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Page 1: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

Version 405

1

GL Wand Installation amp User Guide

wwwexcel4appscom

Excel4Apps (Pty) Ltd

supportexcel4appscom

All rights reserved

24

Using GL Wand

Toolbar

The GL Wand toolbar gives you access to all the functionality of GL Wand

The Menu

Functions can also be accessed from the GL Wand drop down menu

Shortcut keys

Frequently used functions like calculate Range calculate Sheet and calculate All can also be

executed with ALT+CTL+R ALT+CTL+S and ALT+CTL+A

Logging on

- Not logged on click to log on

- Logged on click to log on again

25

The first step in using GL Wand is to log on to the Oracle instance that you intend using

You can log on to the online Vision instance or you can log on to your own Oracle Applications instance

See also the Creating Connections section

There are two possible logon methods that GL Wand can use The method is determined by

a setting on the GL Wand Options form The method can be ldquoOraclerdquo or ldquoExcelrdquo It is also

possible to access your segment values descriptive flexfields by enabling the option during the logon

Oracle Logon Method

The ldquoOraclerdquo option is the new logon method which utilizes the Oracle web based screen to

capture your user name and password This method is also compliant with Oracle Single Sign

On When you click the sign on button you are presented with the screen below where you

select which Oracle connection you wish to use

When you click the logon button the Oracle log on screen will appear Enter your applications user name and password

26

When you click Login on this web browser the window will close and you will be presented

with a list of responsibilities that are linked to your user name You will see one of the two

windows displayed below If your site is licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books

feature you will see the image on the right Else the screen will appear like the image on the

left Trial users using an in-house trial key will by default have access to the Multiple Set of Books (MSOB) feature

Select the responsibility that you wish to use and click ok If you are licensed to use the GL

Wand MSOB feature you can select multiple responsibilities Click an item to select it and click it again to unselect it

If you are licensed to use the MSOB feature you also have the option of logging on to all the

available sets of books This option must be enabled by setting the applicable profile option

27

at user level With the profile option set to yes for a particular user that user will have an

extra item in the list of available responsibilities This ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option allows a user

to log on to all the sets of books configured in the Oracle instance without needing to select

multiple responsibilities

Please note that when logging on with the ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option no security rules are

enforced For this reason you must enable this option for those GL Wand users that are

authorized to report across all the configured sets of books By default this options is

disabled for all users

If you log on to an Oracle Release 12 instance and the data access set linked to the chosen

responsibility contains more than one ledger or ledger set you will be logged on to all the applicable ledgers

Excel Logon Method

The ldquoExcelrdquo logon method is the same mechanism that was used in previous GL Wand

versions This method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function

correctly Again there are two possible windows that you will be presented with depending in whether you are licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books feature

28

Descriptive Flexfields

If you wish to report on segment value descriptive flexfields tick this option on the logon

form This will load the descriptive flexfield information This option is by default un-ticked as loading this information unnecessarily would slow down the logon process

Proxy Authentication

If you are connecting to an Oracle instance on the Internet and your organization uses a

proxy server that requires authentication to access the Internet (in addition to the domain

logon) GL Wand will prompt you for your proxy user name and password if required

29

Enter the required user name and password and click OK Then click the logon button again

License Key

If you have not yet obtained a trial license key for the instance that you are logging on to

you will prompted with the option to request a key Click ldquoYesrdquo to open a web page where you can request a trial key or ldquoNordquo to continue without requesting a key

Customers that have licensed GL Wand will use this exact same process to request the final non-expiring keys

Set of Books and Segment Selector

- Set of Books and Segment selector

Once you have logged on the set of books and segment list dropdowns will be populated

Set of Books

The set of books drop down list can be used to select the set of books that you wish to work

with If you log on to a single set of books this dropdown list will contain a single value only

However if you are licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books feature or are in trial then this list will contain multiple values in the following situations

If you selected multiple responsibilities during the logon process all the sets of books

linked to those responsibilities will be listed

If you selected the special ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option all the sets of books configured

in the Oracle instance will be listed

If you log on to an Oracle Release 12 instance and the data access set linked to the

chosen responsibility contains more than one ledger or ledger set then each of these ledgers will be listed

The number in brackets () indicates the Set of Books identifier This number can be used in

various GL Wand formulas and other functionality in order to obtain information from a specific Set of Books

Segments

This dropdown list will be populated with a list of the segments that are available in the

currently selected Set of Books The number in brackets indicates the segment number The

segment list also includes the special value ldquoPeriodrdquo which is used for discovering the period

names in your set of books

In the example shown the selected segment is ldquoCompanyrdquo and it is identified as segment 1 Certain dynamic functions require the segment number as an input parameter

Discovering

The discover tools allow you to extract segment information from the Oracle Applications

database and populate Excel cells with this information You can use the discover tools to

30

extract segment values segment properties periods or child ranges or the full segment

hierarchy For segment values you can use the discover level to choose whether to retrieve child values parent values or both

Discover Segment Values

- Discover Down

- Discover Down All

- Discover Up

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting segment value eg ldquo1000rdquo into the cell

2 Choose the relevant segment from the segment list eg ldquoAccountrdquo

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand finds the next valid account segment value after account ldquo1000rdquo and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

In the same way you can click the up arrow and the previous segment value will be entered

in the cell above the one that you started in

- Discover Left

- Discover Right

31

- Discover Right All

The left and right arrows work in a similar manner retrieving the next and previous segment

values but they populate the cells to the left and right of the cell that you start in When

discovering segment values you will notice that some of the values are entered with a bold

font This is because these have been identified as parent values

You do not need to discover segment values one at a time

You can enter a starting segment value choose the segment from the segment list

and then highlight a range of cells

When you click one of the discover buttons now GL Wand fills the selected range

with the next or previous segment values depending on which arrow you click on

The Discover Down All and Discover Right All buttons can be used to retrieve all the segment values in one operation

Discover Period Names

You can discover period names in much the same way that you can discover segment

values

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting period name eg Jan-03 into the cell

NB ndash make sure that you enter this starting period name as text by first formatting the Excel

cell as text or entering the period name prefixed by an apostrophe bdquo eg bdquoJan-03 If Excel

interprets the value entered as an actual date eg 01012003 then discover period names

will not work

2 Choose the special ldquoPeriodrdquo value from the segment list

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

32

GL Wand finds the next period name after Jan-07 in the Set of Books calendar and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

You can also use the ldquoDiscover Down Allrdquo ldquoDiscover Previousrdquo ldquoDiscover Rightrdquo ldquoDiscover Right Allrdquo and ldquoDiscover Leftrdquo buttons to discover period names

Discover Properties

- Discover segment properties

The ldquoDiscover Propertiesrdquo button will extract a variety of information about the selected segment value

To use this function

1 Select a cell(s) with a valid segment value in it

2 Make sure the correct segment is selected in the segment selector

3 Click the Discover Properties button

The cells to the right of the selected cell are populated with segment information

The first cell indicates the segment description the second cell indicates if the value is a

parent or not (Y means the segment value is a parent) the third cell indicates if the segment

value is enabled or not (Y means that the segment value is enabled) and the fourth cell

indicates what account type the segment value is eg Asset or Liability etc Obviously the forth cell is only valid for the natural account segment

33

Discover Child Ranges

- Discover child ranges

The ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button can be used to show the child values that are assigned to a particular parent value

1 Select a cell that has a parent segment value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown

3 Now click on the ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button

An Excel note is added to the cell showing the ranges that have been assigned to the selected parent This is useful for understanding and exploring your Chart of Accounts

Discover Hierarchy

To discover the hierarchy for a segment proceed as follows

Enter the starting segment value into an Excel cell This value must be a parent for

the segment you are using

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Select ldquoDiscover Hierarchyrdquo from the Discover menu

GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy for the selected parent and display it in the

Excel worksheet indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

34

Toggle Discover Level

- Toggle discover level

The ldquoDiscover levelrdquo button is used to restrict the segment values that are returned by the discover tools to parent values only child values only or both parent and child values

When you click on this button it toggles from discovering parents and children to discovering parents only to discovering child values only

For example

1 Select a cell and enter a starting segment value

2 Choose the segment from the segment list

3 Click the discover level until the option is set to ldquoDiscovering Parentsrdquo 4 Now highlight a range of cells and click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand fills the selected range with the next segment values but skips all child values and

returns only parent values Similarly child values can be discovered by toggling the discover level to ldquoDiscovering childrenrdquo

If you want to discover both parent and children toggle the discover level back to

ldquoDiscovering parents and childrenrdquo

All segment values must be entered using the Excel text format Either format the cell using

the text number format or enter the cell value using the apostrophe bdquo character which marks

the contents of the cell as text eg if you want to enter the segment value 001 enter it as

follows bdquo001

Expand

- Expand

You can perform an expand down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can expand using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

The Expand feature allows you to extract a list of all the lowest level child values that roll up

to a particular segment selection This might be a parent value range wild card or a

combination of these options

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection eg a parent value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button 4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

35

You can also highlight a number of columns and GL Wand will insert the child values and copy the contents of the highlighted cells against each child value that is inserted

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection and highlight the number of columns that you

would like to have copied into the new rows

2 Identify its segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button

4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

5 The contents of the additional columns that were selected are copied against each new

row inserted In the example below this contains a generic Get Balance formula which is then resolved for each child value

You also have the option of selecting multiple rows when performing an Expand GL Wand will perform an expand on each selected row

The expand feature can also be used with account combinations Please see the Special Get

Balance Criteria section for details on how this works

Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and list them below the starting cell

Expand Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and list all the values below the starting cell indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 2: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

1

GL Wand Installation amp User Guide

wwwexcel4appscom

Excel4Apps (Pty) Ltd

supportexcel4appscom

All rights reserved

24

Using GL Wand

Toolbar

The GL Wand toolbar gives you access to all the functionality of GL Wand

The Menu

Functions can also be accessed from the GL Wand drop down menu

Shortcut keys

Frequently used functions like calculate Range calculate Sheet and calculate All can also be

executed with ALT+CTL+R ALT+CTL+S and ALT+CTL+A

Logging on

- Not logged on click to log on

- Logged on click to log on again

25

The first step in using GL Wand is to log on to the Oracle instance that you intend using

You can log on to the online Vision instance or you can log on to your own Oracle Applications instance

See also the Creating Connections section

There are two possible logon methods that GL Wand can use The method is determined by

a setting on the GL Wand Options form The method can be ldquoOraclerdquo or ldquoExcelrdquo It is also

possible to access your segment values descriptive flexfields by enabling the option during the logon

Oracle Logon Method

The ldquoOraclerdquo option is the new logon method which utilizes the Oracle web based screen to

capture your user name and password This method is also compliant with Oracle Single Sign

On When you click the sign on button you are presented with the screen below where you

select which Oracle connection you wish to use

When you click the logon button the Oracle log on screen will appear Enter your applications user name and password

26

When you click Login on this web browser the window will close and you will be presented

with a list of responsibilities that are linked to your user name You will see one of the two

windows displayed below If your site is licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books

feature you will see the image on the right Else the screen will appear like the image on the

left Trial users using an in-house trial key will by default have access to the Multiple Set of Books (MSOB) feature

Select the responsibility that you wish to use and click ok If you are licensed to use the GL

Wand MSOB feature you can select multiple responsibilities Click an item to select it and click it again to unselect it

If you are licensed to use the MSOB feature you also have the option of logging on to all the

available sets of books This option must be enabled by setting the applicable profile option

27

at user level With the profile option set to yes for a particular user that user will have an

extra item in the list of available responsibilities This ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option allows a user

to log on to all the sets of books configured in the Oracle instance without needing to select

multiple responsibilities

Please note that when logging on with the ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option no security rules are

enforced For this reason you must enable this option for those GL Wand users that are

authorized to report across all the configured sets of books By default this options is

disabled for all users

If you log on to an Oracle Release 12 instance and the data access set linked to the chosen

responsibility contains more than one ledger or ledger set you will be logged on to all the applicable ledgers

Excel Logon Method

The ldquoExcelrdquo logon method is the same mechanism that was used in previous GL Wand

versions This method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function

correctly Again there are two possible windows that you will be presented with depending in whether you are licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books feature

28

Descriptive Flexfields

If you wish to report on segment value descriptive flexfields tick this option on the logon

form This will load the descriptive flexfield information This option is by default un-ticked as loading this information unnecessarily would slow down the logon process

Proxy Authentication

If you are connecting to an Oracle instance on the Internet and your organization uses a

proxy server that requires authentication to access the Internet (in addition to the domain

logon) GL Wand will prompt you for your proxy user name and password if required

29

Enter the required user name and password and click OK Then click the logon button again

License Key

If you have not yet obtained a trial license key for the instance that you are logging on to

you will prompted with the option to request a key Click ldquoYesrdquo to open a web page where you can request a trial key or ldquoNordquo to continue without requesting a key

Customers that have licensed GL Wand will use this exact same process to request the final non-expiring keys

Set of Books and Segment Selector

- Set of Books and Segment selector

Once you have logged on the set of books and segment list dropdowns will be populated

Set of Books

The set of books drop down list can be used to select the set of books that you wish to work

with If you log on to a single set of books this dropdown list will contain a single value only

However if you are licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books feature or are in trial then this list will contain multiple values in the following situations

If you selected multiple responsibilities during the logon process all the sets of books

linked to those responsibilities will be listed

If you selected the special ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option all the sets of books configured

in the Oracle instance will be listed

If you log on to an Oracle Release 12 instance and the data access set linked to the

chosen responsibility contains more than one ledger or ledger set then each of these ledgers will be listed

The number in brackets () indicates the Set of Books identifier This number can be used in

various GL Wand formulas and other functionality in order to obtain information from a specific Set of Books

Segments

This dropdown list will be populated with a list of the segments that are available in the

currently selected Set of Books The number in brackets indicates the segment number The

segment list also includes the special value ldquoPeriodrdquo which is used for discovering the period

names in your set of books

In the example shown the selected segment is ldquoCompanyrdquo and it is identified as segment 1 Certain dynamic functions require the segment number as an input parameter

Discovering

The discover tools allow you to extract segment information from the Oracle Applications

database and populate Excel cells with this information You can use the discover tools to

30

extract segment values segment properties periods or child ranges or the full segment

hierarchy For segment values you can use the discover level to choose whether to retrieve child values parent values or both

Discover Segment Values

- Discover Down

- Discover Down All

- Discover Up

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting segment value eg ldquo1000rdquo into the cell

2 Choose the relevant segment from the segment list eg ldquoAccountrdquo

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand finds the next valid account segment value after account ldquo1000rdquo and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

In the same way you can click the up arrow and the previous segment value will be entered

in the cell above the one that you started in

- Discover Left

- Discover Right

31

- Discover Right All

The left and right arrows work in a similar manner retrieving the next and previous segment

values but they populate the cells to the left and right of the cell that you start in When

discovering segment values you will notice that some of the values are entered with a bold

font This is because these have been identified as parent values

You do not need to discover segment values one at a time

You can enter a starting segment value choose the segment from the segment list

and then highlight a range of cells

When you click one of the discover buttons now GL Wand fills the selected range

with the next or previous segment values depending on which arrow you click on

The Discover Down All and Discover Right All buttons can be used to retrieve all the segment values in one operation

Discover Period Names

You can discover period names in much the same way that you can discover segment

values

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting period name eg Jan-03 into the cell

NB ndash make sure that you enter this starting period name as text by first formatting the Excel

cell as text or entering the period name prefixed by an apostrophe bdquo eg bdquoJan-03 If Excel

interprets the value entered as an actual date eg 01012003 then discover period names

will not work

2 Choose the special ldquoPeriodrdquo value from the segment list

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

32

GL Wand finds the next period name after Jan-07 in the Set of Books calendar and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

You can also use the ldquoDiscover Down Allrdquo ldquoDiscover Previousrdquo ldquoDiscover Rightrdquo ldquoDiscover Right Allrdquo and ldquoDiscover Leftrdquo buttons to discover period names

Discover Properties

- Discover segment properties

The ldquoDiscover Propertiesrdquo button will extract a variety of information about the selected segment value

To use this function

1 Select a cell(s) with a valid segment value in it

2 Make sure the correct segment is selected in the segment selector

3 Click the Discover Properties button

The cells to the right of the selected cell are populated with segment information

The first cell indicates the segment description the second cell indicates if the value is a

parent or not (Y means the segment value is a parent) the third cell indicates if the segment

value is enabled or not (Y means that the segment value is enabled) and the fourth cell

indicates what account type the segment value is eg Asset or Liability etc Obviously the forth cell is only valid for the natural account segment

33

Discover Child Ranges

- Discover child ranges

The ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button can be used to show the child values that are assigned to a particular parent value

1 Select a cell that has a parent segment value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown

3 Now click on the ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button

An Excel note is added to the cell showing the ranges that have been assigned to the selected parent This is useful for understanding and exploring your Chart of Accounts

Discover Hierarchy

To discover the hierarchy for a segment proceed as follows

Enter the starting segment value into an Excel cell This value must be a parent for

the segment you are using

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Select ldquoDiscover Hierarchyrdquo from the Discover menu

GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy for the selected parent and display it in the

Excel worksheet indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

34

Toggle Discover Level

- Toggle discover level

The ldquoDiscover levelrdquo button is used to restrict the segment values that are returned by the discover tools to parent values only child values only or both parent and child values

When you click on this button it toggles from discovering parents and children to discovering parents only to discovering child values only

For example

1 Select a cell and enter a starting segment value

2 Choose the segment from the segment list

3 Click the discover level until the option is set to ldquoDiscovering Parentsrdquo 4 Now highlight a range of cells and click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand fills the selected range with the next segment values but skips all child values and

returns only parent values Similarly child values can be discovered by toggling the discover level to ldquoDiscovering childrenrdquo

If you want to discover both parent and children toggle the discover level back to

ldquoDiscovering parents and childrenrdquo

All segment values must be entered using the Excel text format Either format the cell using

the text number format or enter the cell value using the apostrophe bdquo character which marks

the contents of the cell as text eg if you want to enter the segment value 001 enter it as

follows bdquo001

Expand

- Expand

You can perform an expand down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can expand using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

The Expand feature allows you to extract a list of all the lowest level child values that roll up

to a particular segment selection This might be a parent value range wild card or a

combination of these options

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection eg a parent value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button 4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

35

You can also highlight a number of columns and GL Wand will insert the child values and copy the contents of the highlighted cells against each child value that is inserted

