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Different information in Analytics vs Reports

Chaya Ferguson
$organization

I am a beginner Analytics user. I've taken a bunch of the online Analytics courses and am trying to improve my skills. One of the main issues I have with analytics is my dashboard showing different information than my reports.

For example I am pulling a Fund Activity Report with the only filter as "appeal" for a particular appeal. When I do that I get a total of $41,477.97

However, when I set up my dashboard (contribution cube) with the same filtered appeal with no other filters and add a widget for "contribution amount" I'm getting a significantly lower number $23,903

When I use the finance cube I get an even lower amount $20,119.63

I've done a bunch of playing around and making sure no other filters are present. I cannot figure out why my Fund Activity report has the correct amount for this Appeal but I cannot get a dashboard to reflect that amount. 

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  • $organization

    Hi Chaya,

    This would have to be matched with the Finance data source. Confirm that you've read the Processing Summary for the Fund Activity Report to make sure your dashboard includes any baked in logic that might not be apparent from the report parameters or output. Also read the Parameters section and make sure they're doing what you think they're doing and that the dashboard is configured to align with the parameters as you've configured them in your report run. Use the Finance Cube Field Definitions to assist. 

    Then keep going with your exploration on the differences comparing Constituent level outputs and looking at the details of individual constituents and their gifts that don't align.

    Hope that gets you going.
    Chris

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  • $organization

    Hi Chaya,

    This would have to be matched with the Finance data source. Confirm that you've read the Processing Summary for the Fund Activity Report to make sure your dashboard includes any baked in logic that might not be apparent from the report parameters or output. Also read the Parameters section and make sure they're doing what you think they're doing and that the dashboard is configured to align with the parameters as you've configured them in your report run. Use the Finance Cube Field Definitions to assist. 

    Then keep going with your exploration on the differences comparing Constituent level outputs and looking at the details of individual constituents and their gifts that don't align.

    Hope that gets you going.
    Chris

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  • $organization in reply to Chris Wallingford

    Thanks Chris I've tried the Finance Cube with Contribution Amount and Filtered by only the Appeal as well as trying the Contributions cube. The finance cube produces an even lower amount then the contributions cube did. I'm really stuck and can't figure out why it's not including all the contributions. I don't see anything in the Processing Summary or Field Definitions that would provide such different results. 

    I'm wondering if the issue is with the "Divisions". I don't think we have any Divisions set up, but this line in the Cube description is the only one I could see causing an issue "Data visibility in this cube is determined by the batch type group and GL account control groups. See Divisions for more information."

    But, I've used the finance cube before and it's given the correct numbers. It's something with how filtering by appeal is affecting it I think

  • $organization in reply to Chaya Ferguson

    I spent a little time on this Chaya,

    While I was able to produce a lot of results that aligned with the report, I found two major "gotchas"...

    Control Group Security: the Fund Activity Report uses the control groups on the Funds as the criteria by which your current User Group is able to see certain funds in the report output. The Tessitura Analytics Finance data source uses the control groups from the Batch Type Group and GL Account as the criteria by which your current Division is able to see certain transactions in Analytics. Your User Group is mapped to a Division and the Division may have different control groups associated with it that your User Group. Add to that you may have control group permission to a given Fund making the associated contributions visible to you in the report, but not the Batch Type Group and GL Account associated with the related contributions' transactions making the contributions not visible in the Analytics Finance data source.
     
    Transaction Date: in Analytics the Transaction Date holds the Payment Date on payments, while the Fund Activity Report uses payments' related Transaction Date. This can lead to payments being included in the Fund Activity Report that have payment dates that are outside the range of the selected Transaction Date range parameters of the report. This dashboard will not include those payments when a Transaction Date range is set. To work around the issue, include all Transaction Dates on both the report and this dashboard, and focus instead on the Posting Date or Contribution Date.
  • $organization in reply to Chris Wallingford

    Thanks for this detail and taking the time to help me work through this. I think it might be the control group scenario that is tripping me up; however all transactions are done with the same Batch Type Group so it would be very curious for some transactions to be pulling and some not to be. We only use one Batch Type Group for contributions. I don't have access to Tessitura security so I'll have to reach out to my IT team to look into it.

    I don't think that Transaction Date is the issue as I am not setting a Transaction Date for the Report or for the Dashboard. I'm trying to look at all dates for the Appeal so haven't been setting any dates at all.