Contents

1. Introduction

2. Fractal Map Structure

3. Fractal Map

4. Colouring

5. Analysing the Profit & Loss Report

6. Further Information

1. Introduction

This document is intended to provide help for the "Profit & Loss Report" Fractal Map, available on the Fractal Edge homepage. It is assumed that you are familiar with Fractal Maps and are able to view the "Profit & Loss Report" Fractal Map in your browser. For help on viewing Fractal Maps through a Web Browser, using Fractal Maps and for further information, please refer to the Online Fractal Map User Guide.

2. Fractal Map Structure

The "Profit & Loss Report" contains data obtained from multiple worksheets in an Excel workbook dumped out of a widely used Finanical Analysis package. The worksheets contain "Profit & Loss" data for a company for the current month and year. There are 17 worksheets in the workbook, each belonging to a given Business Practice (Corporate, Industrial, ...), Office (New York, London, ...) or Support Service (Admin, Bus Dev, ...) and additionally a Global Total:

The original reports in an Excel workbook - a mess of numbers on 17 different worksheets

3. Fractal Map

The Fractal Map uses the same structure as the workbook, so the four types of worksheet (Business Practice, Office, Support Service and Global Total) are grouped into four circles at the top level.

The Profit & Loss Report for a company displayed in a Fractal Map - every line item can now be accessed in a single click.

Each circle representing an individual worksheet contains Expense and Revenue information for the relevant area of the business:

Each circle corresponding to a worksheet contains "Revenue" and "Expense" items

"Revenue" circles contain individual line items

"Expense" circles contain two groups. "Compensation" and "Other Expenses"

And each of the circles contain individual line items. "Other Expenses" Line Items

The result in this particular example is the structure and hence (position of circles) for each unit is exactly the same. This enables quick and easy comparisons of the performance between two or more areas at any level:

If green means "better than budget" and red means "worse than budget" then the fact that one unit has beaten their "Resellers" revenue target, while another has missed it is immediately obvious even from a high level.

4. Colouring

The Fractal Map is initially coloured by "06/03 Actual Vs Budget ($)" i.e. the dollar variance of the actual expenditure/revenue vs. the assigned budget for June 2003. The values are aggregated from the bottom line items to the top, for this and other dollar variance schemes, the values are summed giving the net position at each summary level. Looking at the result of applying this colour scheme, the top level circle of the Fractal Map is coloured dark green - comparing this to the legend at the bottom of the map immediately shows that the company's net income for June 2003 is positive.

The Colouring Legend - for this scheme, positive items are coloured green, negative items are coloured red.

Items with values greater than $1,500,000 are assigned the dark green colour shown at the far right of the colour legend and vice versa for items with values less than -$1,500,000 (dark red). Items with values between 0 and $1,500,000 are assigned a colour according to the colour gradient from grey to green as shown in the legend above. The same colouring principal applies for items with negative values between 0 and -$1,500,000 (grey to red).

When a different colouring scheme is selected from the "Colour By" dropdown box in the top right hand corner as shown below, the colouring of the Fractal Map changes and the legend at the bottom of the screen updates to reflect any changes in the colours or values used. A summary of each of the colour schemes is shown in the following table:

5. Analysing the Profit & Loss Report

As mentioned above it is evident that the company's net income for June 2003 is positive (indicated by the dark green colour of the top level circle), according to the colouring legend, the value is greater than (or equal to) $1,500,000. The exact value for a given item is shown in tooltips which are demonstrated below. Examining the Offices in more detail shows the following:

Point the mouse over the Offices circle and click to zoom in

The Offices circle is enlarged to show further detail

Looking at the five offices, it is immediately evident that Paris and London are performing well, New York and Tokyo are doing slightly better than budget and that Frankfurt is behind budget. To see the associated values for a given circle, hold the mouse still over a circle or label and a tooltip appears. 

Hold the mouse still over a circle to display the tooltip

The tooltip displays the values associated with the circle that the mouse is held over in this case "Paris Operating Income"

The tooltips above show the underlying values for "Paris Operating Income". The budget for June 2003 was $1,235,688, the actual amount was $2,460,389, a positive difference of $1,224,701 ("06/03 Actual vs Budget ($)"). Although Paris "Revenues" for June 2003 performed very well, it is also evident that they have gone over budget on "Expenses" - indicated by the dark red colouring. Examining the "Revenues" and "Expenses" in further detail shows the main contributors were "Royalties" and "Incentives" respectively:

The main contributor towards Paris "Revenues" is "Royalties"

The main contributor towards Paris "Expenses" is "Incentives"

By selecting a different colouring scheme from the Colour By dropdown in the top right hand corner, other values and trends can be analysed:   

Click on the Colour By dropdown arrow to view the available schemes

Select the "06/03 Actual vs Budget (%)" scheme

The Fractal Map now shows the performance for June 2003 against budget in percentage terms

Overall Paris has performed 99.10% better than expected for June 2003

There are hundreds of things a manager or controller might want to look at in this Profit & Loss Report, but it should already be clear that the use of a Fractal Map can greatly reduce the time taken to access and analyse it overall and in detail, allowing it to be more thoroughly understood and resulting it is hoped in more timely and better informed decisions.

6. Further Information

For further information, please refer to the following links:

Online Fractal Map User Guide
Online Fractal Map Examples
Terms of Use for Online Fractal Maps
Fractal:Edge Case Studies
Fractal:Edge Products
About Fractal:Edge