI, goodwill, fair value step-ups, and acquisition entries through consolidated journals when needed.
• Review open-period reports to confirm profit and CTA are split between parent equity and NCI before close.

Use period controls to keep current work editable and completed periods locked.

Period controls hard lock closed cycles while keeping current work editable, reviewable, and traceable.

• Keep active periods open while loading data, correcting issues, entering journals, and reviewing reports.
• Close a period only after trial balances, mappings, journals, FX, and reports have been reviewed.
• Review generated carry-forward entries and close automation before distributing final reports.
• Use period history to confirm who opened, changed, refreshed, and closed each period.
• Reopen a period only when a controlled historical correction is required.

Treat closed periods as hard locked and use the reopen-fix-refresh-close workflow for corrections.

Historical changes use a governed reopen, fix, validate, refresh, and close workflow. Closed periods are not recast in the background.

• Do not use setup screens to silently rewrite closed-period history.
• Open Periods first and reopen every affected local or consolidated period you control.
• Change the original trial balance, journal, mapping, account, dimension, chart, or company record.
• Validate the correction and confirm the warning is resolved.
• Refresh reporting data, review the impact, and close the period again.
• If restricted companies are involved, have an authorized user complete that company's correction.