Hello ​@cwilliver 

Are you utilizing the Load function to automatically load information from the work side into Financials?  You can setup a job stream to do this and choose what model, version, time range to load into while choosing to load Actuals &/or schedule.  We have this same process and run the job stream 4 times a day so that users can utilize the column sets we have built based on financial data points and see updated data throughout the day. 

Here is a link to a page in CSC that talks about loading financial plans: https://success.planview.com/Planview_Portfolios/Administration/Job_Stream_Management/010_Creating%2C_Editing%2C_or_Deleting_a_Job_Stream/Financial_Plan_Load_Job_Parameters

Best regards,

Pam Sargent (NASCO)

Hi ​@pamela.sargent thank you for replying. I think i was fundamentally misunderstanding how the versions of a financial plan work.  I am only working with expenditures and was thinking if I imported (or manually entered) the actuals into one version and forecast amounts into another 2nd version, that there was some way to have these two versions of the financial plan to be consolidated and viewed in a 3rd version.  After experimenting I see now that is not how the system works and that my Forecast version will contain a mix of both actuals and forecast.  If my understanding still appears wrong please share your feedback with me. Otherwise thank you again for taking the time to reply to my ‘newbie’ question.

Cheers

​@cwilliver - you are correct that the best practice is to load everything into the same version, actuals & forecasts.  This allows better full visibility to the big picture. You can then create subtotal fields that can just display the forecast and then another to just display actuals. This allows the PMs to see the split between the two within a portfolio view column set.  The one thing that is difficult for them to understand is that the actual & forecast depiction is based on the setting of the first forecast period on the model. This means if you set the first forecast period to the current month then the actuals for the current month, within Financials & financial columns, are reflected as forecast. 

One thing we did was to put everything into one version but then we have a second version for just loading actuals. This allowed us to do some different reporting to even see mid-month actuals, but was advised this is not a suggested method. 

Best of luck to you,

Pam

you’re a legend. thanks ​@pamela.sargent