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection and highlight the number of columns that you

would like to have copied into the new rows

2 Identify its segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button

4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

5 The contents of the additional columns that were selected are copied against each new

row inserted In the example below this contains a generic Get Balance formula which is then resolved for each child value

You also have the option of selecting multiple rows when performing an Expand GL Wand will perform an expand on each selected row

The expand feature can also be used with account combinations Please see the Special Get

Balance Criteria section for details on how this works

Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and list them below the starting cell

Expand Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and list all the values below the starting cell indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 3: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

24

Using GL Wand

Toolbar

The GL Wand toolbar gives you access to all the functionality of GL Wand

The Menu

Functions can also be accessed from the GL Wand drop down menu

Shortcut keys

Frequently used functions like calculate Range calculate Sheet and calculate All can also be

executed with ALT+CTL+R ALT+CTL+S and ALT+CTL+A

Logging on

- Not logged on click to log on

- Logged on click to log on again

25

The first step in using GL Wand is to log on to the Oracle instance that you intend using

You can log on to the online Vision instance or you can log on to your own Oracle Applications instance

See also the Creating Connections section

There are two possible logon methods that GL Wand can use The method is determined by

a setting on the GL Wand Options form The method can be ldquoOraclerdquo or ldquoExcelrdquo It is also

possible to access your segment values descriptive flexfields by enabling the option during the logon

Oracle Logon Method

The ldquoOraclerdquo option is the new logon method which utilizes the Oracle web based screen to

capture your user name and password This method is also compliant with Oracle Single Sign

On When you click the sign on button you are presented with the screen below where you

select which Oracle connection you wish to use

When you click the logon button the Oracle log on screen will appear Enter your applications user name and password

26

When you click Login on this web browser the window will close and you will be presented

with a list of responsibilities that are linked to your user name You will see one of the two

windows displayed below If your site is licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books

feature you will see the image on the right Else the screen will appear like the image on the

left Trial users using an in-house trial key will by default have access to the Multiple Set of Books (MSOB) feature

Select the responsibility that you wish to use and click ok If you are licensed to use the GL

Wand MSOB feature you can select multiple responsibilities Click an item to select it and click it again to unselect it

If you are licensed to use the MSOB feature you also have the option of logging on to all the

available sets of books This option must be enabled by setting the applicable profile option

27

at user level With the profile option set to yes for a particular user that user will have an

extra item in the list of available responsibilities This ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option allows a user

to log on to all the sets of books configured in the Oracle instance without needing to select

multiple responsibilities

Please note that when logging on with the ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option no security rules are

enforced For this reason you must enable this option for those GL Wand users that are

authorized to report across all the configured sets of books By default this options is

disabled for all users

If you log on to an Oracle Release 12 instance and the data access set linked to the chosen

responsibility contains more than one ledger or ledger set you will be logged on to all the applicable ledgers

Excel Logon Method

The ldquoExcelrdquo logon method is the same mechanism that was used in previous GL Wand

versions This method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function

correctly Again there are two possible windows that you will be presented with depending in whether you are licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books feature

28

Descriptive Flexfields

If you wish to report on segment value descriptive flexfields tick this option on the logon

form This will load the descriptive flexfield information This option is by default un-ticked as loading this information unnecessarily would slow down the logon process

Proxy Authentication

If you are connecting to an Oracle instance on the Internet and your organization uses a

proxy server that requires authentication to access the Internet (in addition to the domain

logon) GL Wand will prompt you for your proxy user name and password if required

29

Enter the required user name and password and click OK Then click the logon button again

License Key

If you have not yet obtained a trial license key for the instance that you are logging on to

you will prompted with the option to request a key Click ldquoYesrdquo to open a web page where you can request a trial key or ldquoNordquo to continue without requesting a key

Customers that have licensed GL Wand will use this exact same process to request the final non-expiring keys

Set of Books and Segment Selector

- Set of Books and Segment selector

Once you have logged on the set of books and segment list dropdowns will be populated

Set of Books

The set of books drop down list can be used to select the set of books that you wish to work

with If you log on to a single set of books this dropdown list will contain a single value only

However if you are licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books feature or are in trial then this list will contain multiple values in the following situations

If you selected multiple responsibilities during the logon process all the sets of books

linked to those responsibilities will be listed

If you selected the special ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option all the sets of books configured

in the Oracle instance will be listed

If you log on to an Oracle Release 12 instance and the data access set linked to the

chosen responsibility contains more than one ledger or ledger set then each of these ledgers will be listed

The number in brackets () indicates the Set of Books identifier This number can be used in

various GL Wand formulas and other functionality in order to obtain information from a specific Set of Books

Segments

This dropdown list will be populated with a list of the segments that are available in the

currently selected Set of Books The number in brackets indicates the segment number The

segment list also includes the special value ldquoPeriodrdquo which is used for discovering the period

names in your set of books

In the example shown the selected segment is ldquoCompanyrdquo and it is identified as segment 1 Certain dynamic functions require the segment number as an input parameter

Discovering

The discover tools allow you to extract segment information from the Oracle Applications

database and populate Excel cells with this information You can use the discover tools to

30

extract segment values segment properties periods or child ranges or the full segment

hierarchy For segment values you can use the discover level to choose whether to retrieve child values parent values or both

Discover Segment Values

- Discover Down

- Discover Down All

- Discover Up

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting segment value eg ldquo1000rdquo into the cell

2 Choose the relevant segment from the segment list eg ldquoAccountrdquo

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand finds the next valid account segment value after account ldquo1000rdquo and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

In the same way you can click the up arrow and the previous segment value will be entered

in the cell above the one that you started in

- Discover Left

- Discover Right

31

- Discover Right All

The left and right arrows work in a similar manner retrieving the next and previous segment

values but they populate the cells to the left and right of the cell that you start in When

discovering segment values you will notice that some of the values are entered with a bold

font This is because these have been identified as parent values

You do not need to discover segment values one at a time

You can enter a starting segment value choose the segment from the segment list

and then highlight a range of cells

When you click one of the discover buttons now GL Wand fills the selected range

with the next or previous segment values depending on which arrow you click on

The Discover Down All and Discover Right All buttons can be used to retrieve all the segment values in one operation

Discover Period Names

You can discover period names in much the same way that you can discover segment

values

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting period name eg Jan-03 into the cell

NB ndash make sure that you enter this starting period name as text by first formatting the Excel

cell as text or entering the period name prefixed by an apostrophe bdquo eg bdquoJan-03 If Excel

interprets the value entered as an actual date eg 01012003 then discover period names

will not work

2 Choose the special ldquoPeriodrdquo value from the segment list

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

32

GL Wand finds the next period name after Jan-07 in the Set of Books calendar and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

You can also use the ldquoDiscover Down Allrdquo ldquoDiscover Previousrdquo ldquoDiscover Rightrdquo ldquoDiscover Right Allrdquo and ldquoDiscover Leftrdquo buttons to discover period names

Discover Properties

- Discover segment properties

The ldquoDiscover Propertiesrdquo button will extract a variety of information about the selected segment value

To use this function

1 Select a cell(s) with a valid segment value in it

2 Make sure the correct segment is selected in the segment selector

3 Click the Discover Properties button

The cells to the right of the selected cell are populated with segment information

The first cell indicates the segment description the second cell indicates if the value is a

parent or not (Y means the segment value is a parent) the third cell indicates if the segment

value is enabled or not (Y means that the segment value is enabled) and the fourth cell

indicates what account type the segment value is eg Asset or Liability etc Obviously the forth cell is only valid for the natural account segment

33

Discover Child Ranges

- Discover child ranges

The ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button can be used to show the child values that are assigned to a particular parent value

1 Select a cell that has a parent segment value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown

3 Now click on the ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button

An Excel note is added to the cell showing the ranges that have been assigned to the selected parent This is useful for understanding and exploring your Chart of Accounts

Discover Hierarchy

To discover the hierarchy for a segment proceed as follows

Enter the starting segment value into an Excel cell This value must be a parent for

the segment you are using

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Select ldquoDiscover Hierarchyrdquo from the Discover menu

GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy for the selected parent and display it in the

Excel worksheet indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

34

Toggle Discover Level

- Toggle discover level

The ldquoDiscover levelrdquo button is used to restrict the segment values that are returned by the discover tools to parent values only child values only or both parent and child values

When you click on this button it toggles from discovering parents and children to discovering parents only to discovering child values only

For example

1 Select a cell and enter a starting segment value

2 Choose the segment from the segment list

3 Click the discover level until the option is set to ldquoDiscovering Parentsrdquo 4 Now highlight a range of cells and click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand fills the selected range with the next segment values but skips all child values and

returns only parent values Similarly child values can be discovered by toggling the discover level to ldquoDiscovering childrenrdquo

If you want to discover both parent and children toggle the discover level back to

ldquoDiscovering parents and childrenrdquo

All segment values must be entered using the Excel text format Either format the cell using

the text number format or enter the cell value using the apostrophe bdquo character which marks

the contents of the cell as text eg if you want to enter the segment value 001 enter it as

follows bdquo001

Expand

- Expand

You can perform an expand down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can expand using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

The Expand feature allows you to extract a list of all the lowest level child values that roll up

to a particular segment selection This might be a parent value range wild card or a

combination of these options

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection eg a parent value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button 4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

35

You can also highlight a number of columns and GL Wand will insert the child values and copy the contents of the highlighted cells against each child value that is inserted

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection and highlight the number of columns that you

would like to have copied into the new rows

2 Identify its segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button

4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

5 The contents of the additional columns that were selected are copied against each new

row inserted In the example below this contains a generic Get Balance formula which is then resolved for each child value

You also have the option of selecting multiple rows when performing an Expand GL Wand will perform an expand on each selected row

The expand feature can also be used with account combinations Please see the Special Get

Balance Criteria section for details on how this works

Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and list them below the starting cell

Expand Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and list all the values below the starting cell indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 4: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

25

The first step in using GL Wand is to log on to the Oracle instance that you intend using

You can log on to the online Vision instance or you can log on to your own Oracle Applications instance

See also the Creating Connections section

There are two possible logon methods that GL Wand can use The method is determined by

a setting on the GL Wand Options form The method can be ldquoOraclerdquo or ldquoExcelrdquo It is also

possible to access your segment values descriptive flexfields by enabling the option during the logon

Oracle Logon Method

The ldquoOraclerdquo option is the new logon method which utilizes the Oracle web based screen to

capture your user name and password This method is also compliant with Oracle Single Sign

On When you click the sign on button you are presented with the screen below where you

select which Oracle connection you wish to use

When you click the logon button the Oracle log on screen will appear Enter your applications user name and password

26

When you click Login on this web browser the window will close and you will be presented

with a list of responsibilities that are linked to your user name You will see one of the two

windows displayed below If your site is licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books

feature you will see the image on the right Else the screen will appear like the image on the

left Trial users using an in-house trial key will by default have access to the Multiple Set of Books (MSOB) feature

Select the responsibility that you wish to use and click ok If you are licensed to use the GL

Wand MSOB feature you can select multiple responsibilities Click an item to select it and click it again to unselect it

If you are licensed to use the MSOB feature you also have the option of logging on to all the

available sets of books This option must be enabled by setting the applicable profile option

27

at user level With the profile option set to yes for a particular user that user will have an

extra item in the list of available responsibilities This ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option allows a user

to log on to all the sets of books configured in the Oracle instance without needing to select

multiple responsibilities

Please note that when logging on with the ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option no security rules are

enforced For this reason you must enable this option for those GL Wand users that are

authorized to report across all the configured sets of books By default this options is

disabled for all users

If you log on to an Oracle Release 12 instance and the data access set linked to the chosen

responsibility contains more than one ledger or ledger set you will be logged on to all the applicable ledgers

Excel Logon Method

The ldquoExcelrdquo logon method is the same mechanism that was used in previous GL Wand

versions This method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function

correctly Again there are two possible windows that you will be presented with depending in whether you are licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books feature

28

Descriptive Flexfields

If you wish to report on segment value descriptive flexfields tick this option on the logon

form This will load the descriptive flexfield information This option is by default un-ticked as loading this information unnecessarily would slow down the logon process

Proxy Authentication

If you are connecting to an Oracle instance on the Internet and your organization uses a

proxy server that requires authentication to access the Internet (in addition to the domain

logon) GL Wand will prompt you for your proxy user name and password if required

29

Enter the required user name and password and click OK Then click the logon button again

License Key

If you have not yet obtained a trial license key for the instance that you are logging on to

you will prompted with the option to request a key Click ldquoYesrdquo to open a web page where you can request a trial key or ldquoNordquo to continue without requesting a key

Customers that have licensed GL Wand will use this exact same process to request the final non-expiring keys

Set of Books and Segment Selector

- Set of Books and Segment selector

Once you have logged on the set of books and segment list dropdowns will be populated

Set of Books

The set of books drop down list can be used to select the set of books that you wish to work

with If you log on to a single set of books this dropdown list will contain a single value only

However if you are licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books feature or are in trial then this list will contain multiple values in the following situations

If you selected multiple responsibilities during the logon process all the sets of books

linked to those responsibilities will be listed

If you selected the special ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option all the sets of books configured

in the Oracle instance will be listed

If you log on to an Oracle Release 12 instance and the data access set linked to the

chosen responsibility contains more than one ledger or ledger set then each of these ledgers will be listed

The number in brackets () indicates the Set of Books identifier This number can be used in

various GL Wand formulas and other functionality in order to obtain information from a specific Set of Books

Segments

This dropdown list will be populated with a list of the segments that are available in the

currently selected Set of Books The number in brackets indicates the segment number The

segment list also includes the special value ldquoPeriodrdquo which is used for discovering the period

names in your set of books

In the example shown the selected segment is ldquoCompanyrdquo and it is identified as segment 1 Certain dynamic functions require the segment number as an input parameter

Discovering

The discover tools allow you to extract segment information from the Oracle Applications

database and populate Excel cells with this information You can use the discover tools to

30

extract segment values segment properties periods or child ranges or the full segment

hierarchy For segment values you can use the discover level to choose whether to retrieve child values parent values or both

Discover Segment Values

- Discover Down

- Discover Down All

- Discover Up

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting segment value eg ldquo1000rdquo into the cell

2 Choose the relevant segment from the segment list eg ldquoAccountrdquo

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand finds the next valid account segment value after account ldquo1000rdquo and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

In the same way you can click the up arrow and the previous segment value will be entered

in the cell above the one that you started in

- Discover Left

- Discover Right

31

- Discover Right All

The left and right arrows work in a similar manner retrieving the next and previous segment

values but they populate the cells to the left and right of the cell that you start in When

discovering segment values you will notice that some of the values are entered with a bold

font This is because these have been identified as parent values

You do not need to discover segment values one at a time

You can enter a starting segment value choose the segment from the segment list

and then highlight a range of cells

When you click one of the discover buttons now GL Wand fills the selected range

with the next or previous segment values depending on which arrow you click on

The Discover Down All and Discover Right All buttons can be used to retrieve all the segment values in one operation

Discover Period Names

You can discover period names in much the same way that you can discover segment

values

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting period name eg Jan-03 into the cell

NB ndash make sure that you enter this starting period name as text by first formatting the Excel

cell as text or entering the period name prefixed by an apostrophe bdquo eg bdquoJan-03 If Excel

interprets the value entered as an actual date eg 01012003 then discover period names

will not work

2 Choose the special ldquoPeriodrdquo value from the segment list

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

32

GL Wand finds the next period name after Jan-07 in the Set of Books calendar and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

You can also use the ldquoDiscover Down Allrdquo ldquoDiscover Previousrdquo ldquoDiscover Rightrdquo ldquoDiscover Right Allrdquo and ldquoDiscover Leftrdquo buttons to discover period names

Discover Properties

- Discover segment properties

The ldquoDiscover Propertiesrdquo button will extract a variety of information about the selected segment value

To use this function

1 Select a cell(s) with a valid segment value in it

2 Make sure the correct segment is selected in the segment selector

3 Click the Discover Properties button

The cells to the right of the selected cell are populated with segment information

The first cell indicates the segment description the second cell indicates if the value is a

parent or not (Y means the segment value is a parent) the third cell indicates if the segment

value is enabled or not (Y means that the segment value is enabled) and the fourth cell

indicates what account type the segment value is eg Asset or Liability etc Obviously the forth cell is only valid for the natural account segment

33

Discover Child Ranges

- Discover child ranges

The ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button can be used to show the child values that are assigned to a particular parent value

1 Select a cell that has a parent segment value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown

3 Now click on the ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button

An Excel note is added to the cell showing the ranges that have been assigned to the selected parent This is useful for understanding and exploring your Chart of Accounts

Discover Hierarchy

To discover the hierarchy for a segment proceed as follows

Enter the starting segment value into an Excel cell This value must be a parent for

the segment you are using

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Select ldquoDiscover Hierarchyrdquo from the Discover menu

GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy for the selected parent and display it in the

Excel worksheet indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

34

Toggle Discover Level

- Toggle discover level

The ldquoDiscover levelrdquo button is used to restrict the segment values that are returned by the discover tools to parent values only child values only or both parent and child values

When you click on this button it toggles from discovering parents and children to discovering parents only to discovering child values only

For example

1 Select a cell and enter a starting segment value

2 Choose the segment from the segment list

3 Click the discover level until the option is set to ldquoDiscovering Parentsrdquo 4 Now highlight a range of cells and click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand fills the selected range with the next segment values but skips all child values and

returns only parent values Similarly child values can be discovered by toggling the discover level to ldquoDiscovering childrenrdquo

If you want to discover both parent and children toggle the discover level back to

ldquoDiscovering parents and childrenrdquo

All segment values must be entered using the Excel text format Either format the cell using

the text number format or enter the cell value using the apostrophe bdquo character which marks

the contents of the cell as text eg if you want to enter the segment value 001 enter it as

follows bdquo001

Expand

- Expand

You can perform an expand down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can expand using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

The Expand feature allows you to extract a list of all the lowest level child values that roll up

to a particular segment selection This might be a parent value range wild card or a

combination of these options

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection eg a parent value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button 4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

35

You can also highlight a number of columns and GL Wand will insert the child values and copy the contents of the highlighted cells against each child value that is inserted

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection and highlight the number of columns that you

would like to have copied into the new rows

2 Identify its segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button

4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

5 The contents of the additional columns that were selected are copied against each new

row inserted In the example below this contains a generic Get Balance formula which is then resolved for each child value

