Budgeting Planning & Forecasting

What Are Level Dimensions?

December 3, 2025 by Julia Seelin

In Workday Adaptive Planning, a Level represents an organizational unit or entity around which you plan and report—think departments, cost centers, legal entities, or even individual stores. Levels are the backbone of your organizational hierarchy.

Level Dimensions are, quite simply, the standard dimensions automatically associated with these organizational levels. They are the characteristics that define and categorize the level itself.

For example:

If your Level is “Store”, its Level Dimensions might include:
- Region (e.g., Northeast, West)
- Store Type (e.g., Large Format, Small Format)
- Area
If your Level is “Department”, its Level Dimensions might include:
- Business Unit
- Geographic Location

Level Dimensions tell you where the planning is happening (which part of the organization), while Custom Dimensions tell you what the planning is about (which product or project). Together, they provide a comprehensive, multidimensional view of your business.Level Dimensions are also very similar to attributes. Attributes have the main purpose of grouping either levels or dimensions for reporting purposes. Level Dimensions tag a level similar to an attribute, but also create a new intersection of data with the Level Dimension. This in turn allows for planning to also be done at this intersection, instead of just tagging them together.

Revelwood is more than just a Platinum Workday Adaptive Planning partner — we’re a trusted advisor to the Office of Finance. With 30 years of experience and award-winning expertise, we bring together powerful software, proven best practices and pre-built, ready-to-deploy solutions that accelerate time to value. Our team doesn’t just implement technology — we help finance teams transform the way they plan, analyze and make decisions. Discover how Revelwood can help you get the most out of Workday Adaptive Planning — and achieve results that matter.

Account Modifiers in Formulas

August 27, 2025 by Julia Seelin

The Formula Assistant in Workday Adaptive Planning provides a provides a powerful way to customize how data is pulled and calculated in formulas

To enhance the flexibility of your formulas, you can use a variety of modifiers that adjust how the information is retrieved. These modifiers include time, level, dimension, and attributes, each serving a unique purpose to make your formulas more dynamic and accurate. By incorporating these modifiers, you can manipulate the data in various ways to meet specific reporting or analysis needs.

For instance, when referencing an account, you can apply these modifiers to retrieve data in a manner that fits your desired outcome. A common example would be when you want to reference trailing data, such as pulling the trailing 12 months of revenue. By modifying the formula to say

ACCT.Revenue[time=this-12:this-1],

you can ensure that it pulls revenue data for the previous 12 months, with the ending month being the one immediately preceding the current month you’re analyzing.

Beyond time-based adjustments, you can also use account attributes to fine-tune your calculations based on groupings or classifications associated with the data. For example, if you want to calculate revenue specifically for a particular region, you can apply an attribute filter like

ACCT.Revenue[Region = North]

to pull in all revenue data associated with accounts tagged with the “North” region. This allows you to create more granular and targeted reports, tailored to specific attributes or dimensions within your data.

These modifiers help ensure that your formulas are more flexible, powerful, and specific to your needs, providing deeper insights and more accurate reporting.

Limiting the Scope of Calculated Accounts

August 20, 2025 by Revelwood

Both modeled and cubed sheets in Workday Adaptive Planning allow the user to set a scope to limit the calculation for calculated accounts for both actuals and planned data. A user may utilize this feature to allow calculations to start at a certain point, without having to alter the actuals or plan version start date.

In order to limit the scope of the calculated accounts, you will begin by navigating to the back end of the sheet and go to columns and levels. Once you are at columns and levels, you can press the sheet properties gear in the middle of the screen.

Once you have navigated to the sheet properties, press the last tab that is titled “Scope.” This is where you will have the option to limit the scope for calculated accounts.

You now have the ability to set the scope either forward or backwards for actual values or plan values as well. For the actuals, the drop down for the start/stop calculating gives you an option to select start/end of version, month, quarter, year. For the plan, the drop down for start/stop gives you the option of left scroll limit, end of plan, month, quarter, year.

In the example above, we set the scope so that the plan values do not start until 6 months after the start of the plan. As you can see from the start date, it should start 1/1/2025, but from the row details we can see that the calculations do not begin until July.

Override Formula Settings on Calculated Accounts

August 13, 2025 by Cameron Burke

Workday Adaptive Planning is a powerful tool for financial planning and analysis. One of its key strengths is its flexibility in handling data input and formula calculations. One often overlooked, but highly useful feature is the Override Formula Setting on accounts. This allows users to control how data is entered and calculated within specific accounts or sheets.

