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OBI Financial Reporting

Oracle Business Intelligence (OBI) is a suite of reporting and analysis tools in an easy to use interface. It is the most commonly used reporting tool at Stanford, enabling high quality business decisions through an integrated set of reporting and analysis capabilities.

OBI has one reporting interface, with a common data foundation. Dashboard users can quickly navigate across intuitive subject areas, drill into transaction details and save customizations. Data is integrated, consistent and accurate.

BI Publisher (BIP) reports have also been created for a limited number of special cases (primarily mimicking the previous reporting system for backwards compatibility). These reports are not drillable or customizable but can be scheduled while dashboards cannot. Refer to BI Publisher Reports and  OBI Guide: Scheduling BI Publisher Report Jobs for more information.

 OBI delivers the right tool to the right people with the right skill level:

  • Report Viewer authority: Pre-defined and interactive reports for administrative and financial staff, supporting customization and saving of customized reports.
  • Intermediate Ad Hoc authority: Robust and dynamic ad hoc analyses for budget officers and experienced financial analysts. Build reports from scratch and automate delivery.
Features Dashboard Ad Hoc BIP
Summarize and Pivot Data ✔ ✔ ✔
Change Sorts ✔ ✔  
Advanced Filters ✔ ✔ ✔
Alternate Views ✔ ✔ ✔
Drill to Detail ✔ ✔  
Save Customized Views ✔ ✔  
Share links to customized reports ✔ ✔  
Ad Hoc analyses   ✔  
Customize others analyses   ✔  
Advanced pivot of data   ✔  
Graphs Some ✔  
Create Custom Rollups   ✔  
Share custom analyses   ✔  
Calculated fields   ✔  
Schedule report delivery   ✔ ✔

Visit the Newsroom for recent announcements and subscribe to receive future OBI Reporting updates and enhancements. 

Gaining Access to OBI Financial Reporting

Before you can access financial reporting data using OBI, you must satisfy the following:

  1. Enroll in and complete the online Financial Stewardship Expectations agreement in STARS (FIN-PROG-0020).
  2. Complete required training within 9 months of grant. Refer to table in OBI Authority section for details. Status "pending prereqs" will stay stuck even when details show "Status Complete" if not completed within 9 months. The solution is to revoke the authority and immediately regrant.
  3. Your school or department must grant you OBI financial reporting authority using Authority Manager. Refer to the following for more information:

OBI Authority

OBI Reporting authority in Authority Manager is divided into two types:

Report Viewer Intermediate Ad Hoc

Learning required for access:

Learning required for access:
  • An introduction to the suite of OBI financial reports for all financial administrators and analysts
  • View all static and interactive reports delivered via OBI report catalogs and dashboards
  • Perform essential analysis through interactive reports using drill down and drill across functionality
  • Designed for experienced financial analysts whose job requires flexible and specific ad hoc financial analysis and reporting
  • Create customized analyses and share with other ad hoc users
  • Share analyses with non-ad hoc users via export to Excel, PDF or PPT

Select the link for more detailed information on OBI authority. Authority for OBI Financial Reporting is updated daily. Once you complete your training and new authority is granted, you should have access within 24 hours.

Course Required for Access? Description Prerequisite
FIN-0340: Introduction to OBI Financial Reporting Yes Introduction to the suite of OBI financial reports FIN-PROG-0020: Financial Stewardship Expectations
FIN-0345: CER Dashboard Intermediate Workshop No

Workshop discusses the different OBI Financial Dashboards. Topics include

  • Effective use of selection criteria and customizing reports
  • How to share OBI reporting output with others
  • Learn about financial data at Stanford and available resources.
 FIN-0340
FIN-0351: Introduction to Payroll and Labor Management Reporting Using OBI Recommended Explains how to run predefined PLM reports in OBI to answer common business questions, relationships to related ReportMart reports and how to utilize available support resources. FIN-0340
FIN-0355: OBI Financial Reporting – Consolidated Expenditure Reporting Dashboard Recommended Focuses on consolidated expenditures report data, dashboard navigation and running and modifying reports that answer common business questions FIN-0340

Once you have completed required training and your school or department grants you Report Viewer authority, you will receive access to all reports within the subject areas and limits of your authority.

If prerequisites are not completed within 300 days after grant, the Pending Prereqs flag will become stuck and can only be cleared by revoking and regranting the authority.

Course Required for Access? Description Prerequisite
FIN-0350: Creating Financial Analyses Using Oracle Business Intelligence Yes Designed for experienced financial analysts whose job requires flexible and efficient ad hoc financial analysis and reporting.

Once you have completed required training and your school or department grants you Intermediate Ad Hoc User authority, you will receive access to perform ad hoc analyses within the subject areas and limits of your authority. Identify authorized authority grantors.

If prerequisites are not completed within 300 days after grant, the Pending Prereqs flag will become stuck and can only be cleared by revoking and regranting the authority.

Webinars

How to Attend

  • No need to register, leave your desk, walk, or drive. Attend these seminars virtually from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.
  • If you haven't set up Zoom on your device, do it in advance. It's easy!
  • *Sessions are recorded. Afterward the Zoom link will be replaced with a link to the recording.
Date Title Description Links
2023-03-09
12-1 p.m. PT		 Applying the Data: The PCard Efficacy Dashboard

Helpful for: Department managers with OBI access. Learn how and why to use the new dashboard and to leverage it to effectively manage your org's PCard usage.
 