You also have the option of selecting multiple rows when performing an Expand GL Wand will perform an expand on each selected row

The expand feature can also be used with account combinations Please see the Special Get

Balance Criteria section for details on how this works

Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and list them below the starting cell

Expand Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and list all the values below the starting cell indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 5: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

26

When you click Login on this web browser the window will close and you will be presented

with a list of responsibilities that are linked to your user name You will see one of the two

windows displayed below If your site is licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books

feature you will see the image on the right Else the screen will appear like the image on the

left Trial users using an in-house trial key will by default have access to the Multiple Set of Books (MSOB) feature

Select the responsibility that you wish to use and click ok If you are licensed to use the GL

Wand MSOB feature you can select multiple responsibilities Click an item to select it and click it again to unselect it

If you are licensed to use the MSOB feature you also have the option of logging on to all the

available sets of books This option must be enabled by setting the applicable profile option

27

at user level With the profile option set to yes for a particular user that user will have an

extra item in the list of available responsibilities This ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option allows a user

to log on to all the sets of books configured in the Oracle instance without needing to select

multiple responsibilities

Please note that when logging on with the ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option no security rules are

enforced For this reason you must enable this option for those GL Wand users that are

authorized to report across all the configured sets of books By default this options is

disabled for all users

If you log on to an Oracle Release 12 instance and the data access set linked to the chosen

responsibility contains more than one ledger or ledger set you will be logged on to all the applicable ledgers

Excel Logon Method

The ldquoExcelrdquo logon method is the same mechanism that was used in previous GL Wand

versions This method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function

correctly Again there are two possible windows that you will be presented with depending in whether you are licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books feature

28

Descriptive Flexfields

If you wish to report on segment value descriptive flexfields tick this option on the logon

form This will load the descriptive flexfield information This option is by default un-ticked as loading this information unnecessarily would slow down the logon process

Proxy Authentication

If you are connecting to an Oracle instance on the Internet and your organization uses a

proxy server that requires authentication to access the Internet (in addition to the domain

logon) GL Wand will prompt you for your proxy user name and password if required

29

Enter the required user name and password and click OK Then click the logon button again

License Key

If you have not yet obtained a trial license key for the instance that you are logging on to

you will prompted with the option to request a key Click ldquoYesrdquo to open a web page where you can request a trial key or ldquoNordquo to continue without requesting a key

Customers that have licensed GL Wand will use this exact same process to request the final non-expiring keys

Set of Books and Segment Selector

- Set of Books and Segment selector

Once you have logged on the set of books and segment list dropdowns will be populated

Set of Books

The set of books drop down list can be used to select the set of books that you wish to work

with If you log on to a single set of books this dropdown list will contain a single value only

However if you are licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books feature or are in trial then this list will contain multiple values in the following situations

If you selected multiple responsibilities during the logon process all the sets of books

linked to those responsibilities will be listed

If you selected the special ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option all the sets of books configured

in the Oracle instance will be listed

If you log on to an Oracle Release 12 instance and the data access set linked to the

chosen responsibility contains more than one ledger or ledger set then each of these ledgers will be listed

The number in brackets () indicates the Set of Books identifier This number can be used in

various GL Wand formulas and other functionality in order to obtain information from a specific Set of Books

Segments

This dropdown list will be populated with a list of the segments that are available in the

currently selected Set of Books The number in brackets indicates the segment number The

segment list also includes the special value ldquoPeriodrdquo which is used for discovering the period

names in your set of books

In the example shown the selected segment is ldquoCompanyrdquo and it is identified as segment 1 Certain dynamic functions require the segment number as an input parameter

Discovering

The discover tools allow you to extract segment information from the Oracle Applications

database and populate Excel cells with this information You can use the discover tools to

30

extract segment values segment properties periods or child ranges or the full segment

hierarchy For segment values you can use the discover level to choose whether to retrieve child values parent values or both

Discover Segment Values

- Discover Down

- Discover Down All

- Discover Up

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting segment value eg ldquo1000rdquo into the cell

2 Choose the relevant segment from the segment list eg ldquoAccountrdquo

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand finds the next valid account segment value after account ldquo1000rdquo and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

In the same way you can click the up arrow and the previous segment value will be entered

in the cell above the one that you started in

- Discover Left

- Discover Right

31

- Discover Right All

The left and right arrows work in a similar manner retrieving the next and previous segment

values but they populate the cells to the left and right of the cell that you start in When

discovering segment values you will notice that some of the values are entered with a bold

font This is because these have been identified as parent values

You do not need to discover segment values one at a time

You can enter a starting segment value choose the segment from the segment list

and then highlight a range of cells

When you click one of the discover buttons now GL Wand fills the selected range

with the next or previous segment values depending on which arrow you click on

The Discover Down All and Discover Right All buttons can be used to retrieve all the segment values in one operation

Discover Period Names

You can discover period names in much the same way that you can discover segment

values

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting period name eg Jan-03 into the cell

NB ndash make sure that you enter this starting period name as text by first formatting the Excel

cell as text or entering the period name prefixed by an apostrophe bdquo eg bdquoJan-03 If Excel

interprets the value entered as an actual date eg 01012003 then discover period names

will not work

2 Choose the special ldquoPeriodrdquo value from the segment list

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

32

GL Wand finds the next period name after Jan-07 in the Set of Books calendar and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

You can also use the ldquoDiscover Down Allrdquo ldquoDiscover Previousrdquo ldquoDiscover Rightrdquo ldquoDiscover Right Allrdquo and ldquoDiscover Leftrdquo buttons to discover period names

Discover Properties

- Discover segment properties

The ldquoDiscover Propertiesrdquo button will extract a variety of information about the selected segment value

To use this function

1 Select a cell(s) with a valid segment value in it

2 Make sure the correct segment is selected in the segment selector

3 Click the Discover Properties button

The cells to the right of the selected cell are populated with segment information

The first cell indicates the segment description the second cell indicates if the value is a

parent or not (Y means the segment value is a parent) the third cell indicates if the segment

value is enabled or not (Y means that the segment value is enabled) and the fourth cell

indicates what account type the segment value is eg Asset or Liability etc Obviously the forth cell is only valid for the natural account segment

33

Discover Child Ranges

- Discover child ranges

The ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button can be used to show the child values that are assigned to a particular parent value

1 Select a cell that has a parent segment value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown

3 Now click on the ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button

An Excel note is added to the cell showing the ranges that have been assigned to the selected parent This is useful for understanding and exploring your Chart of Accounts

Discover Hierarchy

To discover the hierarchy for a segment proceed as follows

Enter the starting segment value into an Excel cell This value must be a parent for

the segment you are using

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Select ldquoDiscover Hierarchyrdquo from the Discover menu

GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy for the selected parent and display it in the

Excel worksheet indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

34

Toggle Discover Level

- Toggle discover level

The ldquoDiscover levelrdquo button is used to restrict the segment values that are returned by the discover tools to parent values only child values only or both parent and child values

When you click on this button it toggles from discovering parents and children to discovering parents only to discovering child values only

For example

1 Select a cell and enter a starting segment value

2 Choose the segment from the segment list

3 Click the discover level until the option is set to ldquoDiscovering Parentsrdquo 4 Now highlight a range of cells and click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand fills the selected range with the next segment values but skips all child values and

returns only parent values Similarly child values can be discovered by toggling the discover level to ldquoDiscovering childrenrdquo

If you want to discover both parent and children toggle the discover level back to

ldquoDiscovering parents and childrenrdquo

All segment values must be entered using the Excel text format Either format the cell using

the text number format or enter the cell value using the apostrophe bdquo character which marks

the contents of the cell as text eg if you want to enter the segment value 001 enter it as

follows bdquo001

Expand

- Expand

You can perform an expand down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can expand using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

The Expand feature allows you to extract a list of all the lowest level child values that roll up

to a particular segment selection This might be a parent value range wild card or a

combination of these options

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection eg a parent value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button 4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

35

You can also highlight a number of columns and GL Wand will insert the child values and copy the contents of the highlighted cells against each child value that is inserted

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection and highlight the number of columns that you

would like to have copied into the new rows

2 Identify its segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button

4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

5 The contents of the additional columns that were selected are copied against each new

row inserted In the example below this contains a generic Get Balance formula which is then resolved for each child value

You also have the option of selecting multiple rows when performing an Expand GL Wand will perform an expand on each selected row

The expand feature can also be used with account combinations Please see the Special Get

Balance Criteria section for details on how this works

Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and list them below the starting cell

Expand Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and list all the values below the starting cell indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 6: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

27

at user level With the profile option set to yes for a particular user that user will have an

extra item in the list of available responsibilities This ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option allows a user

to log on to all the sets of books configured in the Oracle instance without needing to select

multiple responsibilities

Please note that when logging on with the ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option no security rules are

enforced For this reason you must enable this option for those GL Wand users that are

authorized to report across all the configured sets of books By default this options is

disabled for all users

If you log on to an Oracle Release 12 instance and the data access set linked to the chosen

responsibility contains more than one ledger or ledger set you will be logged on to all the applicable ledgers

Excel Logon Method

The ldquoExcelrdquo logon method is the same mechanism that was used in previous GL Wand

versions This method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function

correctly Again there are two possible windows that you will be presented with depending in whether you are licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books feature

28

Descriptive Flexfields

If you wish to report on segment value descriptive flexfields tick this option on the logon

form This will load the descriptive flexfield information This option is by default un-ticked as loading this information unnecessarily would slow down the logon process

Proxy Authentication

If you are connecting to an Oracle instance on the Internet and your organization uses a

proxy server that requires authentication to access the Internet (in addition to the domain

logon) GL Wand will prompt you for your proxy user name and password if required

29

Enter the required user name and password and click OK Then click the logon button again

License Key

If you have not yet obtained a trial license key for the instance that you are logging on to

you will prompted with the option to request a key Click ldquoYesrdquo to open a web page where you can request a trial key or ldquoNordquo to continue without requesting a key

Customers that have licensed GL Wand will use this exact same process to request the final non-expiring keys

Set of Books and Segment Selector

- Set of Books and Segment selector

Once you have logged on the set of books and segment list dropdowns will be populated

Set of Books

The set of books drop down list can be used to select the set of books that you wish to work

with If you log on to a single set of books this dropdown list will contain a single value only

However if you are licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books feature or are in trial then this list will contain multiple values in the following situations

If you selected multiple responsibilities during the logon process all the sets of books

linked to those responsibilities will be listed

If you selected the special ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option all the sets of books configured

in the Oracle instance will be listed

If you log on to an Oracle Release 12 instance and the data access set linked to the

chosen responsibility contains more than one ledger or ledger set then each of these ledgers will be listed

The number in brackets () indicates the Set of Books identifier This number can be used in

various GL Wand formulas and other functionality in order to obtain information from a specific Set of Books

Segments

This dropdown list will be populated with a list of the segments that are available in the

currently selected Set of Books The number in brackets indicates the segment number The

segment list also includes the special value ldquoPeriodrdquo which is used for discovering the period

names in your set of books

In the example shown the selected segment is ldquoCompanyrdquo and it is identified as segment 1 Certain dynamic functions require the segment number as an input parameter

Discovering

The discover tools allow you to extract segment information from the Oracle Applications

database and populate Excel cells with this information You can use the discover tools to

30

extract segment values segment properties periods or child ranges or the full segment

hierarchy For segment values you can use the discover level to choose whether to retrieve child values parent values or both

Discover Segment Values

- Discover Down

- Discover Down All

- Discover Up

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting segment value eg ldquo1000rdquo into the cell

2 Choose the relevant segment from the segment list eg ldquoAccountrdquo

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand finds the next valid account segment value after account ldquo1000rdquo and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

In the same way you can click the up arrow and the previous segment value will be entered

in the cell above the one that you started in

- Discover Left

- Discover Right

31

- Discover Right All

The left and right arrows work in a similar manner retrieving the next and previous segment

values but they populate the cells to the left and right of the cell that you start in When

discovering segment values you will notice that some of the values are entered with a bold

font This is because these have been identified as parent values

You do not need to discover segment values one at a time

You can enter a starting segment value choose the segment from the segment list

and then highlight a range of cells

When you click one of the discover buttons now GL Wand fills the selected range

with the next or previous segment values depending on which arrow you click on

The Discover Down All and Discover Right All buttons can be used to retrieve all the segment values in one operation

Discover Period Names

You can discover period names in much the same way that you can discover segment

values

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting period name eg Jan-03 into the cell

NB ndash make sure that you enter this starting period name as text by first formatting the Excel

cell as text or entering the period name prefixed by an apostrophe bdquo eg bdquoJan-03 If Excel

interprets the value entered as an actual date eg 01012003 then discover period names

will not work

2 Choose the special ldquoPeriodrdquo value from the segment list

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

32

GL Wand finds the next period name after Jan-07 in the Set of Books calendar and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

You can also use the ldquoDiscover Down Allrdquo ldquoDiscover Previousrdquo ldquoDiscover Rightrdquo ldquoDiscover Right Allrdquo and ldquoDiscover Leftrdquo buttons to discover period names

Discover Properties

- Discover segment properties

The ldquoDiscover Propertiesrdquo button will extract a variety of information about the selected segment value

To use this function

1 Select a cell(s) with a valid segment value in it

2 Make sure the correct segment is selected in the segment selector

3 Click the Discover Properties button

The cells to the right of the selected cell are populated with segment information

The first cell indicates the segment description the second cell indicates if the value is a

parent or not (Y means the segment value is a parent) the third cell indicates if the segment

value is enabled or not (Y means that the segment value is enabled) and the fourth cell

indicates what account type the segment value is eg Asset or Liability etc Obviously the forth cell is only valid for the natural account segment

33

Discover Child Ranges

- Discover child ranges

The ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button can be used to show the child values that are assigned to a particular parent value

1 Select a cell that has a parent segment value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown

3 Now click on the ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button

An Excel note is added to the cell showing the ranges that have been assigned to the selected parent This is useful for understanding and exploring your Chart of Accounts

Discover Hierarchy

To discover the hierarchy for a segment proceed as follows

Enter the starting segment value into an Excel cell This value must be a parent for

the segment you are using

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Select ldquoDiscover Hierarchyrdquo from the Discover menu

GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy for the selected parent and display it in the

Excel worksheet indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

34

Toggle Discover Level

- Toggle discover level

The ldquoDiscover levelrdquo button is used to restrict the segment values that are returned by the discover tools to parent values only child values only or both parent and child values

When you click on this button it toggles from discovering parents and children to discovering parents only to discovering child values only

For example

1 Select a cell and enter a starting segment value

2 Choose the segment from the segment list

3 Click the discover level until the option is set to ldquoDiscovering Parentsrdquo 4 Now highlight a range of cells and click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand fills the selected range with the next segment values but skips all child values and

returns only parent values Similarly child values can be discovered by toggling the discover level to ldquoDiscovering childrenrdquo

If you want to discover both parent and children toggle the discover level back to

ldquoDiscovering parents and childrenrdquo

All segment values must be entered using the Excel text format Either format the cell using

the text number format or enter the cell value using the apostrophe bdquo character which marks

the contents of the cell as text eg if you want to enter the segment value 001 enter it as

follows bdquo001

Expand

- Expand

You can perform an expand down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can expand using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

The Expand feature allows you to extract a list of all the lowest level child values that roll up

to a particular segment selection This might be a parent value range wild card or a

combination of these options

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection eg a parent value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button 4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

35

You can also highlight a number of columns and GL Wand will insert the child values and copy the contents of the highlighted cells against each child value that is inserted

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection and highlight the number of columns that you

would like to have copied into the new rows

2 Identify its segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button

4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

5 The contents of the additional columns that were selected are copied against each new

row inserted In the example below this contains a generic Get Balance formula which is then resolved for each child value

You also have the option of selecting multiple rows when performing an Expand GL Wand will perform an expand on each selected row

The expand feature can also be used with account combinations Please see the Special Get

Balance Criteria section for details on how this works

Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and list them below the starting cell

Expand Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and list all the values below the starting cell indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
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                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
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                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 7: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

28

Descriptive Flexfields

If you wish to report on segment value descriptive flexfields tick this option on the logon

form This will load the descriptive flexfield information This option is by default un-ticked as loading this information unnecessarily would slow down the logon process

Proxy Authentication

If you are connecting to an Oracle instance on the Internet and your organization uses a

proxy server that requires authentication to access the Internet (in addition to the domain

logon) GL Wand will prompt you for your proxy user name and password if required

29

Enter the required user name and password and click OK Then click the logon button again

License Key

If you have not yet obtained a trial license key for the instance that you are logging on to

you will prompted with the option to request a key Click ldquoYesrdquo to open a web page where you can request a trial key or ldquoNordquo to continue without requesting a key

Customers that have licensed GL Wand will use this exact same process to request the final non-expiring keys

Set of Books and Segment Selector

- Set of Books and Segment selector

Once you have logged on the set of books and segment list dropdowns will be populated

Set of Books

The set of books drop down list can be used to select the set of books that you wish to work

with If you log on to a single set of books this dropdown list will contain a single value only

However if you are licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books feature or are in trial then this list will contain multiple values in the following situations

If you selected multiple responsibilities during the logon process all the sets of books

linked to those responsibilities will be listed

If you selected the special ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option all the sets of books configured

in the Oracle instance will be listed

If you log on to an Oracle Release 12 instance and the data access set linked to the

chosen responsibility contains more than one ledger or ledger set then each of these ledgers will be listed

The number in brackets () indicates the Set of Books identifier This number can be used in

various GL Wand formulas and other functionality in order to obtain information from a specific Set of Books

Segments

This dropdown list will be populated with a list of the segments that are available in the

currently selected Set of Books The number in brackets indicates the segment number The

segment list also includes the special value ldquoPeriodrdquo which is used for discovering the period

names in your set of books

In the example shown the selected segment is ldquoCompanyrdquo and it is identified as segment 1 Certain dynamic functions require the segment number as an input parameter

Discovering

The discover tools allow you to extract segment information from the Oracle Applications

database and populate Excel cells with this information You can use the discover tools to

30

extract segment values segment properties periods or child ranges or the full segment

hierarchy For segment values you can use the discover level to choose whether to retrieve child values parent values or both

Discover Segment Values

- Discover Down

- Discover Down All

- Discover Up

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting segment value eg ldquo1000rdquo into the cell

