Data documents

A data document is an Excel workbook stored in the database, which provides you with the capability and flexibility of working with Excel within FINANCIALS. Data documents also support special named ranges which are automatically updated during calculation with values such as project information, exchange rates and prices (see Special named ranges and Create a special named range in a Data Document). Common uses for data documents include: 

  • Modeling of tariff and cost-share agreements
  • "First pass" calculation of economic limit before the main calculation
  • Specific contract prices (e.g. based on volume)
  • Linking output from an existing Excel model into a FINANCIALS project (see Link a project to a data document)
  • Free-flow calculations not handled by standard Regimes
  • Project interdependencies

To create a data document, simply drag-and-drop your .xls or .xlsx files into the Documents Explorer from the Windows Explorer.

Note: If you are using functions in your data documents, please be aware that not all of them are supported by FINANCIALS due to the use of third-party components which allow spreadsheets to be evaluated outside of Microsoft Excel. For the list of supported functions, see Supported spreadsheet functions.

FINANCIALS offers two types of data documents: Global Data Documents (GDD) and Hierarchy Data Documents (HDD); both are stored in the database and can be used for the same purposes. The differences are explained in the table below.

Global Data Document Hierarchy Data Document
Stored and managed in the Documents Explorer Stored and managed in individual hierarchies
Access control on the document level (see Item Permissions) Access control on the hierarchy level
Available to all projects in the database Available only to projects in the hierarchy: projects can read HDDs from higher levels but not from lower levels.
  If you copy a node to which an HDD is attached, all the links in the projects will be automatically updated to the new location.
  While exporting a hierarchy, HDDs can also be exported together with the links they contain. The imported hierarchy will retain these links.
  You can add several HDDs to one node. This is especially useful for "what if" scenarios: you can create a variety of input data documents for a particular node.