What this article covers: How to build a model on the model page — adding sources, metrics and dimensions, linking source items to them, matching values to members, and saving.
Open a model from Organisation Settings → Business Data Builder by clicking its name or Edit model.
1. The Model Page
The header shows the model’s name, its data status, the template it started from and how many sources it reads. Click the pencil beside the name to change the model’s Name and Description.
Below the header is the canvas. On the left, Sources in model lists the model’s sources; click one to show it. In the middle, the Source cube shows the chosen source’s measures and dimensions, and the Model cube shows the model’s metrics, dimensions, Period, Entity and Scenario. A line between them is a link. Clicking a line or an item opens its settings in the panel beside the canvas.
⚠️ Changes are saved together. Every change on the page — sources, links, metrics, members, names — waits as Unsaved changes until you click Save. Discard drops them. Leaving the page with unsaved changes asks you first.
2. Adding a Source
Click + Add source under the sources list. Search by name, entity or dimension, and pick a source. A source the model already reads is marked Added.
Source
What it offers
Financial statements
Profit & Loss, Profit and Loss by Entity, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow. Their measures are the statement’s lines, read as the report prints them.
Operational data
The operational datasets of the organisation and the entities below it. A model’s own dataset is never offered back to it.
Each source in the list says how many metrics it feeds. To take a source out, click its trash icon and confirm; its links go with it when you save. The source’s own data is not touched.
3. Metrics
Click + Add beside Metrics and choose Metric or Formula metric. To feed a metric, click a measure in the source cube, then the metric. A metric can be fed by several measures, from one source or several, and they are added together. You can also drag a measure onto Drop here to add a metric to create a metric named after it, already fed by it.
Click a metric to edit it in the panel:
Setting
What it does
Name
The metric’s name, as reports and dashboards show it.
Fed by
The measures that feed a linked metric, by source. Click × to unlink one. The panel warns when a line that looks like a total is fed together with other lines, as the same money may be counted twice.
Formula
For a formula metric, click Edit formula and build it from the other metrics with the same builder as custom KPIs. A formula is worked out after the figures are totalled, so a ratio is the ratio of the totals.
Weighting
How months combine into a quarter or a year: Sum, First period, Last period, Average or Weighted. A formula metric can also stay on Default: a formula is then weighed by what it divides by, adds up when every term totals the same way, and is averaged otherwise.
Weighed by
For Weighted: the linked metric each month is weighed by — for example, the impressions behind an average position.
Format and Decimals
Currency, Number or Percentage, with 0–6 decimal places.
Description
An optional note about the metric.
Remove metric
Takes the metric out of the model, after you confirm.
4. Dimensions
A model holds up to four dimensions of your own. Click + Add beside Dimensions to open Add a dimension:
Tab
What it does
Empty
Creates a dimension with the name you enter. Type its members on the dimension afterwards.
Import members from a source field
Choose a source and one of its fields, then tick the values to use as members. Leave Link … to this dimension ticked to link the field to the new dimension.
Import from another model
Copies a dimension of another model of the organisation — its members and hierarchy, but not its links.
You can also drag a source field onto Drop here to add a dimension to create a dimension of its values, linked to it.
Click a dimension to edit it. Rename it at the top, type a name in + Member and click Add to add a member, and use the list beside each member to place it In another member or at the Top level — a parent member reads the figures of everything under it. Every dimension also holds Unassigned, for values no member takes, so totals still agree with the source.
5. Linking a Field to a Dimension
Click a field in the source cube, then a dimension in the model cube. The link panel shows how each of the field’s values lands on the dimension’s members:
Method
How values are matched
Auto
A value matches the member with the same name, ignoring capitals and spaces at either end. Under Match on part of the text, you can compare only part of each text: set where the source item and the model member start (from character) and how many characters to compare (length).
Manual
Pick the member for each value. Switching to Manual starts from what Auto matched, so only the exceptions need changing.
A value with no match goes to Unassigned. Click + Create member (or + New in Manual) to add a member named after it. Click Apply to keep the link, or Unlink to remove it. Click an existing line to open its link again.
6. Fields and Dimensions a Source Does Not Link
Item
Your choice
A source field not linked to a dimension
Click the field and choose Add up all values, or Use only one value.
Scenario
Without Scenario in the model, a source is read for one scenario — Actual unless you choose another for it. Scenarios are never added together.
A model dimension the source does not fill
Click the dimension and choose a member to Put all of the source’s data in, or leave it on Unassigned.
7. Period, Entity and Scenario
Item
How it works
Period
Always in the model. Every source fills it from its own months; there is nothing to set.
Entity
Tick Entity in model to keep each entity’s figures apart. Figures with no entity of their own, and a model without Entity, belong to the organisation that owns the model.
Scenario
Tick Scenario in model to keep Actual, Budget and Forecast side by side. Scenarios have no total.
8. Saving and Viewing
Click Save. The whole model is written at once and its data starts loading in the background; the status in the header changes to Up to date when it finishes. Click View to read the figures in the operational report viewer.