2 Choose the relevant segment from the segment list eg ldquoAccountrdquo

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand finds the next valid account segment value after account ldquo1000rdquo and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

In the same way you can click the up arrow and the previous segment value will be entered

in the cell above the one that you started in

- Discover Left

- Discover Right

31

- Discover Right All

The left and right arrows work in a similar manner retrieving the next and previous segment

values but they populate the cells to the left and right of the cell that you start in When

discovering segment values you will notice that some of the values are entered with a bold

font This is because these have been identified as parent values

You do not need to discover segment values one at a time

You can enter a starting segment value choose the segment from the segment list

and then highlight a range of cells

When you click one of the discover buttons now GL Wand fills the selected range

with the next or previous segment values depending on which arrow you click on

The Discover Down All and Discover Right All buttons can be used to retrieve all the segment values in one operation

Discover Period Names

You can discover period names in much the same way that you can discover segment

values

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting period name eg Jan-03 into the cell

NB ndash make sure that you enter this starting period name as text by first formatting the Excel

cell as text or entering the period name prefixed by an apostrophe bdquo eg bdquoJan-03 If Excel

interprets the value entered as an actual date eg 01012003 then discover period names

will not work

2 Choose the special ldquoPeriodrdquo value from the segment list

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

32

GL Wand finds the next period name after Jan-07 in the Set of Books calendar and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

You can also use the ldquoDiscover Down Allrdquo ldquoDiscover Previousrdquo ldquoDiscover Rightrdquo ldquoDiscover Right Allrdquo and ldquoDiscover Leftrdquo buttons to discover period names

Discover Properties

- Discover segment properties

The ldquoDiscover Propertiesrdquo button will extract a variety of information about the selected segment value

To use this function

1 Select a cell(s) with a valid segment value in it

2 Make sure the correct segment is selected in the segment selector

3 Click the Discover Properties button

The cells to the right of the selected cell are populated with segment information

The first cell indicates the segment description the second cell indicates if the value is a

parent or not (Y means the segment value is a parent) the third cell indicates if the segment

value is enabled or not (Y means that the segment value is enabled) and the fourth cell

indicates what account type the segment value is eg Asset or Liability etc Obviously the forth cell is only valid for the natural account segment

33

Discover Child Ranges

- Discover child ranges

The ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button can be used to show the child values that are assigned to a particular parent value

1 Select a cell that has a parent segment value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown

3 Now click on the ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button

An Excel note is added to the cell showing the ranges that have been assigned to the selected parent This is useful for understanding and exploring your Chart of Accounts

Discover Hierarchy

To discover the hierarchy for a segment proceed as follows

Enter the starting segment value into an Excel cell This value must be a parent for

the segment you are using

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Select ldquoDiscover Hierarchyrdquo from the Discover menu

GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy for the selected parent and display it in the

Excel worksheet indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

34

Toggle Discover Level

- Toggle discover level

The ldquoDiscover levelrdquo button is used to restrict the segment values that are returned by the discover tools to parent values only child values only or both parent and child values

When you click on this button it toggles from discovering parents and children to discovering parents only to discovering child values only

For example

1 Select a cell and enter a starting segment value

2 Choose the segment from the segment list

3 Click the discover level until the option is set to ldquoDiscovering Parentsrdquo 4 Now highlight a range of cells and click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand fills the selected range with the next segment values but skips all child values and

returns only parent values Similarly child values can be discovered by toggling the discover level to ldquoDiscovering childrenrdquo

If you want to discover both parent and children toggle the discover level back to

ldquoDiscovering parents and childrenrdquo

All segment values must be entered using the Excel text format Either format the cell using

the text number format or enter the cell value using the apostrophe bdquo character which marks

the contents of the cell as text eg if you want to enter the segment value 001 enter it as

follows bdquo001

Expand

- Expand

You can perform an expand down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can expand using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

The Expand feature allows you to extract a list of all the lowest level child values that roll up

to a particular segment selection This might be a parent value range wild card or a

combination of these options

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection eg a parent value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button 4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

35

You can also highlight a number of columns and GL Wand will insert the child values and copy the contents of the highlighted cells against each child value that is inserted

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection and highlight the number of columns that you

would like to have copied into the new rows

2 Identify its segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button

4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

5 The contents of the additional columns that were selected are copied against each new

row inserted In the example below this contains a generic Get Balance formula which is then resolved for each child value

You also have the option of selecting multiple rows when performing an Expand GL Wand will perform an expand on each selected row

The expand feature can also be used with account combinations Please see the Special Get

Balance Criteria section for details on how this works

Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and list them below the starting cell

Expand Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and list all the values below the starting cell indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 8: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

29

Enter the required user name and password and click OK Then click the logon button again

License Key

If you have not yet obtained a trial license key for the instance that you are logging on to

you will prompted with the option to request a key Click ldquoYesrdquo to open a web page where you can request a trial key or ldquoNordquo to continue without requesting a key

Customers that have licensed GL Wand will use this exact same process to request the final non-expiring keys

Set of Books and Segment Selector

- Set of Books and Segment selector

Once you have logged on the set of books and segment list dropdowns will be populated

Set of Books

The set of books drop down list can be used to select the set of books that you wish to work

with If you log on to a single set of books this dropdown list will contain a single value only

However if you are licensed to use the GL Wand Multiple Sets of Books feature or are in trial then this list will contain multiple values in the following situations

If you selected multiple responsibilities during the logon process all the sets of books

linked to those responsibilities will be listed

If you selected the special ldquoAll Sets of Booksrdquo option all the sets of books configured

in the Oracle instance will be listed

If you log on to an Oracle Release 12 instance and the data access set linked to the

chosen responsibility contains more than one ledger or ledger set then each of these ledgers will be listed

The number in brackets () indicates the Set of Books identifier This number can be used in

various GL Wand formulas and other functionality in order to obtain information from a specific Set of Books

Segments

This dropdown list will be populated with a list of the segments that are available in the

currently selected Set of Books The number in brackets indicates the segment number The

segment list also includes the special value ldquoPeriodrdquo which is used for discovering the period

names in your set of books

In the example shown the selected segment is ldquoCompanyrdquo and it is identified as segment 1 Certain dynamic functions require the segment number as an input parameter

Discovering

The discover tools allow you to extract segment information from the Oracle Applications

database and populate Excel cells with this information You can use the discover tools to

30

extract segment values segment properties periods or child ranges or the full segment

hierarchy For segment values you can use the discover level to choose whether to retrieve child values parent values or both

Discover Segment Values

- Discover Down

- Discover Down All

- Discover Up

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting segment value eg ldquo1000rdquo into the cell

2 Choose the relevant segment from the segment list eg ldquoAccountrdquo

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand finds the next valid account segment value after account ldquo1000rdquo and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

In the same way you can click the up arrow and the previous segment value will be entered

in the cell above the one that you started in

- Discover Left

- Discover Right

31

- Discover Right All

The left and right arrows work in a similar manner retrieving the next and previous segment

values but they populate the cells to the left and right of the cell that you start in When

discovering segment values you will notice that some of the values are entered with a bold

font This is because these have been identified as parent values

You do not need to discover segment values one at a time

You can enter a starting segment value choose the segment from the segment list

and then highlight a range of cells

When you click one of the discover buttons now GL Wand fills the selected range

with the next or previous segment values depending on which arrow you click on

The Discover Down All and Discover Right All buttons can be used to retrieve all the segment values in one operation

Discover Period Names

You can discover period names in much the same way that you can discover segment

values

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting period name eg Jan-03 into the cell

NB ndash make sure that you enter this starting period name as text by first formatting the Excel

cell as text or entering the period name prefixed by an apostrophe bdquo eg bdquoJan-03 If Excel

interprets the value entered as an actual date eg 01012003 then discover period names

will not work

2 Choose the special ldquoPeriodrdquo value from the segment list

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

32

GL Wand finds the next period name after Jan-07 in the Set of Books calendar and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

You can also use the ldquoDiscover Down Allrdquo ldquoDiscover Previousrdquo ldquoDiscover Rightrdquo ldquoDiscover Right Allrdquo and ldquoDiscover Leftrdquo buttons to discover period names

Discover Properties

- Discover segment properties

The ldquoDiscover Propertiesrdquo button will extract a variety of information about the selected segment value

To use this function

1 Select a cell(s) with a valid segment value in it

2 Make sure the correct segment is selected in the segment selector

3 Click the Discover Properties button

The cells to the right of the selected cell are populated with segment information

The first cell indicates the segment description the second cell indicates if the value is a

parent or not (Y means the segment value is a parent) the third cell indicates if the segment

value is enabled or not (Y means that the segment value is enabled) and the fourth cell

indicates what account type the segment value is eg Asset or Liability etc Obviously the forth cell is only valid for the natural account segment

33

Discover Child Ranges

- Discover child ranges

The ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button can be used to show the child values that are assigned to a particular parent value

1 Select a cell that has a parent segment value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown

3 Now click on the ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button

An Excel note is added to the cell showing the ranges that have been assigned to the selected parent This is useful for understanding and exploring your Chart of Accounts

Discover Hierarchy

To discover the hierarchy for a segment proceed as follows

Enter the starting segment value into an Excel cell This value must be a parent for

the segment you are using

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Select ldquoDiscover Hierarchyrdquo from the Discover menu

GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy for the selected parent and display it in the

Excel worksheet indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

34

Toggle Discover Level

- Toggle discover level

The ldquoDiscover levelrdquo button is used to restrict the segment values that are returned by the discover tools to parent values only child values only or both parent and child values

When you click on this button it toggles from discovering parents and children to discovering parents only to discovering child values only

For example

1 Select a cell and enter a starting segment value

2 Choose the segment from the segment list

3 Click the discover level until the option is set to ldquoDiscovering Parentsrdquo 4 Now highlight a range of cells and click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand fills the selected range with the next segment values but skips all child values and

returns only parent values Similarly child values can be discovered by toggling the discover level to ldquoDiscovering childrenrdquo

If you want to discover both parent and children toggle the discover level back to

ldquoDiscovering parents and childrenrdquo

All segment values must be entered using the Excel text format Either format the cell using

the text number format or enter the cell value using the apostrophe bdquo character which marks

the contents of the cell as text eg if you want to enter the segment value 001 enter it as

follows bdquo001

Expand

- Expand

You can perform an expand down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can expand using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

The Expand feature allows you to extract a list of all the lowest level child values that roll up

to a particular segment selection This might be a parent value range wild card or a

combination of these options

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection eg a parent value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button 4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

35

You can also highlight a number of columns and GL Wand will insert the child values and copy the contents of the highlighted cells against each child value that is inserted

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection and highlight the number of columns that you

would like to have copied into the new rows

2 Identify its segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button

4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

5 The contents of the additional columns that were selected are copied against each new

row inserted In the example below this contains a generic Get Balance formula which is then resolved for each child value

You also have the option of selecting multiple rows when performing an Expand GL Wand will perform an expand on each selected row

The expand feature can also be used with account combinations Please see the Special Get

Balance Criteria section for details on how this works

Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and list them below the starting cell

Expand Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and list all the values below the starting cell indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 9: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

30

extract segment values segment properties periods or child ranges or the full segment

hierarchy For segment values you can use the discover level to choose whether to retrieve child values parent values or both

Discover Segment Values

- Discover Down

- Discover Down All

- Discover Up

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting segment value eg ldquo1000rdquo into the cell

2 Choose the relevant segment from the segment list eg ldquoAccountrdquo

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand finds the next valid account segment value after account ldquo1000rdquo and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

In the same way you can click the up arrow and the previous segment value will be entered

in the cell above the one that you started in

- Discover Left

- Discover Right

31

- Discover Right All

The left and right arrows work in a similar manner retrieving the next and previous segment

values but they populate the cells to the left and right of the cell that you start in When

discovering segment values you will notice that some of the values are entered with a bold

font This is because these have been identified as parent values

You do not need to discover segment values one at a time

You can enter a starting segment value choose the segment from the segment list

and then highlight a range of cells

When you click one of the discover buttons now GL Wand fills the selected range

with the next or previous segment values depending on which arrow you click on

The Discover Down All and Discover Right All buttons can be used to retrieve all the segment values in one operation

Discover Period Names

You can discover period names in much the same way that you can discover segment

values

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting period name eg Jan-03 into the cell

NB ndash make sure that you enter this starting period name as text by first formatting the Excel

cell as text or entering the period name prefixed by an apostrophe bdquo eg bdquoJan-03 If Excel

interprets the value entered as an actual date eg 01012003 then discover period names

will not work

2 Choose the special ldquoPeriodrdquo value from the segment list

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

32

GL Wand finds the next period name after Jan-07 in the Set of Books calendar and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

You can also use the ldquoDiscover Down Allrdquo ldquoDiscover Previousrdquo ldquoDiscover Rightrdquo ldquoDiscover Right Allrdquo and ldquoDiscover Leftrdquo buttons to discover period names

Discover Properties

- Discover segment properties

The ldquoDiscover Propertiesrdquo button will extract a variety of information about the selected segment value

To use this function

1 Select a cell(s) with a valid segment value in it

2 Make sure the correct segment is selected in the segment selector

3 Click the Discover Properties button

The cells to the right of the selected cell are populated with segment information

The first cell indicates the segment description the second cell indicates if the value is a

parent or not (Y means the segment value is a parent) the third cell indicates if the segment

value is enabled or not (Y means that the segment value is enabled) and the fourth cell

indicates what account type the segment value is eg Asset or Liability etc Obviously the forth cell is only valid for the natural account segment

33

Discover Child Ranges

- Discover child ranges

The ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button can be used to show the child values that are assigned to a particular parent value

1 Select a cell that has a parent segment value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown

3 Now click on the ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button

An Excel note is added to the cell showing the ranges that have been assigned to the selected parent This is useful for understanding and exploring your Chart of Accounts

Discover Hierarchy

To discover the hierarchy for a segment proceed as follows

Enter the starting segment value into an Excel cell This value must be a parent for

the segment you are using

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Select ldquoDiscover Hierarchyrdquo from the Discover menu

GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy for the selected parent and display it in the

Excel worksheet indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

34

Toggle Discover Level

- Toggle discover level

The ldquoDiscover levelrdquo button is used to restrict the segment values that are returned by the discover tools to parent values only child values only or both parent and child values

When you click on this button it toggles from discovering parents and children to discovering parents only to discovering child values only

For example

1 Select a cell and enter a starting segment value

2 Choose the segment from the segment list

3 Click the discover level until the option is set to ldquoDiscovering Parentsrdquo 4 Now highlight a range of cells and click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand fills the selected range with the next segment values but skips all child values and

returns only parent values Similarly child values can be discovered by toggling the discover level to ldquoDiscovering childrenrdquo

If you want to discover both parent and children toggle the discover level back to

ldquoDiscovering parents and childrenrdquo

All segment values must be entered using the Excel text format Either format the cell using

the text number format or enter the cell value using the apostrophe bdquo character which marks

the contents of the cell as text eg if you want to enter the segment value 001 enter it as

follows bdquo001

Expand

- Expand

You can perform an expand down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can expand using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

The Expand feature allows you to extract a list of all the lowest level child values that roll up

to a particular segment selection This might be a parent value range wild card or a

combination of these options

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection eg a parent value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button 4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

35

You can also highlight a number of columns and GL Wand will insert the child values and copy the contents of the highlighted cells against each child value that is inserted

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection and highlight the number of columns that you

would like to have copied into the new rows

2 Identify its segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button

4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

5 The contents of the additional columns that were selected are copied against each new

row inserted In the example below this contains a generic Get Balance formula which is then resolved for each child value

You also have the option of selecting multiple rows when performing an Expand GL Wand will perform an expand on each selected row

The expand feature can also be used with account combinations Please see the Special Get

Balance Criteria section for details on how this works

Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and list them below the starting cell

Expand Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and list all the values below the starting cell indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 10: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

31

- Discover Right All

The left and right arrows work in a similar manner retrieving the next and previous segment

values but they populate the cells to the left and right of the cell that you start in When

discovering segment values you will notice that some of the values are entered with a bold

font This is because these have been identified as parent values

You do not need to discover segment values one at a time

You can enter a starting segment value choose the segment from the segment list

and then highlight a range of cells

When you click one of the discover buttons now GL Wand fills the selected range

with the next or previous segment values depending on which arrow you click on

The Discover Down All and Discover Right All buttons can be used to retrieve all the segment values in one operation

Discover Period Names

You can discover period names in much the same way that you can discover segment

values

1 Select a cell and enter a valid starting period name eg Jan-03 into the cell

NB ndash make sure that you enter this starting period name as text by first formatting the Excel

cell as text or entering the period name prefixed by an apostrophe bdquo eg bdquoJan-03 If Excel

interprets the value entered as an actual date eg 01012003 then discover period names

will not work

2 Choose the special ldquoPeriodrdquo value from the segment list

3 Now click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

32

GL Wand finds the next period name after Jan-07 in the Set of Books calendar and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

You can also use the ldquoDiscover Down Allrdquo ldquoDiscover Previousrdquo ldquoDiscover Rightrdquo ldquoDiscover Right Allrdquo and ldquoDiscover Leftrdquo buttons to discover period names

Discover Properties

- Discover segment properties

The ldquoDiscover Propertiesrdquo button will extract a variety of information about the selected segment value

To use this function

1 Select a cell(s) with a valid segment value in it

2 Make sure the correct segment is selected in the segment selector

3 Click the Discover Properties button

The cells to the right of the selected cell are populated with segment information

The first cell indicates the segment description the second cell indicates if the value is a

parent or not (Y means the segment value is a parent) the third cell indicates if the segment

value is enabled or not (Y means that the segment value is enabled) and the fourth cell

indicates what account type the segment value is eg Asset or Liability etc Obviously the forth cell is only valid for the natural account segment

33

Discover Child Ranges

- Discover child ranges

The ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button can be used to show the child values that are assigned to a particular parent value

1 Select a cell that has a parent segment value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown

3 Now click on the ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button

An Excel note is added to the cell showing the ranges that have been assigned to the selected parent This is useful for understanding and exploring your Chart of Accounts

Discover Hierarchy

To discover the hierarchy for a segment proceed as follows

Enter the starting segment value into an Excel cell This value must be a parent for

the segment you are using

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Select ldquoDiscover Hierarchyrdquo from the Discover menu

GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy for the selected parent and display it in the

