Concept: Linked Accounts

How Linked Accounts Work

Although

Link

is part of the

Type

setting, it doesn't change the type of the account, which remains periodic or cumulative.

How Link Overrides Work

Use Cases for Linked Accounts

Goal	Example
Calculate and plan general ledger data with dimensions, metrics, and other drivers in a modeled or cube sheet. You still want the data roll up to a general ledger total.	The data of a personnel modeled sheet drives salary expenses per individual employee. Create a general ledger salary account as a child of the general ledger Expense account. Link the child account to the salary generated in the modeled sheet. The salary expense rolls up to the general ledger Expense total with all the other expenses. See Example: Linked Accounts for Expenses.
Pivot data from a modeled or cube sheet to present clean and clear totals.	A personnel modeled sheet displays the salary of each employee per location dimension. Pivot that data in a cube sheet to display the total salary expense per location without showing the employees. See Example: Linked Accounts for Expenses
Plan with multiple dimensions and use only some of those dimensions in another account.	A cube sheet plans revenue by product, location, customer, and more. The general ledger needs the revenue by product category. Create a general ledger revenue account for each product category and link each account to the dimension-filtered revenue of the cube. See Example: Linked Accounts for Dimensions and Revenue.
Create intuitive formulas using general ledger account codes with the dimensions from the model or cube sheets.	Link general ledger accounts to cube and modeled accounts. In formulas, reference the general ledger account codes instead of referencing the long and unintuitive account codes of modeled and cube accounts. Then, you can add the dimensions. Example: Linked Accounts for Dimensions and Revenue.
Plan with custom dimensions, while keeping a simple general ledger hierarchy that more closely mirrors your ERP system.	Link several expense accounts from 2 personnel modeled sheets into a single general ledger expense account. To simplify a complex account structure down to a single general ledger account, apply the Spend Category custom dimension values to each linked account. See Example: Multi-Source Linked Accounts with Applied Dimensions.

Performance Limitations

Certain linked account configurations and usage patterns are more likely to degrade performance or produce unexpected results. To reduce the chance of encountering performance issues and the severity of the encountered problems, we recommend that you avoid these most common problematic configurations or usage patterns:

Configuration or Usage Pattern	Limitation
Long chains of linked accounts	If you use 3 or more links in a chain from one sheet or account to another, performance degrades, especially when the originating sheet contains a lot of data. These chains increase compute time linearly because you propagate cells in all dependent sheets. Avoid intermediate links when you can, and keep the data source as close as possible to the destination.
Linking from merged cubes	Linking an account to a merged cube as a source causes performance issues, particularly during import changes. This happens because calculating the output of a merged cube spreads data across upstream accounts.
Circular references	Avoid configuring circular references in linked accounts. The system will identify and alert you about circular references in many cases, but not all of them. Circular references lead to performance degradation and potential data issues because the system can't clearly determine data paths, and processing occurs out of order.
Using passthrough sheets to drop or add dimensionality	When you use passthrough sheets to link an account to a sheet to remove dimensionality, performance often degrades. Linked accounts weren't designed for this, and this use case increases the number of chained link accounts from origin to target.
Using applied dimensions for creative use cases	When you use applied dimensions for purposes like report formatting, you significantly increase the number of links.
Linking from accounts other than modeled or cube accounts	The system generally doesn't support linking from metric, system, or custom and standard accounts as provider accounts. Trying to link to these accounts can result in configuration errors or unexpected behavior.
Configuration with actuals	Linking accounts that pull from actuals causes performance degradation and is often unnecessary. When you select Show actuals if linked account has them , plan values link from the actuals version, which impacts performance. If you only need the account value for plan versions, we recommend that you select Enable actuals for link in the Linked filters section. If the account values are only necessary for plan versions, we recommend that you select Data Entry for your Override Link Setting on your actuals versions.
Many links on a given sheet or across the instance	If you add hundreds or thousands of links on an instance or a specific sheet, performance degrades. The impact depends on how complex the model is for the accounts that the link uses.
Provider accounts pointing to root or rollup levels	When a provider account is a calculated account that points to a root or rollup level, it impacts performance. This creates more dependencies as the system calculates and aggregates additional data.