In this post, we’ll explore the three options in the Override Formula Setting — None, Override Formula, and Data Entry — and how you can leverage them to refine your planning models.

What is the Override Formula Setting?

The Override Formula Setting determines whether users can manually enter data into an account or if the system will enforce a formula-based calculation. This setting is particularly useful when working with modeled sheets, standard sheets, or specific versions of your budget and forecast.

1. None (Default Setting)

When the Override Formula Setting is set to None, the account strictly follows the formula defined in the account’s properties. This means that users cannot manually enter data in the cell; Adaptive Planning will always use the account’s default formula to calculate the value.

Use Case:

When you want to ensure that a particular metric (e.g., Gross Margin % or a calculated KPI) is always derived from a formula and never manually overridden.
Useful for accounts that should remain consistent across all planning scenarios.

2. Override Formula

Selecting Override Formula allows users to enter data manually in specific instances while keeping the formula intact. When a user inputs a value, it replaces the formula-driven calculation for that particular cell, but the original formula remains in place for all other cells where data is not manually entered.

Use Case:

When you want the flexibility to override a formula-based calculation in certain months or scenarios but still rely on the formula for most periods.
Example: If revenue is usually calculated using a formula but needs to be adjusted manually for a particular product launch or seasonal fluctuation.

3. Data Entry

With Data Entry enabled, the formula is completely removed, allowing full manual input for all periods and scenarios. This effectively turns the account into a standard input field rather than a calculated one.

Use Case:

When the account should be completely user-driven, such as manually entering sales targets or one-time adjustments.
Example: Entering specific planned expenses for an event that vary from period to period and do not follow a predictable pattern.

This setting also allows you to have different override settings for different versions. For example, if you want to manually upload/enter actuals for an account and have the budget version calculate numbers based off of these actuals, you can set the actuals version to data entry and the budget version to none. You are able to enter a formula in the budget version referring to actuals data for that account as shown below.

Best Practices for Using the Override Formula Setting

1. Lock Critical Formulas: If an account should always be formula-driven, keep the setting at None to prevent accidental overrides.
2. Use Override Formula Sparingly: This setting is powerful, but frequent overrides can lead to inconsistencies. Use it only when necessary and document any manual inputs.
3. Enable Data Entry When Needed: If you expect manual input for an account, proactively set it to Data Entry to avoid confusion among users.

The Override Formula Setting in Workday Adaptive Planning provides essential flexibility in managing how data is calculated and entered. Understanding when to use None, Override Formula, or Data Entry ensures that your planning models remain both accurate and adaptable.

By strategically applying these settings, you can strike the right balance between automation and user control, leading to more effective and reliable financial planning.

Optimizing FP&A in Multi-Site Healthcare Organizations

August 8, 2025 by Revelwood

Managing a multisite healthcare organization – such as a group of eye doctors or urgent care centers – is a complex endeavor. These healthcare organizations have multiple locations with diverse revenue streams. it’s critical to have a robust system for budgeting, forecasting, and reporting.

Increasingly, these healthcare organizations are turning to Workday Adaptive Planning for their centralized FP&A activities.

Key Benefits for Multisite Healthcare Organizations

Workday Adaptive Planning is designed to empower healthcare organizations with tools that simplify and enhance financial planning and analysis. Here’s how:

1. Streamlined Budgeting and Forecasting: Multisite organizations often spend countless hours building budgets for each location. Workday Adaptive Planning reduces this time significantly by providing a centralized platform where budgets and forecasts can be created, updated, and managed with ease.
2. Sophisticated Reporting Capabilities: Complex reporting is essential in healthcare for analyzing performance and making strategic decisions. Workday Adaptive Planning enables detailed reporting on critical metrics such as:
- Reimbursement rates
- Non-billable hours
- Daily sales outstanding (DSO)
- Specialty-specific revenue and expenses

This granularity ensures leaders have the insights needed to optimize operations across all locations.

3. Enhanced Visibility into Financial Processes: The platform offers a more transparent and detailed view of the budgeting process. This enhanced visibility enables proactive adjustments, ensuring that budgets align with organizational goals.
4. Census Information Management: Healthcare organizations rely on accurate census data for resource allocation and planning. Workday Adaptive Planning facilitates tracking and charting census information to support data-driven decisions.