Excel worksheet indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

34

Toggle Discover Level

- Toggle discover level

The ldquoDiscover levelrdquo button is used to restrict the segment values that are returned by the discover tools to parent values only child values only or both parent and child values

When you click on this button it toggles from discovering parents and children to discovering parents only to discovering child values only

For example

1 Select a cell and enter a starting segment value

2 Choose the segment from the segment list

3 Click the discover level until the option is set to ldquoDiscovering Parentsrdquo 4 Now highlight a range of cells and click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand fills the selected range with the next segment values but skips all child values and

returns only parent values Similarly child values can be discovered by toggling the discover level to ldquoDiscovering childrenrdquo

If you want to discover both parent and children toggle the discover level back to

ldquoDiscovering parents and childrenrdquo

All segment values must be entered using the Excel text format Either format the cell using

the text number format or enter the cell value using the apostrophe bdquo character which marks

the contents of the cell as text eg if you want to enter the segment value 001 enter it as

follows bdquo001

Expand

- Expand

You can perform an expand down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can expand using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

The Expand feature allows you to extract a list of all the lowest level child values that roll up

to a particular segment selection This might be a parent value range wild card or a

combination of these options

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection eg a parent value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button 4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

35

You can also highlight a number of columns and GL Wand will insert the child values and copy the contents of the highlighted cells against each child value that is inserted

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection and highlight the number of columns that you

would like to have copied into the new rows

2 Identify its segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button

4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

5 The contents of the additional columns that were selected are copied against each new

row inserted In the example below this contains a generic Get Balance formula which is then resolved for each child value

You also have the option of selecting multiple rows when performing an Expand GL Wand will perform an expand on each selected row

The expand feature can also be used with account combinations Please see the Special Get

Balance Criteria section for details on how this works

Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and list them below the starting cell

Expand Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and list all the values below the starting cell indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 11: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

32

GL Wand finds the next period name after Jan-07 in the Set of Books calendar and enters this value in the cell below the one that you started in

You can also use the ldquoDiscover Down Allrdquo ldquoDiscover Previousrdquo ldquoDiscover Rightrdquo ldquoDiscover Right Allrdquo and ldquoDiscover Leftrdquo buttons to discover period names

Discover Properties

- Discover segment properties

The ldquoDiscover Propertiesrdquo button will extract a variety of information about the selected segment value

To use this function

1 Select a cell(s) with a valid segment value in it

2 Make sure the correct segment is selected in the segment selector

3 Click the Discover Properties button

The cells to the right of the selected cell are populated with segment information

The first cell indicates the segment description the second cell indicates if the value is a

parent or not (Y means the segment value is a parent) the third cell indicates if the segment

value is enabled or not (Y means that the segment value is enabled) and the fourth cell

indicates what account type the segment value is eg Asset or Liability etc Obviously the forth cell is only valid for the natural account segment

33

Discover Child Ranges

- Discover child ranges

The ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button can be used to show the child values that are assigned to a particular parent value

1 Select a cell that has a parent segment value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown

3 Now click on the ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button

An Excel note is added to the cell showing the ranges that have been assigned to the selected parent This is useful for understanding and exploring your Chart of Accounts

Discover Hierarchy

To discover the hierarchy for a segment proceed as follows

Enter the starting segment value into an Excel cell This value must be a parent for

the segment you are using

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Select ldquoDiscover Hierarchyrdquo from the Discover menu

GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy for the selected parent and display it in the

Excel worksheet indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

34

Toggle Discover Level

- Toggle discover level

The ldquoDiscover levelrdquo button is used to restrict the segment values that are returned by the discover tools to parent values only child values only or both parent and child values

When you click on this button it toggles from discovering parents and children to discovering parents only to discovering child values only

For example

1 Select a cell and enter a starting segment value

2 Choose the segment from the segment list

3 Click the discover level until the option is set to ldquoDiscovering Parentsrdquo 4 Now highlight a range of cells and click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand fills the selected range with the next segment values but skips all child values and

returns only parent values Similarly child values can be discovered by toggling the discover level to ldquoDiscovering childrenrdquo

If you want to discover both parent and children toggle the discover level back to

ldquoDiscovering parents and childrenrdquo

All segment values must be entered using the Excel text format Either format the cell using

the text number format or enter the cell value using the apostrophe bdquo character which marks

the contents of the cell as text eg if you want to enter the segment value 001 enter it as

follows bdquo001

Expand

- Expand

You can perform an expand down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can expand using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

The Expand feature allows you to extract a list of all the lowest level child values that roll up

to a particular segment selection This might be a parent value range wild card or a

combination of these options

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection eg a parent value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button 4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

35

You can also highlight a number of columns and GL Wand will insert the child values and copy the contents of the highlighted cells against each child value that is inserted

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection and highlight the number of columns that you

would like to have copied into the new rows

2 Identify its segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button

4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

5 The contents of the additional columns that were selected are copied against each new

row inserted In the example below this contains a generic Get Balance formula which is then resolved for each child value

You also have the option of selecting multiple rows when performing an Expand GL Wand will perform an expand on each selected row

The expand feature can also be used with account combinations Please see the Special Get

Balance Criteria section for details on how this works

Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and list them below the starting cell

Expand Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and list all the values below the starting cell indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 12: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

33

Discover Child Ranges

- Discover child ranges

The ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button can be used to show the child values that are assigned to a particular parent value

1 Select a cell that has a parent segment value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown

3 Now click on the ldquoDiscover Child Rangesrdquo button

An Excel note is added to the cell showing the ranges that have been assigned to the selected parent This is useful for understanding and exploring your Chart of Accounts

Discover Hierarchy

To discover the hierarchy for a segment proceed as follows

Enter the starting segment value into an Excel cell This value must be a parent for

the segment you are using

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Select ldquoDiscover Hierarchyrdquo from the Discover menu

GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy for the selected parent and display it in the

Excel worksheet indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

34

Toggle Discover Level

- Toggle discover level

The ldquoDiscover levelrdquo button is used to restrict the segment values that are returned by the discover tools to parent values only child values only or both parent and child values

When you click on this button it toggles from discovering parents and children to discovering parents only to discovering child values only

For example

1 Select a cell and enter a starting segment value

2 Choose the segment from the segment list

3 Click the discover level until the option is set to ldquoDiscovering Parentsrdquo 4 Now highlight a range of cells and click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand fills the selected range with the next segment values but skips all child values and

returns only parent values Similarly child values can be discovered by toggling the discover level to ldquoDiscovering childrenrdquo

If you want to discover both parent and children toggle the discover level back to

ldquoDiscovering parents and childrenrdquo

All segment values must be entered using the Excel text format Either format the cell using

the text number format or enter the cell value using the apostrophe bdquo character which marks

the contents of the cell as text eg if you want to enter the segment value 001 enter it as

follows bdquo001

Expand

- Expand

You can perform an expand down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can expand using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

The Expand feature allows you to extract a list of all the lowest level child values that roll up

to a particular segment selection This might be a parent value range wild card or a

combination of these options

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection eg a parent value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button 4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

35

You can also highlight a number of columns and GL Wand will insert the child values and copy the contents of the highlighted cells against each child value that is inserted

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection and highlight the number of columns that you

would like to have copied into the new rows

2 Identify its segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button

4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

5 The contents of the additional columns that were selected are copied against each new

row inserted In the example below this contains a generic Get Balance formula which is then resolved for each child value

You also have the option of selecting multiple rows when performing an Expand GL Wand will perform an expand on each selected row

The expand feature can also be used with account combinations Please see the Special Get

Balance Criteria section for details on how this works

Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and list them below the starting cell

Expand Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and list all the values below the starting cell indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
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                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 13: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

34

Toggle Discover Level

- Toggle discover level

The ldquoDiscover levelrdquo button is used to restrict the segment values that are returned by the discover tools to parent values only child values only or both parent and child values

When you click on this button it toggles from discovering parents and children to discovering parents only to discovering child values only

For example

1 Select a cell and enter a starting segment value

2 Choose the segment from the segment list

3 Click the discover level until the option is set to ldquoDiscovering Parentsrdquo 4 Now highlight a range of cells and click the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button

GL Wand fills the selected range with the next segment values but skips all child values and

returns only parent values Similarly child values can be discovered by toggling the discover level to ldquoDiscovering childrenrdquo

If you want to discover both parent and children toggle the discover level back to

ldquoDiscovering parents and childrenrdquo

All segment values must be entered using the Excel text format Either format the cell using

the text number format or enter the cell value using the apostrophe bdquo character which marks

the contents of the cell as text eg if you want to enter the segment value 001 enter it as

follows bdquo001

Expand

- Expand

You can perform an expand down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can expand using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

The Expand feature allows you to extract a list of all the lowest level child values that roll up

to a particular segment selection This might be a parent value range wild card or a

combination of these options

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection eg a parent value

2 Identify its segment number to the GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button 4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

35

You can also highlight a number of columns and GL Wand will insert the child values and copy the contents of the highlighted cells against each child value that is inserted

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection and highlight the number of columns that you

would like to have copied into the new rows

2 Identify its segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button

4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

5 The contents of the additional columns that were selected are copied against each new

row inserted In the example below this contains a generic Get Balance formula which is then resolved for each child value

You also have the option of selecting multiple rows when performing an Expand GL Wand will perform an expand on each selected row

The expand feature can also be used with account combinations Please see the Special Get

Balance Criteria section for details on how this works

Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and list them below the starting cell

Expand Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and list all the values below the starting cell indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 14: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

35

You can also highlight a number of columns and GL Wand will insert the child values and copy the contents of the highlighted cells against each child value that is inserted

1 Select a cell that has a segment selection and highlight the number of columns that you

would like to have copied into the new rows

2 Identify its segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

3 Click the expand button

4 The child values are retrieved from Oracle and are inserted below the selected cell

5 The contents of the additional columns that were selected are copied against each new

row inserted In the example below this contains a generic Get Balance formula which is then resolved for each child value

You also have the option of selecting multiple rows when performing an Expand GL Wand will perform an expand on each selected row

The expand feature can also be used with account combinations Please see the Special Get

Balance Criteria section for details on how this works

Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and list them below the starting cell

Expand Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Expand feature except that it will

expand using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and list all the values below the starting cell indenting the various levels in the hierarchy

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 15: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

36

Undo Expand

- Undo Expand

The expand operation inserts rows into the worksheet to allow the child data to be

populated If you would like to quickly remove the expand data click the undo expand button GL Wand will remove the inserted data from the most recent expand operation

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The undo expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the undo expand

may not function correctly

Refresh Expand

- Refresh Expand

The expand operation fetches the child data that meets the criteria that you enter and

inserts it into new rows in the workbook This data may change over time eg you may

expand a parent value and over time the definition of that parent is modified Use the refresh expand button to retrieve the most recent data from Oracle as follows

Highlight the entire range of expanded data

This must include the criteria row that drives the expand operation eg the row

containing the parent value

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

Click the refresh expand button

GL Wand will remove the old expand data and will refresh the expand with the latest information

Please note that the expand operation formats the inserted rows in a particular way eg the

segment values are indented The refresh expand operation relies on this formatting in order

to process correctly If you modify the formatting of the expanded rows the refresh expand

may not function correctly

Explode Report

- Explode report

You can perform an explode down to the lowest level children (explained below) or you can explode using the hierarchy going down one level or expanding the full hierarchy

Explode report works in a similar way to the expand feature The difference is that where

expand inserts a new row in the worksheet for each child value found explode creates a new worksheet in the current workbook for each child value found For example

Start with a complete GL Wand report

Select the cell in the report that drive the Get Balance formulas eg a department

parent value in the report header

Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the

segment list dropdown

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 16: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

37

Click the explode report button

GL Wand will duplicate the worksheet for each child value found for the selected parent

Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the values one level down the hierarchy and create a new worksheet for each value

Explode Hierarchy (Full)

This option works in exactly the same manner as the Explode feature except that it will

Explode using the defined hierarchy For this option to work your starting cell must contain a

single parent value GL Wand will extract the full hierarchy and create a new worksheet for

each value

Open List of Values

- Open list of values

The segment list of values form can be used to search through the segment values and

descriptions for a specific segment First pick the segment from the segment list

dropdown and then click the segment list of values button The list of values for the chosen

segment is displayed

You can enter a value to search for in the find box The list of values will be filtered to show

only items that match the text entered in the find box The text entered in the find box is

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 17: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

38

compared to the segment value and segment description An item will be included in the results if either field contains the text entered in the find box

In the list section you can start entering a segment value (eg Account number) and the list will scroll to the item matching the values that you have entered

Click the ldquoAddrdquo button double click an item in the list or press enter to add the current item

to the selection list on the right You can also click and drag an item to add it to the selection list

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 18: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

39

If you want to add a range like ldquo1000-2000rdquo do the following

Start by adding the ldquo1000rdquo value using one of the options explained above

Then find the ldquo2000rdquo value in the master list

Ensure that the ldquo2000rdquo value is highlighted in the master list and the ldquo1000rdquo value is

highlighted in the selection list and click the ldquoAdd Rangerdquo button

You can also drag a value from the master list onto an existing value in the selection list to create a range

To remove an item from the selection list ensure that it is highlighted and then click the ldquoRemoverdquo button or press the ldquoDeleterdquo key

Every segment will have the additional value called ldquoAllrdquo Selecting this value will add a ldquordquo

to the parameter list which means ldquoAll valuesrdquo If ldquoAllrdquo is selected then all other selections will be removed and replaced with a

If you want to include certain values and exclude others you can use the ldquoAdd Excluderdquo

option This will add the highlighted value to the selection list prefixed by the reserved exclude character ldquo~rdquo

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 19: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

40

You can add any combination of the options mentioned above to produce your own

calculation

Once you have added all the required segment values to the selection list click ldquoOKrdquo to copy

the list to the clipboard You can then paste these values into a Get Balance function or

anywhere else on the Excel sheet

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
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                      • Descriptive Flexfields
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                      • License Key
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                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
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                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
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                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
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                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
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                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
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                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
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                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
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                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 20: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

41

Create List of Values

- Create list of values

This feature can be used to quickly format a cell to be a special list of values cell There are

two types The first type inserts a drop down list of values in the cell and is used for balance

types translated flags and actual flags

The second type creates a link to the standard list of values form It is used for segment values periods and balance and encumbrance names

The cell is identified by a note containing the word ldquoLOVrdquo In order to open the list of values

simply double click the cell or select the cell and click the List of Values button on the

toolbar This will open the list of values form for the specific data type that the list of values cell was created for In the example this was the department segment

The checkbox allows you to link the list of values to a specific set of books This option is only applicable if you have the Multiple Sets of Books feature enabled

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 21: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

42

Functions

The GL Wand functions work in a similar way to any other Excel worksheet function You

provide the required parameters and the results of the function are returned to the Excel

cell The difference being that GL Wand functions retrieve information from your Oracle Applications system

GL Wand currently has the following functions

- Get Balance

- Segment Description

- Next Segment Value

- Previous Segment Value

- Parent Flag

- Enabled Flag

- Account Type

- Period Name

- Set of Books Name

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 22: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

43

- Segment Descriptive Flexfield

- Period Offset

Split Text

Combine Text

Functional Currency

Get Daily Rate

You can enter a function into an Excel cell in a number of ways

Click the applicable button on the GL Wand toolbar (or on the GL Wand menu)

Type the function name into the cell manually prefixed by an = sign

You can select the function from the list that Excel provides when you choose the

Insert Function menu item The GL Wand functions are listed under the special GL

Wand category (Prior to Excel 2007 they are listed in the User Defined category)

If you click the applicable function button on the toolbar and the cell you are in contains that

function the Excel formula wizard window will open If you click a function button in a cell

that contains other data GL Wand will warn you that it is going to replace the contents of the cell with the chosen formula and will give you the option of cancelling the action

All parameters must be entered as text values ie enclosed in double quotes eg enter

ldquoUSDrdquo when entering the currency code or enter ldquo001rdquo when entering a segment value

See ldquoDiscovering versus Functionsrdquo for a comparison extracting information using the

discover tools or the functions

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 23: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

44

Get Balance

The Get Balance function is probably the most important function in GL Wand It returns a

General Ledger balance individually or summed based on the parameters that you enter

Example =Get_Balance(Jan-02YTDUSDEABIS CORPORATE01T4000-41600000000)

Clicking the Get Balance function on the GL Wand toolbar will open the Get Balance Wizard

This form has lists of values for items like period name balance type actual flag etc Select

the applicable values and enter a valid currency code and budget or encumbrance name if required

Double clicking a segment value or clicking the list of values button next to the segment will

open the segment list of values form for that segment See the Segment List of Values

section for details on how to use this form When you click the ldquoOKrdquo button on the Segment

List of Values form the selected segment parameters are entered against that segment in the Get Balance Wizard form

If your Oracle configuration includes dependant segments as part of the accounting

flexfield this form will support selecting values based on the independent and dependant

segment values Simply select a value from the available list of values for the independent

segment Then open the list of values for the dependant segment The list of available values

will be limited to only those values that are related to the selected independent segment

value

When you have entered all the parameters click the ldquoOKrdquo button to insert the Get Balance

function into the selected cell with the entered parameters Clicking the ldquoEditrdquo button will

open the Get Balance function in the Excel formula wizard form which will allow you to link

parameters to cells in the Excel sheet

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 24: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

45

You can also open the Get Balance formula in the Excel formula wizard form using the fx

button on the formula bar or by selecting the ldquoInsert Functionrdquo menu item on the Excel menu bar

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Type ldquoCTDrdquo

(Custom to Date) you can specify a custom period selection For

example ldquoFeb-07-Aug-07rdquo will add all the movement for the entered

period range You may enter multiple lists or ranges of periods and can use wild cards as well eg ldquoJan-0rdquo or ldquo-07rdquo

When used in conjunction with the special Balance Types ldquoJEDrdquo

ldquoJEDUrdquo or ldquoJEDPrdquo (Journal Effective Date) the period parameter

becomes a date parameter eg ldquo01012007-0501200710012007rdquo

The format that your date is in is important The ldquo-ldquo character is

used in GL Wand to denote a range of values and therefore it cannot

be used as a date delimiter eg 01-01-2007 would not be valid So

take care if your Windows regional setting use the ldquo-ldquo as a date

delimiter For JED type calculations we recommend that you use the

ldquordquo as a date delimiter and that you always format the date as text

in Excel otherwise Excel will convert the date based on your regional

setting

Balance Type YTD QTD PTD PJTD CTD JED JEDP or JEDU all in upper case

YTD ndash Summarizes the full years balance

QTD ndash Summarizes the balance for the quarter

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 25: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

