Consolidations: Row level math

Consolidations allow mathematical operations between attribute elements or attribute element groups. That is, you can perform arithmetic operations such as addition, multiplication, division, and subtraction on the attribute elements. You can even use constants while specifying your consolidation elements. This feature makes consolidations a powerful tool in reporting, by allowing you to specify row level math for a report. That is, it allows you to have a report row that is created based on a mathematical operation.

For example, you need to analyze data by season (Fall, Winter, and so on), although your project does not contain a Season attribute. Your data warehouse does not store data at the seasonal level. After you create a consolidation using the Month attribute, where the Winter consolidation element is composed of December, January, and February, and so on (see Consolidations: Virtual attributes for more information), you can compare sales for the different seasons. To do this, create another consolidation element that calculates data for all the months, named All Time. Add more elements that perform percent-to-total calculations. That is, use the elements themselves in the formula, such as Winter/All Time, Spring/All Time, and so on. When you place the consolidation on a report with the Revenue metric, the Winter/All Time row calculates the percent of Winter sales against all sales.

You can format individual consolidation elements. This means that the season elements can be displayed as currency, while the elements containing ratios can be displayed as percentages. For more information, see Formatting consolidations.

For more details and examples, see the Custom Groups and Consolidations chapter of the Advanced Reporting Help.