Workday Adaptive Planning has created a powerful budgeting and forecasting interface for its customers. Adaptive’s out-of-the-box planning functionality can help a Finance or Operational Planning team member drive a faster and more strategic budgeting or forecast cycle.
One of the key functionalities available to its end users is the ability to enter formulas on the fly to generate plan values. This powerful functionality is not available in many other competitive products. In this post, we will walk you through some handy formulas that can be used to expedite your planning efforts!
Formulas can be entered in the formula bar at the top of an input screen after clicking in the cell in which you want to add a formula. You can also right-click on a given cell and utilize the Formula Assistant.
Same Value as Same Period Last Year
ACCT.this[time=this-12]
Places the same value from the prior year same period into your desired cell. Ex: Apr 2021 would grab the value from Apr 2020.
Average Value for Account from Last Year
divf(ACCT.this[time=this.year-1],12)
Takes the total of the last completed fiscal year for that account and divides it by 12 and places it into the desired cell.
Account’s Value for Last Year as a Percent of Revenue, Multiplied by this Period’s Revenue
divf (ACCT.this[time=this.year-1], ACCT.4000_Revenue[time=this.year-1])*ACCT.4000_Revenue
Takes the total of the last completed fiscal year for that account and divides it by the total of another account (Revenue in this example) to get a percentage and then applies that percentage against the denominator account (Revenue) and places that value into the desired cell.
Rolling 12 Month Average
divf(ACCT.this[time=this-12:this-1],12)
Takes the total of the previous twelve months and divides it by 12 to get an average for the rolling 12. Note – this formula takes the previous 12 months for each month, so months later in your year may be taking a combination of actual periods and forecast periods. To lock in what 12 months you’d like to use, see the next formula.
12 Month Average
divf(ACCT.this[time=Apr_2020:Mar_2021],12)
Takes the total of a defined timespan and averages it and places it in the cell. In this example, we are taking the 12 month span from Apr 20 to Mar 21 and dividing 12. You can choose any time period if you’d like, could be 3 months or 18. Just make sure to change the denominator to the proper number of periods in your timespan.
