Sometimes you want to analyse your sales based on common values like for example product category, sales person and/or sales territory. You can change the way the data is reported by electing to either use the values that were saved at the time of the invoice or the current value for those master file fields.
Reporting on historical product categories, sales persons and sales territories
The product category, sale person and sale territory that was current at the time of a sale invoices is recorded on the sale invoice. If you build an analysis report from sale invoice lines and report on any of those fields you will get an analysis based on the value of those fields at the time the sale invoice was posted.This allows you to group and total sales data based on the historical at time of sale invoice values of product categories, sales persons and/or sales territories. This is required for some reports, like sales commissions.
Reporting on current product categories, sales persons and sales territories
The current product category, sale person and sale territory exist on the product for the sale invoice line and on the customer for the sale invoice header. If you drag the current product category, sale invoice line's sale invoice's customer sales person or territory onto the analysis report. You will get an analysis based on the value of those fields using the current values. This allows you to group and total sales data based on the current values of product categories, sales persons and/or sales territories. This is required if you want to see how your sales history breaks up based on your current master file data which may have changed since the sales occurred.
Note that all the cubes are built from historical data at the time of the sale invoice. To run your analysis against current values, you have to set the data source of your analysis report to sale invoice lines. You will then be able to drag the current master file fields onto the report. The historical values will still be saved on the invoice and invoice line. But your report will ignore them and use the current values if you drag the current values onto the report..