Forum Discussion

kmd's avatar
kmd
Contributor II
21 days ago

Account Attribute: In Use versus Allow Input

Hi all,

We have hundreds of historical (no longer valid) accounts sitting in a cube and we are looking at ways of de-cluttering resulting data retrievals to avoid seeing them.  But additionally, we want to prevent any accidental loading to these accounts from the source system.

For reporting, I know we can populate one of the text fields with some text and then combine that with a Where() clause to filter out these old accounts.

But, from a data load perspective, just wondering what the risks / benefits are of utilizing either (or both) of the In Use or Allow Input attributes; to prevent accidental loading of data there.

  • We want to be able to continue to see any historical data for these accounts and be able to drilldown from the parent account and see that data.
  • There are no member formulas associated with these - they are all base accounts.
  • We don't care about the Scenario/Time specificity capability

If anyone is using these attributes would very much appreciate any recommendations or hearing what your experience has been (before we go through the effort of testing either of these options).

Many thanks,
K.

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2 Replies

  • chul's avatar
    chul
    Contributor III
    20 days ago

    I'm curious about this point:

    • We don't care about the Scenario/Time specificity capability

    You can change the InUse to False as of a certain time on the Default scenario type which will make that property valid for all scenarios. Allow input = False prevents imports, journals and forms data but calculations can still be written to those members.

  • Henning's avatar
    Henning
    Valued Contributor II
    17 days ago

    In addition to using the InUse setting, have you considered setting up an alternative hierarchy? E.g. adding a suffix to all existing parent accounts ("_pre2025") and create a new hierarchy without the historical accounts using your de-cluttered base accounts with the parents using the names without a suffix. That way you can still use all of your existing reports, you just need to create new reports for looking at historical data that includes the outdated accounts.

    Especially with hundreds of accounts, it seems to be at a point where creating a new hierarchy makes it all easier for the end-users as well as the admins.

    ...or if your business has changed substantially, or your ERP has changed, one could also consider starting in a new scenario... lots of options, depending on the requirements and the exact reason for the change.