Comprehensive Tools in One Centralized Platform

Workday Adaptive Planning consolidates essential tools into a single, user-friendly interface. Key functionalities include:

Volume-Based Modeling: Optimize resources and services by projecting patient volumes and aligning them with operational capacity.
Capacity and Workflow Planning: Streamline staffing and resource allocation to improve efficiency and patient outcomes.
Forecasting and Budgeting: Create short-term and long-term financial plans tailored to each site’s unique needs.
Revenue Recognition: Customize revenue reporting to reflect specialty-specific practices and ensure compliance with accounting standards.
Practice and Location-Level Reporting: Gain granular insights into individual practices or sites to identify areas of improvement and replicate success.

Adopting Workday Adaptive Planning equips multisite healthcare organizations with the agility and precision needed to navigate a rapidly evolving industry. Its intuitive design ensures ease of use for financial teams, while its robust features empower organizations to focus on what matters most—delivering exceptional patient care.

By investing in a system that integrates budgeting, forecasting, and reporting, healthcare organizations can drive operational efficiency, reduce costs, and improve decision-making at every level.

Planning, Budgeting, and Reporting: The Tech Sector’s Imperative for Modernization

July 3, 2025 by Revelwood

Today’s competitive technology industry relies on more than innovation in products and services—it requires innovation in how companies plan, budget, and report. According to a recent IDC study sponsored by Workday, technology organizations are feeling the pressure to modernize these core finance processes to stay agile and competitive.

The Cost of Outdated Finance Processes

The report highlights that manual finance processes, such as budgeting, forecasting, consolidations and reporting, are holding many tech companies back. These outdated methods are time-consuming, costly, prone to inefficiency and have the potential for human error. Over a third of surveyed organizations reported that slow, rigid, and siloed planning and budgeting processes prevent them from responding effectively to rapidly changing market conditions.

The result? Limited visibility into financial performance, constrained ability to pivot and delayed decision-making. These factors can erode competitiveness in a fast-moving industry.

The Call for Connected, Cloud-Based Planning

To address these challenges, tech firms are prioritizing investments in modern, connected cloud services. The benefits of this approach are clear:

Faster, data-driven decision-making: Cloud-based systems offer real-time visibility into financial, operational and external data, improving forecasting accuracy and business agility.
Streamlined planning cycles: With automation and AI-powered insights, companies can shift from static annual budgeting to dynamic, continuous planning.
Improved reporting and compliance: Modern platforms reduce reliance on manual data entry, minimize errors and accelerate time to close, moving toward the vision of a zero-day close.

Why Modern Planning Technology Matters Now

The IDC study found that 56% of technology leaders consider finance their top priority for modernization. This underscores the urgency to transform planning and reporting systems. Tech leaders recognize that without modern, configurable technology, they risk falling behind in operational efficiency, decision velocity, and profitability.

Key drivers behind this push include:

The need for more agile processes that can keep pace with evolving business models.
The pursuit of better customer satisfaction, as accurate forecasting supports reliable delivery and service.
A commitment to innovative business models that require adaptable financial frameworks.

The Path Forward for Tech Companies

To compete effectively, technology companies must:

Replace manual processes with automated solutions that simplify complexity and reduce time to insight.
Standardize business processes across the enterprise to enable consistency, compliance, and faster decisions.
Prioritize continuous planning and forecasting to ensure resilience in the face of change.

Those that invest in these capabilities will not only enhance their financial operations but also position themselves for sustained growth and competitive advantage.

Revelwood is dedicated to helping the Office of Finance succeed through the strategic use of technology. For 30 years we have partnered with CFOs and FP&A leaders to modernize and transform the Office of Finance. Our approach is to focus on success, speak business first and to leverage best-in-class technology that suits your organization’s unique needs. We partner with leading technology providers to build best-in-class solutions for our clients.

More from our FP&A Done Right Series:

Introducing the FP&A Done Right – The Podcast

From Static to Dynamic: How Businesses Can Embrace Agile Planning, Part 2

From Static to Dynamic: How Businesses Can Embrace Agile Planning, Part 1

IBM Planning Analytics Workspace Settings – Dim Editor Index

April 1, 2025 by Lee Lazarow

Have you ever looked at all elements in a dimension (via the “All” button in Perspectives or any of the prebuilt “All xxx” sets in IBM Planning Analytics) and wondered how the resulting order was defined? This is a result of a behind-the-scenes setting called an Index. Every element is assigned an index. It is used to define the default sorting / appearance of the list.

