Concept: Hierarchies in Plans and Budgets in AP&C

You can use hierarchical relationships to link your plans and budgets in Adaptive Planning and Consolidation (AP&C). Workday provides 2 unique hierarchy types, true parent-child and virtual parent-child. With these plan hierarchies:

Your organizations can create separate plan structures.

You can generate structures at different levels of detail.

In Workday, the plan structure is the linking mechanism for these relationships.

True and Virtual Hierarchy Comparison

This table compares true and virtual plan hierarchies:

	True Hierarchy	Virtual Hierarchy
Purpose	Defines a top-down process for plan entry. The parent plan structure defines the summary details and the plan amount, which are passed down to its child plan structure.	Enables you to link an unlimited number of plan structures to create aggregated reports.
Hierarchy Levels	Unlimited number of hierarchy levels. Parent-child relationship is a 1-to-1 relationship.	2 hierarchy levels. Parent can have many children, and child can have many parents. Plans or budgets used in a true hierarchy can also be a virtual child.
Plan Types	Financial	Parent and children must be Financial.
Structured Dimensions	Child must have all structured dimensions of the parent. Child can have more structured dimensions than the parent. Must be required.	Parent can have any structured dimension as long as it exists on at least 1 child. Child can have more structured dimensions than the parent. Can be optional, but if they're required on the parent, they must be required on all children.
Dimension Members	Child must be a subset or the same as the parent.	Child must be a subset or the same as the parent.
Time Periods	Child must be a subset or the same as the parent so it can roll up into the parent time periods.	Child must be a subset or the same as the parent so it can roll up into the parent time periods. Child must contain at least 1 time period defined in the parent.
Amounts	Child must be equal to or less than the parent. Amendments on the child cascade up to the parent.	Parent has no amounts of its own because virtual parents are summarized totals of their children. Cannot be entered or changed directly in the parent.