46

PTD ndash Includes just the current period‟s movement

PJTD ndash Project to date

CTD ndash Summarizes the custom period criteria entered

JED ndash Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for both posted and unposted journals

JEDP - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered

dates for posted journals only

JEDU - Summarizes the journal movements for the entered dates for unposted journals only

Currency Code The currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

Translated Flag Enter E T or C Use E to retrieve the entered amount and T for the

translated amount Use C to report on the converted amount ie

the functional currency equivalent of a foreign currency amount

Only E is valid if requesting a balance for the functional currency of the current Set of Books

You must ensure that you have run the currency translation process

in Oracle for the selected currency and period before reporting on

translated balances If you enter T to request the translated balance

and there is no current translated balance available in the system a zero is returned

Oracle Release 12 provides a new feature to allow reporting on the

values entered in the functional currency only ie excludes any

foreign currency transactions converted to the functional currency

Therefore in Release 12 if you use the E (entered) flag in

conjunction with the functional currency any converted amounts will

be excluded To report on the total balance (including values entered

in functional currency and values converted to the functional

currency) use the new ldquoTotalrdquo option This option is only available if

you log on to a release 12 Oracle instance

Actual Flag A ndash Actual B ndash Budget E ndash Encumbrance

Bud Encumb Name If you enter B or E above enter the exact budget name or

encumbrance type here Otherwise simply enter ldquordquo for actual

balances

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter the segment value here You must enter it as a text value

including any leading zeros eg enter segment value ldquo10rdquo as ldquo0010rdquo

if this segment is configured as four characters with leading zeros in Oracle

You may enter your segment values in a variety of flexible ways

including parents child values ranges wildcards excludes etc See

the explanation below on valid values for this parameter

To include all values simply enter ldquordquo Please note as from GL Wand

3850 you can no longer leave the segment blank a value is

required

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 26: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

47

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Options This parameter is used to modify the results returned by the Get

Balance function from the standard behavior Currently two options are supported

Source ndash Limit the results to a specific journal source

Category ndash Limit the results to a specific journal category

The criteria needs to be entered as follows - ldquoSource=Manualrdquo or

ldquoCategory=Adjustmentrdquo To specify both a source and category use

the ldquo|rdquo as a delimiter eg ldquoSource=Manual|Category=Adjustmentrdquo

You can specify multiple values by separating them with ldquordquo eg

ldquoSource=PayablesReceivablesrdquo

When creating Get Balance formulas always use ldquordquo to denote all values as this allows more

efficient SQL to be generated Do not use a range like ldquo000-ZZZrdquo as they will require

unnecessary processing

The segment value parameters can be entered as

a single value representing a child or parent account eg ldquo1500rdquo might represent a

parent account

a range of values eg entering ldquo1500-1600rdquo in one of the segment parameters will

sum all the segment values between 1500 and 1600 for that segment

a list of segment values eg entering ldquo150015101590rdquo in one of the segment

parameters will sum the specific segment values entered If any of the segment

values are parents GL Wand will sum the hierarchy for that parent

wild card entries eg 100 will sum 1100 1200 1300 1400 etc or entering the

value 1 will sum all values that start with 1

values to be included and then specific exclusions eg ldquo1000-2000~1500rdquo will sum

the values between 1000 and 2000 but will skip 1500

a combination of any of the above eg 1000-2000237123752560-

25803000~32004000~4161-4169 In this way you can build up your own calculation definition in the segment parameter

Please note ndash there are two additional methods for specifying segment criteria in the Get

Balance function The one allows you to specify account combinations and the other

allows the use of segment descriptive flexfields Please see the Special Get Balance

Criteria section in order to use these options

Segment Description

Returns the segment description for the chosen segment value

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 27: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

48

Example =Get_Segment_Description(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value

Returns the next or previous segment value

Parameter Description

Last Value The starting segment value

Segment The segment number

Level Enter a P to return the next or previous parent value enter a C to

return the next or previous child value or leave the parameter blank

to return the next or previous segment value irrespective of whether

it is a parent or child

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example = Next_Segment_Value(ldquo1000rdquo3P)

Parent Flag

Returns the parent flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is a

parent

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Parent_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Enabled Flag

Returns the enabled flag for the chosen segment value Y means that the segment value is

enabled

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example = Enabled_Flag(ldquo1000rdquo3)

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 28: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

49

Account Type

Returns the account type for the chosen segment value This function is only applicable for

the natural account segment and will return the value Asset Liability etc

Parameter Description

Account Value The account segment value

Segment The segment number

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Account_Type(ldquo1000rdquo3)

Period Name

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number Optionally the returned value can be a certain number of periods into the future or past

Parameter Description

PeriodYear The year that you want the period name for

PeriodNumber The period number that you want the period name for

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Offset Optionally enter an offset to return the period name which is n

periods before or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3

periods into the future or -1 to return the previous period

Example =Period_Name(20063)

Set of Books Name

Returns the set of books name for the chosen set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Set_of_Books_Name()

Segment Descriptive Flexfield

Returns the segment values descriptive flexfield for the selected criteria

Parameter Description

Segment Value The segment value

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 29: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

50

Segment The segment number

AttributeNo Identify which attribute you want to report on The segment values

descriptive flexfield has 50 possible attribute values The applicable

attributes will depend on your configuration and whether this

Descriptive Flexfield is used by your organization

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

IndepValue For dependant segments enter the independent value that the

segment value relates to

Example =Segment_DFF(ldquo100rdquo25) retrieves the 5th attribute on the segment values

descriptive flexfield for segment value 100 on segment 2

Period Offset

Returns the period name for the chosen year and period number

Parameter Description

Period The period name as configured in Oracle This parameter must be

entered in exactly the same format as the period names in Oracle

For example if your period names are configured as follows ldquoJan-07rdquo

in Oracle and you enter ldquoJan-2007rdquo or ldquoJanuary-07rdquo or ldquojan-07rdquo for

this parameter GL Wand will not return any data

Offset Enter an offset to return the period name which is n periods before

or after the entered criteria eg enter 3 to return 3 periods into the

future or -1 to return the previous period

RetRange Enter TRUE (or 1) to return the result as a range eg entering

period Mar-07 with an offset of -2 and the RetRange set to true will

return ldquoJan-07-Mar-07rdquo This can be used in conjunction with the

CTD (Custom to Date) balance type in the Get Balance function to

create rolling period reporting

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Period_Offset(Jan-07-2TRUE)

Split Text

Splits delimited text and returns a specific portion based on an offset Especially useful to

split account combinations but can be used to split any text

Parameter Description

Value Some text which has been concatenated using a delimiter eg an

account combination like ldquo011007000rdquo

Offset Identify which portion of the text to return

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Split_Text(0110070002) will return the ldquo100rdquo portion of the text

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 30: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

51

Combine Text

Combines selected text separated by a delimiter Especially useful to combine segment

values to create a delimited account combinations but can be used to combine any text

Parameter Description

Segment1 through

Segment20

Enter segment values that you wish to combine into an account

combination

Delimiter Defaults to ldquordquo if you leave this parameter blank but you can override

it to any delimiter

Example =Combine_Text(011007000) will return ldquo011007000rdquo

Functional Currency

Returns the functional currency for the set of books

Parameter Description

Book Optionally enter a set of books id to bind the formula to a specific

set of books If this parameter is omitted the set of books currently

selected in the Set of Books dropdown list will be used

Example =Functional_Currency()

Get Daily Rate

Returns the daily exchange rate for the entered criteria

Parameter Description

FromCurrency The ldquoFromrdquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case

eg ldquoUSDrdquo

ToCurrency The ldquoTordquo currency code as configured in Oracle all in upper case eg

ldquoUSDrdquo

ConversionType The conversion type as configured in Oracle Spelling and case must

be identical to the Oracle configuration

ConversionDate The conversion date This must be in Excel date format Either refer

to a cell which contains a date or use one of the Excel date functions

to return a date in the parameter

Example =Get_Daily_Rate(USDGBPReportingDATE(200911))

Function return values

The GL Wand functions will return a variety of results depending on a number of factors If

all the information is entered correctly and there are no restrictions on access to the data or

the GL Wand itself the result should be the General Ledger balance segment value segment description etc However the following are also possible return values

glwDemo ndash this means that you are using GL Wand without a valid trial key entered

into the GL Wand License Key profile option When trying GL Wand without a valid

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 31: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

52

trial key you are only allowed to use the first 20 rows and 20 columns of the first

sheet in the workbook Any formula entered outside this range will not calculate a

value but will only return the word ldquoglwDemordquo This is called evaluation mode A

trial key needs to be requested from within GL Wand and entered into the profile

option to allow full access to all functionality

glwNoAccess ndash When you log on you will be prompted for your applications user name

and password and will then need to select a responsibility to log on to Any security

rules that have been linked to the selected responsibility will be enforced on the GL

Wand data If you attempt to access a balance on a general ledger account that you

do not have access to the function will return the word ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo Please see

the ldquoAudit Get Balancerdquo section for information on how to identify the security rule that is being contravened

Please note that Oracles Hierarchical Security is not supported

glwError ndash If you enter invalid information in a parameter for a GL Wand function the

GL Wand error value will be returned This may happen when you for example

enter an invalid budget name or period name in the Get Balance function or when you

enter an invalid segment number in the next segment value function This error value

will also be returned when you are not logged on The details of the return value will

indicate where the problem exists eg glwError (Logon) glwError (Balance Type)

glwError (Translated Flag) glwError (Actual Flag) glwError (Missing segment)

glwError (Data error) glwError (Range) glwError (Period)

glwPending ndash This value will be returned during the calculation process Whenever a

cell requires calculation and the process has not been completed yet the cell will

contain the value ldquoglwPendingrdquo

glwEditing ndash Displays in the Excel function arguments window when editing a Get Balance formula

Discovering versus Functions

You may have noticed that you can achieve similar results by using the discover tools and

using the functions For example you could use the ldquoDiscover Downrdquo button to retrieve the

next segment value or you could use the ldquoNext Segment Valuerdquo function to return the same result The difference between these two approaches is as follows

Com

paris

on b

etw

een D

iscoverin

g a

nd

Functio

ns

Discovering Functions

Results returned as text string to Excel

cell

Value is calculated based on

parameters

Value is static Value is dynamic

Never changes Recalculated when sheet refreshed

Lower performance overhead Higher performance overhead

Discover Down Next Segment Value

Discover Up Previous Segment Value

Discover Left Next Segment Value

Discover Right Previous Segment Value

Discover Properties

Segment Description

Parent flag

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 32: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

53

Enabled Flag

Account Type

Discover Child Ranges No equivalent

Toggle Discover Level

Parameters of next segment value

determine whether parents children or

both are returned

Use the discover buttons with ldquoPeriodrdquo

selected in the segment drop down Period Name

Balance Extract is similar to Get

Balance though the static values it

produces are refreshable

Get Balance

Special Get Balance Criteria

GL Wand supports two special types of criteria in the Get Balance function namely ldquoAccount

Combinationsrdquo and ldquoSegment Descriptive Flexfieldrdquo criteria These two forms of the Get

Balance criteria have very specific syntax which must be carefully adhered to in order to

achieve the correct results You also have the ability to expand account combinations for a

selection that uses the ldquoAccount Combinationrdquo criteria

Account Combinations

In the past the Get Balance function only supported individual segment values eg segment

2 = 100 or 200 and segment 3 = 1000 or 2000 This would result in GL Wand returning all the possible combinations of those segment 2 and 3 values

Now you have the ability to specify account combinations using the new Get Balance syntax

This means that you can create new complex criteria for your Get Balance formula eg

(segment 2 = 100 and segment 3 = 1000) or (segment 2 = 200 and segment 3 = 2000)

With these criteria GL Wand will no longer return all the possible combinations but rather only the combinations you specify

In order to specify account combinations in a Get Balance function you must tell GL Wand

which segments you are combining You do this by entering a special value into the segment

eg if you want to combine criteria for segment 2 and segment 3 you would enter the

following in the parameter for segment 2 ldquoUse_Seg3rdquo This tells GL Wand that that it must

find the criteria for segment 2 inside the segment 3 parameter In the segment 3 parameter

you now enter the criteria for both segment 2 and segment 3 separated by the special

delimiter character eg ldquo1001000rdquo This tells GL Wand that you are looking for accounts where segment 2 is 100 and segment 3 is 1000 An example could look like this

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg3100100020020000000000)

It is possible to combine multiple segments as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA 01Use_Seg5Use_Seg5Use_Seg510010000000000)

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 33: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

54

You simply point each applicable segment to the parameter where the account combination

using the special ldquoUse_SegXrdquo syntax Then inside the target parameter you combine the fully qualified account combination for the applicable segments delimited with a ldquordquo character

When you specify your account combination you have full flexibility to use ranges lists wild

cards parents and exclude criteria For example this criteria will fetch all the values where

segment 2 is between 100 and 200 and segment 3 is between 1000 and 2000 And in

addition to that it will include the values where segment 2 is 250 (a parent) and segment 3

starts with 33 but will exclude the specific value where segment 2 is 250 and segment 3 is

3320

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA01Use_Seg31001000-200200025033~25033200000000)

You also have the flexibility to group different parts of the account combination together For

example this criteria combines the values for segment 1 and 3 together and combines segment 2 and 4 together

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA

Use_Seg3Use_Seg401100002115010000002001050000)

These new Get Balance syntax options provide you with tremendous flexibility when building your GL Wand reports

Expand Account Combinations

The expand feature allows you to extract all the detailed child segment values that roll up to

the criteria that the user specifies The expand feature has been extended to support account combinations

In order to expand an account combination you would do the following

Ensure that the correct set of books is selected in the drop down list on the GL Wand

toolbar

Select the cell containing the account combination criteria eg ldquo1007000rdquo Click the expand button

GL Wand will now identify that the selected cell contains an account combination rather than

a single segment value You will now be presented with a window to identify which segments from your chart of accounts are represented in the account combination

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 34: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

55

Select the correct segments and click ldquoOKrdquo GL Wand will now extract all the child

combinations that roll up to the criteria that you entered and insert them into the Excel sheet

The other options are as follows

Fix ndash if you tick this option for a segment GL Wand will ldquopegrdquo that segment using the

selected value (this option only makes sense for a parent segment value) You might

for example want to expand all the account combinations used in a particular parent

cost centre Simply ldquoFixrdquo the cost centre segment and GL Wand will return all the

account combinations used within that parent cost centre

Exclude disabled account combination ndash tick this option to only return account combinations that are currently enabled and have not been end dated

The expand account combinations feature can be used as a normal GL Wand ldquoExpandrdquo in

order to extract the detail behind a total but it is also very useful to extract existing account combinations from your Oracle system

This feature can be used very effectively with the Split Text and Combine Text functions

Segment Descriptive Flexfields

In order to extract balances using the descriptive flexfields stored on the segment values

you need to use special syntax in the Get Balance function The syntax works as follows

1ABC

You wrap the descriptive flexfield using curly brackets

The first character after the open bracket identifies which descriptive flexfield

attribute is being referred to

You then separate the descriptive flexfield attribute from the actual value using a ldquordquo You then specify the criteria for this attribute

An example Get Balance function would look as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC10000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield on segment 2 is equal to the value ldquoABCrdquo

It is possible to specify criteria for multiple descriptive flexfields as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011ABC2XX10000000000)

Simply wrap each descriptive flexfield value in its own and identify the attribute number

At this stage the descriptive flexfield criteria is restricted to a single value or a single range

of values Lists of values and multiple ranges are not supported A range can be specified

using the special range delimiter ldquo|rdquo (pipe character) This character is different to the range

character that is used for normal Get Balance segment parameters The reason is that the

normal range delimiter ldquo-ldquo may easily be used in a segment descriptive flexfields and

therefore is not suitable In future you will be able to configure your own range delimiter

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 35: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

56

character which will provide the best flexibility The range criteria can be specified as follows

=Get_Balance(Jan-02PTDUSDEA011100|20010000000000)

This example will return all the values where attribute 1 of the segment descriptive flexfield

on segment 2 is between 100 and 200 Date values are also supported in this criteria and GL Wand will correctly derive the ldquobetweenrdquo criteria for a date

Calculating

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what cells are refreshed from

Oracle They are used in conjunction with the GL Wand calculation option (onoff) You can stop a calculation at any time by clicking cancel

- Calculate Range (Alt+Ctl+R)

- Calculate Sheet (Alt+Ctl+S)

- Calculate All (Alt+Ctl+A)

- GL Wand calculation on

- GL Wand calculation off

Calculate Range Sheet or All

The three calculation buttons allow you to control exactly what is recalculated

To calculate a range of cells simply

1 Highlight the range

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Rangerdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+R shortcut key

3 Select multiple ranges using the ctrl button (as normal in Excel)

4 Select a range and then select multiple Excel worksheets to calculate the same range on

each sheet

Please note do not use the calculate range option to recalculate the entire sheet ie by

selecting all the cells on the sheet This will take unnecessarily longer Rather use the

calculate sheet option

To calculate a sheet simply

1 Select the applicable sheet

2 Click the ldquoCalculate Sheetrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+S shortcut key

3 Selecting multiple sheets will calculate each of the selected sheets

To calculate all open workbooks simply

1 Click the ldquoCalculate Allrdquo button or use the Alt+Ctl+A shortcut key

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 36: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

57

GL Wand calculation on or off

You can use the GL Wand calculation toggle button to control when requests for calculations

are sent to the Oracle server

If you toggle GL Wand calculation ldquoOffrdquo calculation requests are not sent to the Oracle server which means you

you can manipulate a worksheet

change cell values

enter new formulae and

perform any other task that would normally cause Excel to recalculate

and the applicable functions will only return the ldquoglwPendingrdquo status and will not

actually calculate a result

This is useful during report development

To calculate the results simply click one of the three calculation buttons ldquoCalculate Range

Sheet or Allrdquo

If you leave the GL Wand calculation option ldquoOnrdquo the applicable functions will be recalculated whenever Excel initiates a calculation process eg

when changing the contents of the cell

changing one of the functions input values deleting a column or row in the worksheet etc

Please note that the GL Wand calculation option has nothing to do with Excel‟s automatic

and manual calculation The GL Wand calculation option controls only the calculation of the

applicable GL Wand functions All other calculations are controlled as normal by the Excel

automatic and manual calculation option

Calculation progress and stopping a calculation

When you perform a recalculation a window will appear to show the progress of the

calculation

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 37: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

