Dimensions overview

A dimension is a classification system used to organize, sort, and report on your company information in meaningful ways. Think of a dimension as a tag with a set of values related to transactions and entries. Every transaction can be tagged with multiple dimension values to help you identify the transaction and report on it.

Dimensions allow you to customize financial reports around specific business activities to capture key metrics central to your business, such as the following:

  • Your most profitable or most costly items or customers.
  • The return on investment of a project or department.
  • Whether and to what degree a new product or product line is successful.
  • Which way a particular aspect of your business is trending.

Dimensions drive visibility into the parts of your business that matter most.

Dimension relationships

Think of dimensions as having relationships that allow you to preset dimension values in a transaction based on other dimension values in the same transaction. For example, if you always use the same location for a customer, you can create a relationship between the Customer and Location dimensions. This relationship sets the Location value to autofill every time you create a transaction for that customer.

Dimension setup considerations

When you set up dimensions for your company, there are considerations that will make the most of your dimensions. As you set up dimensions, keep in mind your reporting needs, security, and workflows to ensure that your setup is aligned with your organization's needs.

Consider the following needs: 

Reporting

  • Yes or no?
    • Multiple entities
    • Consolidation
    • Detail the current chart structure and plan for change
    • Common chart of accounts
  • External reports
    • Tax filings
    • Published financials
    • Other compliance guidelines
  • Internal report audiences
    • Executive and board reports
    • Internal reporting centers
  • Reporting basis needs
  • Discrete start and stop dates

Security

  • Data entry (yes or no?)
    • Independent entity access control
    • Internal departmental access control
    • Employee users control for project time or expenses
  • Reporting access concerns
  • Drill-down access restrictions

Workflow

  • Areas of approval desired
    • Purchasing employee
    • Expenses
    • Timesheets project and grant costs
    • General journal
  • Structure of approvals for each area
  • Budget checking

Standard vs. user-defined dimensions

Sage Intacct gives a set of standard dimensions right out of the box, ready to be enabled. You can use them as is, or repurpose them, as needed.

You can create user-defined dimensions and add your own business logic and custom fields to tailor them to your specific business needs. User-defined dimensions become available throughout the company wherever dimensions are displayed. Use your user-defined dimensions in the same way as standard dimensions.

For example, a software company with several product lines creates a user-defined dimension called Line of Business. This dimension uses the values Direct customers, Channel partners, and OEM.

Another example is a user-defined dimension is Facility that uses values specific to the following facility types: Hospital, Day Care, and Residential.

Additional fees can apply for user-defined dimensions. Contact your account representative for more information.

Mix and match standard and user-defined dimensions to report on all aspects of your business.

Standard dimensions + user-defined dimensions = your unique operational and strategic insights.

Standard dimensions

The following standard dimensions are available in Intacct:

  • Affiliate entity (with multi-entity environment and subscription to Consolidation)
  • Asset (with subscription Fixed Assets Management)
  • Class
  • Contract (with subscription to Contracts)
  • Cost type (dependent on Project and Task dimensions and subscription to Construction)
  • Customer
  • Department
  • Employee
  • Item
  • Location
  • Project (basic or with subscription to Project applications)
  • Task (dependent on Project dimension and subscription to Projects)
  • Vendor
  • Warehouse (with subscription to Inventory)
  • Work order
If you subscribe to certain applications, related dimensions are automatically enabled. You do not need to use these dimensions, but you cannot deactivate them.

The Construction subscription enables the project, task, and cost type dimensions.

The Fixed Assets Management subscription enables the asset dimension.

Examples of how to use dimensions

Examples of what you can do with dimensions
Dimension What you can do Example

Location

Create a hierarchy of locations to reflect how locations are organized within your company.

West Coast Division

  • California
    • Northern
    • Southern
  • Nevada
  • Utah

Department

Create a hierarchy of departments to reflect how departments are organized within your company.

East Coast Division

  • Engineering
    • Software
    • Hardware
  • Sales
  • Marketing

Distribution Method

Create a user-defined dimension.
  • Reseller
  • Direct

Common questions

The following are some common questions related to dimensions.

After you implement the standard dimensions and create any new dimensions, Sage Intacct distributes your dimensions everywhere that you want to access them:

  • Transactions: On the transaction entry pages, you can select the dimensions that you want to propagate to the general ledger. By selecting dimensions in transactions, such as bills or invoices, you organize operational and financial information to be sliced and diced any way that you need to gain insight into your business.
  • Reports: Dimensions are a core component of reporting. They allow you to track performance instantly by different business drivers as your strategies and operations change. By using dimensions in reporting, you can create almost limitless ways of viewing your information and capturing key metrics.

Almost all reports support the use of dimensions.

In some situations, dimension use is limited to specific dimensions, as listed below.

Application Page name/functionality Supported dimensions

Accounts Payable

Apply Payments (Overpayments) and Bill Backs
  • Department
  • Location

Projects

Project Information

  • Class
  • Customer
  • Department
  • Location
  • Task

Consolidations

Advanced Consolidations

  • Department
  • Location
Construction

Construction

The Construction subscription enables the project, task, and cost type dimensions. While use is optional, you cannot disable these dimensions. As a WBS best practice, use the dimensions together to build the project hierarchy. The project is independent of tasks or cost types. Tasks are unique to a specific project; and cost types depend on the existence of the project and task dimensions. The uniqueness of a cost type is bound to a specific project and task, meaning you cannot select a cost type without first identifying the project and task in that project.

When you deactivate a dimension value, it does not appear in your dropdown lists. This helps prevent the creation of new transactions using that dimension value.

The dimension value still exists within Intacct. Deactivating a dimension value does not affect your financial reporting; the dimension value still rolls up to the top level of the hierarchy at the time the report is run.

The Construction subscription enables the project, task, and cost type dimensions. While use is optional, you cannot disable these dimensions.

For example, you deactivate a location dimension: 

  • Your California location dimension has Northern California and Southern California child dimensions.

  • Your Southern California location closes in June, so you deactivate the dimension value.

At the end of the year, you need to run reports that include information for the Southern California location. You cannot run a report on Southern California because it’s deactivated, but you can run a report on California for the year. Intacct automatically rolls up all transactions including the Southern California location and displays in your California report.

You cannot deactivate a dimension after it has been used in a transaction.

You can update your user preferences to view inactive dimensions when filtering reports. In the General preferences section, under Report filters, select Show all values.

Some dimensions include an extra status option: Active non-posting.

If a dimension member has the Active non-posting status, that dimension can no longer be used for transactions. It no longer appears in the transaction selection dropdown lists. Setting this status prevents anyone from posting a transaction entry to that dimension.

The Active, non-posting status is similar to the Inactive status, but you can easily select the dimension for reporting.

The following dimensions can be set to Active non-posting:

  • Department
  • Location
  • Class
  • Customer
  • Vendor
  • Project (if subscribed)

For example, you have a parent department named Management that has child departments that represent cost centers: Accounting, HR, Executives, and IT.

  • Transactions are recorded into the correct cost center area.

  • For reporting purposes you want to roll these other departments up to the Management department, showing a combined management cost centers amount.

  • You want each department value to be part of the Management department, but you do not want anyone posting directly to the Management department.

Set the Management department to Active, non-posting, and add the other departments as children.