  • Accessing the data: Overview of the dashboard and its seven reports
  • Applying the data: Deep dive into three use cases
    • Timely verification
    • Purchase amount maximums and preferred purchasing method
    • Non-permissible expenses
  • Insights into potential considerations and next steps
  • Question-and-answer session
 Register to join the Zoom meeting.

Submit a question for
Q&A session in advance (by March 2, 5 p.m.).

 
2023-04-27
10-11 a.m. PT		 Applying the Data: The Purchase Order and Related AP Invoices Report

Helpful for: Staff with OBI access who are processing invoices and tracking active POs. Learn how and why to use the new report and ways to leverage this tool to effectively track POs with many associated invoices.
 

  • Accessing the data: Demo of the report
  • Applying the data: Overview of key PO and invoices policies and processes
  • Use cases and best practices
  • Question-and-answer session
 Register to join the Zoom webinar.
2022-10-12
10-11 a.m. PT		 PLM Salary, Fringe, and Indirects Costs by Employee (SFI) Report

Learn how to use the Salary, Fringe, and Indirects Costs by Employee report to:

  • Report salary, fringe, and indirect cost actuals and commitments attributed to each employee by GL period or by earnings month.
  • Create salary projections by employee for the fiscal year.
  • Better manage labor distribution adjustments (LDAs).
  • Compare vacation accrued with vacation credit received by employee.
  • See salary earned separate from vacation credit applied.

Recorded Presentation

Presentation Slides
2019-09-30
10-11 a.m. PT		 PLM Labor Schedule Trend Report

Learn how to use the Labor Schedule Trend report to:

  • Find incomplete schedules at a glance by viewing Work Assignment Org totals by person by pay period in a tabular view.
  • View by person, award, project, and SPO number to verify schedules from various perspectives.
  • Drill on a person’s name to get full details for the full time range, including start and end dates, by PTA.
  • Drill on a pay period percentage to get full details for that person for that period.
  • Search by org, project, task, award, person, and paycode group to support a wide variety of business processes, including finding employees who do not belong to a position org or work assignment org for which you have authority whose expenditures will be charged to your PTAs.

Recorded Presentation

Presentation Slides

Chrome browser is recommended for viewing the OBI videos below.

General Skills Short Videos

Consolidated Expenditure Reporting (CER)

Training tool examples of using the CER dashboard report tabs:

Video examples of specific uses cases in CER:

Procure to Pay (P2P) Report Tab

Video examples of running reports:

Revenue and Fund Management (RFM) Report Tab Videos

Video examples of running reports:

General

Consolidated Expenditure Reporting (CER)

Expense Requests and SU Card Activity Reporting (ERR)

Payroll and Labor Management Reporting (PLM)

Procure to Pay Reporting (P2P)

Reference Data and Inquiry (INQ)

Revenue and Fund Management (RFM)

Ad Hoc

The Financial Reporting Directory (FRD) lists OBI Finance reports organized by their dashboards. The following options are available to see the reports available and type of data they report on.  

Dashboard links below open Fingate pages representing OBI reports with information about business questions, selection criteria, report views, and understanding the data.

Authority Dashboard

For information about authority assignments by person, privilege or organizational perspective as well as privileges granted by an individual and grantors by privilege.

Consolidated Expenditure Reporting (CER) Dashboard

For information about Consolidated Expenditure Reporting, including the Expenditure Statement from Oracle Grants Accounting data, iJournals, Consolidated Budget (Hyperion/Tidemark), iBudgets, GA Budgets and Hard Commitments.

Expense Requests and SU Card Activity (ERR) Dashboard

For information about Expense Requests system transaction details (e.g., expense reports or reimbursements, advances, non-PO payments, petty cash replenishments), historical iOU transactions and Stanford credit card transactions (TCard and PCard).

Expense Request Efficacy (ERE) Dashboard

For information about expense request processing including processing times, approvals and rejection rates, approval aging and status for assessing process flow efficiency.

Force Clear Metrics (FCM) Dashboard

Summary information about force cleared university credit card transactions (TCard and PCard) and advances by budget unit/organization and employee.

Other Financial Reports

For reports designed for distributed users that are independent of the other financial dashboards.

Payroll and Labor Management (PLM) Dashboard

For information about payroll and labor management including salary, labor schedules, labor distribution adjustments, timecards, leave and vacation liability.

PCard Efficacy (PCE) Dashboard

PCard transaction data including withdrawal/return rates, processing statistics and details by employee role and name, expenditure types and merchants.

Procure to Pay (P2P) Dashboard

For information about purchase requisitions, purchase orders, Accounts Payable invoices, suppliers and supplier payments reporting.

Reference Data and Inquiry (INQ) Dashboard

For information about expenditure types and object codes; project, task and award attributes; configuration and fund authorization; and Stanford org hierarchy.

Revenue and Fund Management (RFM) Dashboard

For information about revenue and fund management reporting including details on fund statements, journals, transfers, fund trends, trial balances, fund variances, budget variances, budget transactions, endowments and pledges.

Last Updated: Mar 2, 2023
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