58

If you would like to cancel the calculation process simply click the ldquoCancelrdquo button

Please note that GL Wand will need to wait for the next reply from Oracle before the

connection can be closed Therefore it may take some time before the calculation stops and

the window closes

Snapshot

- Snapshot

The snapshot tool can be used to take a snapshot of your GL Wand report This tool will

remove all the GL Wand functions from the workbook and will replace them with the values that the function returned

The results are similar to using the Excel ldquopaste valuesrdquo functionality However this process will only replace GL Wand formulas All other Excel formulas will be left as they were

Please note that you cannot take a snapshot of a protected worksheet rather output the

sheet to PDF format for archive and distribution purposes

When producing a snapshot GL Wand will request a name for the new workbook You can

select an existing workbook and GL Wand will give you the option to append the snapshot

results to the existing workbook or overwrite the existing workbook You therefore have the

option of producing various snapshot reports and combining them into one new workbook in a single operation rather than producing a separate workbook for each snapshot

Hide zeros

- Hide zeros in selected range

Select a report range that contains rows where all the numbers are zero Click the hide zeros

button and GL Wand will hide all the rows in the selected range where all the cells containing

numbers are zero This is very useful for formatting a report which includes many rows

where for example a number of accounts are not used in a particular cost centre or have no

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 38: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

59

balances in a certain period At the click of a button you can hide all the rows that contain only zeros

Select the entire report range when using the hide zeros function GL Wand checks the

selected range for zeros when determining which rows to hide

Excel automatically forces a recalculation of Get Balance formulas when you hide rows on a

report This is normal Excel functionality

This feature can be used on any Excel worksheet and is not limited to GL Wand reports

Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)

- Undo the last hide zeros operation

Click this button to automatically undo the last hide zeros operation

Drill downs

- Drill to default Balance layout

- Drill to default Journal layout

- Drill to default Sub Ledger layout

The drill down options allow you to extract additional detail about a specific ldquoGet Balancerdquo function

1 Select a cell that contains a valid Get Balance function

2 Click on the drill to balance button

3 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

4 The criteria sheet will be populated with the criteria from the Get Balance function

5 The drill down to balance detail will be executed showing all the detailed accounts that make up the total in the Get Balance function

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 39: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

60

See the Create Drill Criteria Sheet section for more details and options on the drill down criteria sheet

Budget variance analysis If you select two cells on the GL Wand report eg one cell with

actual values and one with budget numbers GL Wand will perform a drill down on the Get

Balance function and display the actual and budget values next to each other and a

calculated variance

You now have a variety of options which can be performed from the drill down workbook

1 Modify the parameters on the criteria sheet and perform a new drill to balance Drop

down lists are provided for most of the parameters see the Create Drill Criteria Sheet for

more details

2 Create a summary drill down report

3 If you have performed a balance drill down you can select the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet and then

click drill down to journal details after selecting one or more rows with accounts

4 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo sheet and then click the button to drill down to the full journal

after selecting one or more rows with journal lines The full journal with all the contra

entries for the selected journal lines will be displayed

5 Select the ldquoJournalrdquo or ldquoJournal-Fullrdquo sheet and then click sub-ledger drill down after

selecting one or more rows with journal lines 6 Drill down to Global Consolidation System transactions

When drilling down you have the following options

Double click any cell on the row that you wish to drill down on

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 40: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

61

Select any cell in the row that you want to drill down on and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar

Highlight a range of rows and click the applicable drill down button on the GL Wand

toolbar to drill down on multiple lines at once

Highlight non contiguous rows using the ldquoCtrlrdquo button and click the applicable drill

down button on the GL Wand toolbar to drill down on multiple lines which are not adjacent to each other

It is possible to drill from a Get Balance formula directly to the journal or sub ledger

information Similarly you can drill from a detailed balance (on the Balance worksheet)

directly to the sub ledger information If you select these options GL Wand will execute the

interim drill steps automatically Be careful when performing a drill down directly to the

journal or sub ledger detail level as these drill down operations may return many records

GL Wand will automatically group the drill down to journals and sub ledger information using

Excel‟s group and outline functionality This will allow you expand and collapse the data to

show just a portion of the report Headings are also inserted on the journal and sub-ledger drill down to make the report easier to read

On the sub-ledger drill down the heading includes a number in brackets eg ldquo(23) Journal

Name 123rdquo The number indicates which Excel row these sub-ledger lines originated from on

the ldquoJournalsrdquo sheet

You can use the remove drill down report headings button to strip out the headings on

the journal and sub-ledger drill down sheets

A couple of important things to note about drill downs

GL Wand will first count the number of rows that will be retrieved by the drill down

operation

If the row count is more than 1000 you will receive a warning message asking you if

you want to continue

If the row count is more than the defined limit (see Query Limit) you will receive a

warning and the drill down will be cancelled

If the row count is more than the number of rows available in your version of Excel

you will receive an error and the drill down will be cancelled

When you drill down to journal details the ldquoBalance Typerdquo parameter controls how

much detail is returned If this parameter is ldquoPTDrdquo only the current period‟s journals

are returned If this parameter is ldquoYTDrdquo then all the journals for the year are returned and likewise ldquoQTDrdquo will show the journal for the quarter

Ensure that the worksheet is calculated before performing any drill down functions Also

ensure that the cell contains a ldquoGet Balancerdquo function with valid parameter information

A new drill down workbook will be created each time you perform a drill down operation from

a Get Balance function Once you are finished with a drill down workbook simply close it

without saving

You cannot drill down to journal detail on translated balances

Oracle Global Consolidation System

Drill down to Oracle Global Consolidation System (GCS) transactions is also supported

These items will appear on the journal drill down report with a source and category of

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 41: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

62

ldquoConsolidationrdquo If you execute a normal drill down to Sub Ledger on these transactions a

new GL Wand drill workbook will be created and the drill down to the subsidiary set of books will be executed

In order to drill down on a GCS transaction you must be logged on the parent as well as the

subsidiary set of books This can be done using the Multiple Sets of Books logon option

Summary Balance Drill Down

On the drill down Criteria sheet toggle the summarization option to ldquoYrdquo for any segment that

you which to summaries by GL Wand creates a summary trial balance report and

summarizes by the selected segments The report can still be expanded to show the detailed

lines and you can still drill down to journals from these lines

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 42: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

63

Drill Down Batching

With the drill down batching option enabled GL Wand will execute the drill downs more

efficiently This option will help with the performance of large drill down reports You also have the option to cancel the process

Drill to My Layout

- Drill to My Balance layout

- Drill to My Journal layout

- Drill to My Sub Ledger layout

GL Wand allows you to customize the layout of the drill down reports There are a number of

possible drill layout options

When GL Wand is initially installed each drill down report has a default layout

The default drill layout is used each time a standard drill down is performed

The default drill layout can be edited ndash see the Edit Default Drill Layout option

When a drill down is performed a new GL Wand Drill Workbook is created these

workbooks can be saved for future use or sent to others so that they can use these layouts to perform their own drill downs

To create custom drill layouts follow this process

1 Use the Edit Default Drill Layout option to create the layout that you require eg

create a layout to be used for Accounts Receivable drill downs

2 Perform a standard drill down which will create a new drill workbook using the new

layout that you just created

3 Save this workbook and call is something like ldquoMy Accounts Receivable Layoutrdquo 4 Repeat this process to create other drill down layouts

Now you can make use of these custom drill layouts When performing a drill down from a

Get Balance function instead of using the standard drill down buttons use one of the ldquoDrill to My Layoutrdquo options You will be presented with one of the following options

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 43: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

64

If there are no GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be prompted to open one that

you would like to use for the drill down

If there is only one GL Wand drill workbook open the drill down will be executed into

that drill workbook

If you have multiple GL Wand drill workbooks open you will be presented with a list of

Drill workbooks to choose from The drill down will be executed into the selected workbook

With these options you can create as many custom drill layouts as you like and save them as

Excel spreadsheets with appropriate names You can then use these drill layouts whenever you need them or share them with other users

The GL Wand drill down workbooks have certain hidden columns and rows that must not be

modified Other changes to the reports are permitted eg changing column widths column

orders column headings and column formatting

Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns

You can add your own calculated columns in the GL Wand drill down reports as follows

Execute a normal drill down to journal detail for example

Now insert a column using normal Excel functionality Ensure that you give the new column a heading

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 44: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

65

Then unhide the special hidden row 2 Ensure that you only modify the contents of

row 2 in the new column that you have inserted Modifying any of the other cells in

this hidden row may cause problems with the drill down template

Enter your formula in this cell using normal Excel functionality You can include any

formula or function from Excel or GL Wand

Add any formatting you like to this cell

Hide the special row 2 again

Execute the drill down again

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 45: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

66

GL Wand copies your new formula into each report row as it populates the drill down

results

Save this drill down template and reuse it for future drill downs

You can add calculated Excel columns to any of the GL Wand drill down reports

This functionality can be used very effectively in conjunction with the new Reports Wand

module You can insert a Run Report formula into a calculated Excel column which can be

linked to fields returned by the GL Wand drill down When you double click on this Run

Report formula Reports Wand will execute the custom SQL statement that you have created

and can provide additional detail which is not provided by the standard GL Wand drill down

report

Sort Drill Report

- Sort the drill report

With a drill down report as the active sheet click the sort button under the drill menu GL

Wand will highlight the correct report range (ensuring that all rows and columns including

the special hidden id columns are selected) and open the Excel sort window

Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)

- Configuration Sheet

When you click the ldquoConfiguration Sheetrdquo button GL Wand inserts a new worksheet into the

current workbook that contains a variety of information about the configuration of your Set of Books

The Configuration Sheet includes the

chart of accounts layout showing each segment‟s details

example period names

valid balance types

available currency codes

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 46: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

67

valid actual flags

budget names and encumbrance types definition of the segment values descriptive flexfield as configured in your system

The information on the Configuration Sheet can be useful when constructing GL Wand

functions

The period names will show you how the accounting period has been configured for your Set

of Books eg the period names may be in the format

Apr-03 or they might be April-03

This is very important because when you populate the Period name parameter of the ldquoGet Balancerdquo function you must enter it in

the correct format

the correct case

otherwise GL Wand will not find the data you have requested

The new Period Name function will return the period name in the correct format and can be used as an input into the Get Balance function

The budget and encumbrance names are also very useful as these must also be entered in

the correct case and with the correct spelling in order to successfully extract a budget or encumbrance balance

Options (Tools Menu)

- Options

The options form allows you to

create database connections

initiate an upgrade set other GL Wand options

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 47: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

68

Connections

GL Wand connects to the Oracle Applications database using internet architecture This

means that the only setting required on the client is the connection URL

This required URL will depend on the GL Wand server component that you are using There

are three possibilities If you are not sure which method you are using to connect to your Oracle system please check with the applications DBA

Connection option 1 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the Mod PLSQL connection method then the required URL is the Applications Web

Agent URL This URL is stored in an Oracle Applications profile option called ldquoApplications Web Agentrdquo You can query this profile option through the main Oracle Applications forms

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 48: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

69

Connection option 2 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 11i system

using the java servlet method then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportservlets

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000servlets

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add servlets to it

Connection option 3 - If you are connecting to GL Wand on an Oracle release 12 system

then the required URL will be as follows

httpserver1domaincomportOA_HTML

For example - httpvisionjhb1excel4appscom8000OA_HTML

The first part will be the same as the URL that you use to log on to Oracle and you simply add OA_HTML to it

To create a new connection click the option button next to the connection that you which to

add or edit A maximum of 5 connections can be created

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 49: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

70

Select a new line in the connections section and enter a connection name like ldquoProdrdquo or

ldquoDevrdquo to identify the connection Type the connection URL in the space provided Note that

you can copy a URL (eg from an e-mail) and paste it into the space provided using ctrl-v or

clicking the right mouse button If this connection should use your internet explorer settings

to find the correct path to the server (eg it must go through a proxy server or via the Internet) then tick the check box on that line

You can then test the connection using the test button Click the ldquoTestrdquo button to open a web browser which will navigate to the GL Wand test page

You should see the page shown above This means that the GL Wand server side install has

been successfully completed If you get a ldquoPage cannot be foundrdquo error it means that either

the GL Wand server side install has not been completed successfully or the Oracle

Application server is down This page also shows the database indexes on the key tables utilized by GL Wand

Click ldquoOKrdquo on the main options screen to save your changes This connection will now be available in the log on screen

From the options screen you can select an existing connection to delete Click the ldquoDeleterdquo

button and the connection will be removed Click ldquoOKrdquo to save your changes

Upgrade

If you want to check if there is a new version of GL Wand available simply click the upgrade

button on the options screen

GL Wand periodically checks for new versions of the product and provides the users with the

ability to perform an upgrade It either checks a shared folder on your corporate LAN or else

it checks on the internet at Excel4appscom This is controlled by populating the profile

option ldquoGL Wand Upgrade Locationrdquo with the appropriate information Refer to the profile

options section in this user guide for more information If a new version is detected it will be downloaded and the installation will be initiated

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 50: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

71

Disable Summary Account Checking

The Oracle General Ledger provides the functionality to hold summary balances for a parent

GL account When calculating balances GL Wand first checks if the account you are

requesting is a summary account If it is it simply fetches the balance on this account If not

it calculates the balance based on the defined parent hierarchy

This summary account check takes time Therefore if you know that your organization does

not use summary accounts leave this option ticked (default)

HTTP Packet Size

This value can be changed in order to control the number of calculations that are sent to

Oracle in each calculation batch The default is dynamic With this setting selected GL Wand

will dynamically recalculate the optimal packet size to use for each calculation batch based

on how quickly your Oracle instance resolves the Get Balance SQL queries If your system is

resolving the queries quickly the HTTP packet size will be increased to allow more

calculations to be performed in one batch If the queries are running slower than average

the HTTP packet size will be reduced This dynamic mode will attempt to ensure that you do not receive a timeout due to the Get Balance SQL queries taking too long to complete

If you prefer you can override the dynamic option and pick a specific HTTP packet size We

recommend that you only do this in one of two situations Firstly if you know your system

processes the Get Balance SQL queries quickly eg upwards of 10 cells per second you can

choose the maximum HTTP packet size of 32000 This will ensure that GL Wand sends the

most calculations in each batch that it possibly can The second situation where you might

override this setting is if the dynamic calculations are not providing the optimal HTTP packet

size on your system for some reason In this case select the appropriate HTTP packet size from the list

You should only modify the HTTP packet size if you are experiencing errors during the

calculation process typically when a batch of calculations runs for more than 5 minutes

Otherwise leave it at the default

Trace Mode

Trace mode is used for troubleshooting problems with Excel4apps support

Logon Method

GL Wand supports a new logon method via the Oracle logon screen (default) You can use

this option to switch the logon method back to the Excel based logon screen The Excel method should not be used unless the ldquoOraclerdquo method does not function correctly

Show secured segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow secured segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether secured

segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Note Even though a user can control the visibility of items secured by segment value

security rules Get Balance functions will not display secured values but rather the message

ldquoglwNoAccess to indicate a security rule breach

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 51: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

72

Show disabled segment values

Select or de-select the ldquoShow disabled segment valuesrdquo option to determine whether

disabled segment values are shown in the list of values window and included in the discover process

Budget Upload

This option works in conjunction with the budget upload functionality See the section on

deleting duplicates during a budget upload for more detail

Parent Cache Option

With this option enabled the GL Wand logon screen will have a new check box which allows

you to select an alternative method for processing Get Balance formulas This option must

be enabled on the options form before this new tick box will appear on the logon form This is to avoid confusing any users that have no need for this option

Once this option is enabled you can tick this checkbox at each logon and vary it to suit which ever method provides you with the best performance for particular GL Wand reports

In certain situations this alternate Get Balance processing method can result in a significant

performance improvement Typically it will only improve performance on those Oracle

systems which are currently giving poor performance This would normally be less than 5

cells per second calculation rate If you are already achieving calculation rates of more than this then chances are this option will not improve performance on your environment

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 52: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

73

When selecting this option the initial GL Wand logon may be slower We recommend testing

your slower GL Wand reports using the old and the new method to determine which method is better for your environment

Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size

This option determines if GL Wand uses batching to process drill down requests With this

option enabled the drill down process can handle large drill downs more efficiently and also

provides a Cancel option to stop the process

The Batch Size tells GL Wand how many records to fetch with each batch The default is 1000 which should be suitable for most situations

Report Manager

These options are as follows

Process Disabled Segment Values ndash Uncheck this option if you would prefer report

manger to skip disabled segment values when producing reports

Email Client ndash If you wish to create emails from the report manager choose your

email client ldquoOutlook ndash Draftrdquo is the default For Outlook and GroupWise the only

available option is to create a draft email with the reports attached which must then

me sent by clicking the send button manually For Lotus Notes you can choose to create a draft mail message or to actually send the mail

Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)

A drill down can be performed by selecting a cell containing a Get Balance formula and

clicking the drill down button on the toolbar However you may wish to bypass the

requirement for a Get Balance formula and simply extract data based on parameters that

you set The Drill Down Criteria Sheet functionality allows you to very quickly extract the

detailed general ledger balances and journals that meet certain criteria This is useful when

large numbers of individual GL balances are required as the values are returned faster than by using many individual ldquoGet Balancerdquo formulae

- Create drill down criteria sheet

1 Click on the Create drill down criteria sheet button

2 A new GL Wand drill down workbook is created

3 Enter the parameters for the data that you wish to extract on the criteria sheet of this

new workbook The criteria are exactly the same as the parameters of the Get Balance

function and operate in the same manner

4 Use the balance drill down button on the GL Wand toolbar to execute the drill down

5 This workbook operates in exactly the same manner as a normal drill down See the Drill downs section for more details

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 53: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

74

Enter a period or double click the cell to select it from the drop down list

Choose the balance type Please note that selecting ldquoYTDrdquo will extract all the journal

lines for the year when executing a journal drill down and similarly ldquoQTDrdquo will extract

the journals for the quarter

Enter the required currency code

Pick ldquoErdquo entered or ldquoTrdquo translated balances (Or Total if using Oracle R12)