So how do you see the index number in PAW when editing a dimension? There are two ways to do this. One approach is to manually turn on the option within the dimension editor. This is done by clicking on the settings icon and enabling the option for Element index.

Once enabled, the index number will appear directly to the right of the element.

The second approach is to always have this setting enabled. Users with the Administrator, Modeler, or Analyst role can use the Settings editor to define global settings. To enable this setting, click on your username at the top right corner of Planning Analytics Workspace, select the option for Profile and Settings, and then select the option for Settings. The index definition is found within the Dimension Editor section. After enabling this setting, the Element Index option will be selected by default within the dimension editor screen. Users can still manually deselect the option, if preferred.

By viewing the index, it will be easy to see the order that elements will appear for various default sets.

Revelwood is an IBM Gold Business Partner with 25+ years of experience designing, developing, implementing and maintaining IBM Planning Analytics environments. Revelwood has helped clients in all sizes across all industries optimize and grow their use of Planning Analytics. Revelwood’s Planning Analytics team consists of experienced PA experts, including a multi-year IBM Champion.

Stay up to date with PA – sign up for our weekly Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks newsletter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and join our IBM Planning Analytics All-Stars group on LinkedIn.

How We Solve Problems Using Workday Adaptive Planning

March 5, 2025 by Revelwood

This post is the first post in our new blog series on how we solve problems using Workday Adaptive Planning. Each blog post focuses on a real-world client experience where Revelwood was presented with a unique or thorny problem. We’ll explain our approach to how we solved it.

Revelwood Client: A medical technology company that works with clinicians in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Asia Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada.

Problem: Personnel / headcount planning

Scenario: This company had unique requirements for the allocations and formulas in their personnel model. Personnel needed to be partially allocated based off of a monthly headcount by department, and then further allocated quarterly based on global assumptions.

How We Helped: Our team determined that this client needed to have a granular, clear view into how the company’s explosive growth was impacting its personnel needs. We built a personnel model to give the FP&A team – and senior management – the ability to track the timing of new hires and forecast the company’s personnel needs globally. This model – and Workday Adaptive Planning in general – is saving the company a significant amount of time.Do you have a challenge you’d like to leverage Workday Adaptive Planning for? Reach out to us – we can help!

Read the posts in our series, How We Solve Problems Using Workday Adaptive Planning

Using Workday Adaptive Planning to Model Revenue and Expenses

Workday Adaptive Planning for Budgeting and Forecasting for a SaaS Business Model

Workday Adaptive Planning for Incorporating Foreign Transactions

February 12, 2025 by Revelwood

This post continues our series on how we use Workday Adaptive Planning to solve problems. Each blog post focuses on a real-world client experience where Revelwood was presented with a unique or thorny problem. We’ll explain our approach to how we solved it.

Revelwood Client: A privately held biotech company striving to accelerate the leap to a more nature-positive era for agriculture by solving performance and delivery challenges of traditional chemical and biological crop protection.

Problem: Inaccurate and Cumbersome Foreign Transactions

Scenario: The company is headquartered in Massachusetts, with offices and operations in North Carolina, Florida, Brazil, Italy and Switzerland. Their Workday Adaptive Planning system needed to incorporate different statutory requirements on a state and country basis in a detailed manner. With its previous Excel-based system, the company was able to factor in payroll taxes, Social Security and other details for the United States, but they had to use an assumed percentage for other countries.

How We Helped: Revelwood created a purpose-built model for payroll that incorporates a wide range of scenarios and details. For example, employees in Brazil get a lunch stipend and other payments. Italy has 14 pay periods instead of 12 pay periods. The new model in Workday Adaptive Planning models payroll differences by state, region and country. By incorporating country-level details, this biotech company gets a much more detailed – and accurate – view of payroll, and ultimately, current cash flow.

Do you have a challenge you’d like to leverage Workday Adaptive Planning for? Reach out to us – we can help!

Read the posts in our series, How We Solve Problems Using Workday Adaptive Planning

Using Workday Adaptive Planning to Model Revenue and Expenses

Workday Adaptive Planning for Budgeting and Forecasting for a SaaS Business Model

What Are Level Dimensions?

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Account Modifiers in Formulas

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Limiting the Scope of Calculated Accounts

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Override Formula Settings on Calculated Accounts