Design help for Financial Reporting

[adam_mc]

Using Cognos 10.2 and Transformer Cubes.
We are using cubes for report porformance reason (business wants the ability to quickly navigate between P&L statements for any store, head-office, or departmental reporting.

Currently, the account rollups (provided by the business) and hence if I create an Account Hierarchy it would be either "unbalanced" or "ragged".
I'm not sure that this is best for my reporting needs.

For the P&L Statement, in the data provided by the business most accounts rollup from a full 8 sub-levels of details (and all levels are present - If not, necessarily needed).
Sub-Account level 8 represents the actual detail account.
However, in a few there are entries in various levels, but others are null/missing.

For example (these also have corresponding account numbers):
Level1              Level2                           Level3   Level4   Level5     Level6                   Level7       Level8
Net Income      Income before Tax                                               Total Interest                         Interest Exp
Net Income                                                                                  Total Tax                                Deferred Tax Exp

The varous Levels shown are the summary totals to be shown on a P&L/Income Statement.

What is the best strategy to make this work as I need it in a Transformer Cube such that all potential account rollups can be reported?
Can I use a unbalanced hierarchy, or should all levels be created even if they are in effect  "dummy"/not-reportable levels.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreicated.
Thanks in advance,
Adam

[bdbits]

Personally I have never set things up with "missing" levels like that. Varying the depth is fine (e.g. with org trees) and works fine. So I would use the "dummy" levels you alluded to.

It is curious to me, since this is P&L I would think you would always have a parent level. Usually those levels correspond to reporting sections/levels, and I would think you nearly always want a pretty strict hierarchical relationship as you move down the statement. Ah well, there are always exceptions to everything it seems.