Pick ldquoArdquo actual ldquoBrdquo budgets or ldquoErdquo encumbrance for the primary balance type If you

select ldquoBrdquo or ldquoErdquo then you must populate the BudEnc Name parameter with the

budget version name or encumbrance type Please note this must be spelt correctly

Optionally populate the secondary balance parameters They work in the same

manner as the primary balance parameters If you do populate the secondary balance

parameters and perform a balance drill down the ldquoBalancerdquo sheet will contain a list of

the primary balance values with the secondary balance values alongside them and a

variance between the two

Populate the segment values You can enter values directly into the Excel cells or you

can pick them from a list of values To use the list of values simply double click the

cell where you want the parameters entered or select the applicable cell and click the

list of values button on the GL Wand toolbar The list of values form will open (see

the Segment List of Value sections for more details) When you click ldquoOKrdquo on the

segment list of values form the parameters that you have selected will be entered

into the current cell

Toggle the summarization option ldquoYrdquo for any segment that you wish to summaries by

Enter a journal source or category to limit the results to only the journals meeting

those criteria

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 54: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

75

Note that GL Wand will remember your selections for secondary balance criteria as well as

which segments you have selected for summarization Future drill down operations will apply

these parameters automatically

Report Wizard (Tools Menu)

- Report wizard

The report wizard is useful for building your very first example report from which to learn GL Wand principles

The report wizard will create a template report using your set of books configuration The

report has a standard layout and allows you to specify one segment as the ldquoPagerdquo item and

one segment as the ldquoRowrdquo item A report is created with a list of values at the top of the

report for the chosen ldquoPagerdquo segment The report lists the first ten child segment values

down the rows of the report for the chosen ldquoRowrdquo segment The report wizard creates generic Get Balance formulas to build the detailed values of the report

Start by entering the parameters for the report

The special items ldquoRowsrdquo and ldquoPagerdquo can be selected from the segment list of values and

may be entered against one segment only The ldquoPagerdquo and ldquoRowsrdquo values must be included against one segment Clicking ldquoOKrdquo will generate the report

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 55: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

76

Once you have generated the report you can extend it to incorporate other values by

inserting more rows and copying and pasting the generic Get Balance formulas You now have the freedom and power of Excel to extend it and modify it as needed

Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)

This button can be used to obtain information about how GL Wand is processing the segment

values of a Get Balance function It can be specifically helpful to indentify which security rules are being contravened when the Get Balance returns ldquoglwNoAccessrdquo

Select a single cell containing a Get Balance function

Click this button

GL Wand calculates the cell and creates a new Excel workbook containing a log of how the Get Balance function processed its segment parameters

The log output is fairly self explanatory but if you require assistance interpreting the results please contact Excel4apps support

Convert FSG (Tools Menu)

The FSG conversion utility can be used to import an FSG report definition from Oracle You

can then format the data and link it to Get Balance and other GL Wand formulas to complete

the report A demonstration of how to use this feature can be found on the Excel4apps web site

Import Definition

Select the FSG report that you wish to import GL Wand will create a new workbook which

contains the RowSet and ColumnSet information from the FSG report

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 56: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

77

Please note that the information extracted is the basic RowSet and ColumnSet data to cater

for an FSG report of average complexity The more advanced reports may not be catered for

100 For calculations only simple addition and subtraction calculations are replicated into

an Excel formula

Once the information has been populated into the Excel spreadsheet you can use the

following as a guideline to complete your GL Wand report

Review Row definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Review Column definitions and consolidate segment low high ranges into input

parameters for the Get Balance function

Modify the sample Get Balance function to reference valid parameters These may be

from the report header the RowSet account assignments the ColumnSet account

assignments the ColumnSet override values or hardcoded values Then copy amp paste

the formula across report

Insert additional GL Wand amp Excel formulas as needed (eg Segment description and

Budget Variance and other calculations)

Remove or hide unused RowsColumns format report and Expand Rows where required

Merge Low High Segment Ranges

The account assignment information is presented as Low High ranges of segment values as

per the definition in the FSG report In order to use this information in a segment parameter

of the Get Balance function one often needs to merge the values into a single cell of ranges

and lists of segment values You can use the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button to automate this process

Select a range of Low High segment ranges that need to be merged

Click the Merge Low High Segment Ranges button The selection is merged into a single cell of ranges and lists of segment values

Report Manager (Tools Menu)

- Create Report Manager workbook

- Execute the selected range

- Execute the selected sheets

- Execute all the sheets in the current workbook

Report Manager allows you to batch produce (replicate) GL Wand reports from a source

report snapshot them and then automatically convert them to various formats In addition

you can optionally choose to print the reports and or email them to specified recipients For

example you might have a standard GL Wand report that you wish to replicate for a range

of cost centers in your organization With report manager you can configure a report set

definition and then execute that definition and the production of the reports will be

automated for you

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 57: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

78

The first step is to create the source GL Wand report using Get Balance formulas as normal

Ensure that you link the applicable parameters of the Get Balance function to appropriate

cells in the workbook For example if you want to replicate this report for a range of cost

centers ensure that you have a cell somewhere in the workbook where the cost centre can

be captured Then link the applicable parameter of all the Get Balance formulas in the report

to this cell When you change the value in this cell all the Get Balance formulas should recalculate for the new cost centre

Report Set Definition

Next you create a report manager workbook Click the create button on the toolbar This

button is in the tools section under Report Manager You will be presented with a form to capture the details of the report set definition

1 In this form click the ldquoSelectrdquo button and choose the GL Wand source report If the

report is not currently open GL Wand will open it

2 Optionally select the output folder and file name to group reports in to

3 Tick the options that you want eg Excel PDF HTML Print and email

4 Tick the applicable items that you want GL Wand to loop though when the report is

created

5 For each ticked item populate the Cell Link field You can type in this field but it is

easier to simply click the applicable target cell on the worksheet and the field will be

correctly populated with the cell reference

6 Optionally select the From and To values that you want GL Wand to loop through

These fields can also be populated on the next screen

7 Optionally select a range on the report where you would like to execute a ldquoHide Zerosrdquo Report Manager will hide the zeros in this range for each report produced

When you are finished populating the form click ldquoOKrdquo A new workbook will be created and the report set definition will be populated

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 58: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

79

This is a normal Excel workbook However the structure must not be changed The only

changes that you may make to this workbook are to insert more lines and to populate the

white fields Any other changes will most likely corrupt the definition and Report Manager

will give an error when you try to execute the definition

Modifying the Criteria

You can now modify and populate this report as follows

Modify the report name in cell E4 This can be done by editing the cell but we

recommend that you rather double click the cell and select the report from the

normal file open dialogue box If you edit the cell directly you must ensure that you

capture the path and file name correctly

Optionally modify the output folder and grouping file name You can double click

output folder cell to select the folder from a dialogue box

Optionally edit the hide zeros range

You can edit the cell links in row 7 Please ensure that you enter valid cell references

Edit the parameters by capturing from and to values and toggling the Y N flags for

the various options

Enter applicable email information like the email address that the email should be

sent to or who should be cc‟d etc

Optionally set an output folder and grouping file name for the row

Populate additional lines by either capturing the detail from scratch or simply use

normal Excel copy and paste to create a new line and then change only those fields

that you want different Insert additional rows if the default number is not enough

Executing the Report Set

Once you have completed populating the report set definition it can be saved as a normal

Excel spreadsheet When you are ready to execute the report set definition close all other Excel workbooks and then do one of the following

To execute only a few rows of the report set definition first highlight the applicable

rows (or a cell in each row) and then click the execute range button

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 59: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

80

To execute one or more report set definition sheets first select the applicable sheets

and then click the execute sheet button

To execute all the definition sheets in the current workbook click the execute all

button

Report manager will validate the definition and if all checks are passed the reports will be generated

Report Manager Validation

Report manager first validates all the definition rows that will be executed If any errors are

found the process will be stopped and the errors will be marked in red An Excel note will be

added to provide more information about the error

If all rows to be executed pass validation you will receive a message indicating how many

reports will be created and which printer will be used for any rows where the print option is marked with Y At this stage you can cancel the process or you can click ldquoYesrdquo to continue

Report Generation

If you click Yes Report manager will open the GL Wand report and loop through all the

selected report set definition rows and create a report for the criteria on that row The

applicable output formats will be created and if requested the report will be printed

The output report name and folder location will depend on the options that you have

specified on the report set definition The output folder location will be determined as follows

If an output folder is specified on the row the report will be saved in that folder

Else if you specify an output folder on the header level that folder will be used

Else the report will be saved in the folder where the source GL Wand report is located

The file name will be determined as follows

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 60: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

81

If a grouping file name is specified on the row then all output from that row will be

grouped into the specified file name

Else if you specify a grouping file name on the header level then all output will be

grouped into that specified file name

Else the file name will be generated using the source GL Wand report name suffixed

with a concatenation of the segment or period values used in the generation of that

report eg ldquoProfit and Loss ndash Jan-07 ndash 100rdquo might be the profit and loss output report

for January 2007 and department 100

It is obviously possible for many of the generated reports to use the same folder and file name In this case GL Wand will append all the report output into a single Excel workbook

During the validation process GL Wand will check if any of the output files to be used already

exist If they do exist you will receive a warning If you choose to continue the report

manager output will be appended to the existing files

If you requested the report to be emailed an email message will be created and populated

with the To CC Bcc Subject and Text and the applicable file will be attached

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

Sending email requires Microsoft Outlook GroupWise or Lotus Notes as your mail client

Excel must have the focus while the Report Manage process executes If you attempt to

perform other tasks on the PC while the process is running you will notice that Excel

continually takes the focus

Once the process is completed each executed row will be marked in green if it was

successfully processed or in red if it was not Any unsuccessful rows will include a note in column B to provide any available information about what caused the problem

It is possible to include multiple report set definitions in a single workbook To do this simply

open an existing Report Manager workbook and click the Create button under the Report

Manager menu A new sheet will now be added to the existing workbook instead of a new

workbook being created You can also use normal Excel functionality to copy a sheet from

one Report Manager workbook to another

Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)

- Balance

- Journal

- Sub Ledger

- Sub Ledger (R12) (Only visible on an Oracle release 12 system for sub ledger accounting (SLA))

- OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 61: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

82

When GL Wand is installed each of the drill down reports is configured with a default layout

You can edit the default layout using these options When you select one of the options a form opens which allows you to modify the fields included in this layout

You can modify the layout using the following options

Select one or more (using shift) items in the list of available fields and click add to

include them in the layout

Select one or more (using shift) items in the current layout and click remove to

exclude them from the layout

Use the Up Down Top and Bottom buttons to re-order the fields in the layout

Click and drag items from the available fields to the selected fields to include them in

the layout

Click and drag items in the selected fields to change their order

Click ldquoDefaultrdquo to return the layout to the GL Wand standard

Tip To immediately see the impact of your changes to a drill down layout first delete the

currently open drill sheet eg Journal and then re-execute the drill down to see the edited

layout Alternatively close any open drill workbooks and then start a new drill down

PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)

- Export selected range to PDF

- Export selected sheets to PDF

- Export all the sheets in the current workbook to PDF

Export to PDF allows you to export a highlighted range the selected sheets or the entire

workbook to a PDF file This feature can be used on any Excel spreadsheet It does not

require a GL Wand report to function Start by setting your page setup options to ensure

that the report will be produced in the correct way eg landscape versus portrait as well as

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages
Page 62: Version · Identify the segment number to GL Wand by selecting the relevant segment from the segment list dropdown. Select “Discover Hierarchy” from the Discover menu. GL Wand

83

print size Then click the applicable PDF button under the Tools menu on the GL Wand

toolbar or simply right click in a cell A temporary PDF file will be created with the selected

output from Excel and will be opened in the default PDF viewer If you wish to keep this file

click the Save As button in the PDF Viewer and save the file in the correct folder with an appropriate name

Please note that in order to create PDF output the required component ldquoPDF Creatorrdquo must

be installed It is available for download at httpwwwexcel4appscompdf

About GL Wand

- About GL Wand

This button brings up the about box for the GL Wand application

You can use this window to

see which version of the product you are running

see your site information like GL Wand key expiry date licensed users etc

see what version of the e-Business Suite and Oracle database you are running

request a license key for the current instance

log a support request

Help

- Help

Use the help button to access the latest online version of the help file

  • Quick start guide
  • New features
    • Release 405
    • Release 389
    • Release 385
    • Release 380
      • About ldquoDemoxlsrdquo tutorial
      • Install add-in on PC
        • Installation files
        • PC Installation
        • Uninstalling GL Wand
        • Installation Problems
        • Installing PDF Creator
          • PDF Creator on Vista
              • Connect to Vision
                • Connection details
                • About the test instance
                • Test instance performance
                  • Using GL Wand
                    • Toolbar
                    • The Menu
                    • Shortcut keys
                    • Logging on
                      • Oracle Logon Method
                      • Excel Logon Method
                      • Descriptive Flexfields
                      • Proxy Authentication
                      • License Key
                        • Set of Books and Segment Selector
                          • Set of Books
                          • Segments
                            • Discovering
                              • Discover Segment Values
                              • Discover Period Names
                              • Discover Properties
                              • Discover Child Ranges
                              • Discover Hierarchy
                              • Toggle Discover Level
                                • Expand
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                  • Expand Hierarchy (Full)
                                    • Undo Expand
                                    • Refresh Expand
                                    • Explode Report
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (1 Level)
                                      • Explode Hierarchy (Full)
                                        • Open List of Values
                                        • Create List of Values
                                        • Functions
                                          • Get Balance
                                          • Segment Description
                                          • Next Segment Value and Previous Segment Value
                                          • Parent Flag
                                          • Enabled Flag
                                          • Account Type
                                          • Period Name
                                          • Set of Books Name
                                          • Segment Descriptive Flexfield
                                          • Period Offset
                                          • Split Text
                                          • Combine Text
                                          • Functional Currency
                                          • Get Daily Rate
                                          • Function return values
                                            • Discovering versus Functions
                                            • Special Get Balance Criteria
                                              • Account Combinations
                                              • Expand Account Combinations
                                              • Segment Descriptive Flexfields
                                                • Calculating
                                                  • Calculate Range Sheet or All
                                                  • GL Wand calculation on or off
                                                  • Calculation progress and stopping a calculation
                                                    • Snapshot
                                                    • Hide zeros
                                                    • Undo Hide Zeros (Tools Menu)
                                                    • Drill downs
                                                      • Oracle Global Consolidation System
                                                      • Summary Balance Drill Down
                                                      • Drill Down Batching
                                                        • Drill to My Layout
                                                        • Drill Downs ndash Calculated Excel Columns
                                                        • Sort Drill Report
                                                        • Configuration Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                        • Options (Tools Menu)
                                                          • Connections
                                                          • Upgrade
                                                          • Disable Summary Account Checking
                                                          • HTTP Packet Size
                                                          • Trace Mode
                                                          • Logon Method
                                                          • Show secured segment values
                                                          • Show disabled segment values
                                                          • Budget Upload
                                                          • Parent Cache Option
                                                          • Enable Drill Down Batching and Batch Size
                                                          • Report Manager
                                                            • Create Drill Criteria Sheet (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Report Wizard (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Audit Get Balance (Tools Menu)
                                                            • Convert FSG (Tools Menu)
                                                              • Import Definition
                                                              • Merge Low High Segment Ranges
                                                                • Report Manager (Tools Menu)
                                                                  • Report Set Definition
                                                                  • Modifying the Criteria
                                                                  • Executing the Report Set
                                                                  • Report Manager Validation
                                                                  • Report Generation
                                                                    • Edit Default Drill Layout (Tools Menu)
                                                                    • PDF Export (Tools Menu and Right click in a cell)
                                                                    • About GL Wand
                                                                    • Help
                                                                      • Budget Wand
                                                                        • Budget Wand overview
                                                                        • Technical requirements
                                                                          • Installation Versions required
                                                                          • License key requirements
                                                                            • Installation
                                                                              • Client
                                                                              • Server
                                                                              • Profile options
                                                                                • Oracle required setup
                                                                                • Budget Wand components
                                                                                  • About box
                                                                                  • Toolbar changes
                                                                                  • Convert Get Balance
                                                                                  • Load Budget Wizard
                                                                                  • Setting the Load mode
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from selected cells ndash ldquoRrdquo ndash ldquoSrdquo ndash ldquoArdquo
                                                                                  • Validate and load budgets from input cells
                                                                                  • Debits and credits
                                                                                  • Monitor Budget Wand Concurrent requests
                                                                                  • Create List of Values
                                                                                    • Loading a Budget
                                                                                      • Validate and Load Budgets
                                                                                      • Handling Duplicate records
                                                                                      • Deleting duplicates
                                                                                      • Reporting duplicates
                                                                                        • Statuses and Error messages
                                                                                          • Load Budget Status
                                                                                          • Server Side Error Messages
                                                                                              • Reports Wand
                                                                                                • About Reports Wand
                                                                                                  • Reports Wand Licensing
                                                                                                    • Using Reports Wand basic features
                                                                                                      • Criteria Form
                                                                                                      • Executing the report
                                                                                                      • Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Calculating the Run Report Function
                                                                                                      • Refreshing Definitions
                                                                                                        • Customizing the output template
                                                                                                          • Report Header
                                                                                                          • Report Titles
                                                                                                          • Column Headings
                                                                                                          • Formatting
                                                                                                          • Deleting Columns
                                                                                                          • Adding Calculated Columns
                                                                                                          • Inserting user defined totals and aggregations ndash Report Footer
                                                                                                          • Format rows ndash First two rows of the report
                                                                                                          • Restrictions
                                                                                                            • Using Reports Wand advanced features
                                                                                                              • Working with pivot tables
                                                                                                              • Link one report to another report
                                                                                                              • Using functions that hyperlink to static values
                                                                                                                • Security
                                                                                                                • Creating Report Definitions
                                                                                                                  • Prerequisites
                                                                                                                  • Report Header
                                                                                                                  • SQL Statement
                                                                                                                  • Parameters
                                                                                                                  • Filters
                                                                                                                  • Default Report To
                                                                                                                  • Batching
                                                                                                                  • Assign the report
                                                                                                                      • Server Component
                                                                                                                      • Oracle Profile Options
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand All sets of books access
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Enable Extended Languages
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Get Balance Hint
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand HTTP Timeout
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand License Key
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Query Limit
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Track User Activity
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Upgrade Location
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand User
                                                                                                                        • GL Wand Budget Wand User
                                                                                                                          • Support
                                                                                                                            • Support Requests
                                                                                                                            • Enhancement Requests
                                                                                                                              • Error Messages