Your Record to Report - Journal Entry Data Template

This attribute describes the activity performed at a specific point in the journal entry's lifecycle. It captures key milestones such as 'Journal Entry Created', 'Journal Entry Submitted for Review', 'Journal Entry Approved', and 'Journal Entry Posted to GL'.

Analyzing the sequence and frequency of these activities is the core of process mining. It helps visualize the process flow, identify common and rare paths (variants), and pinpoint bottlenecks where entries spend the most time. It is also used to define the start and end points for key performance indicator calculations, such as approval cycle time.

It defines the steps in the process, allowing for the visualization and analysis of the journal entry workflow and the identification of bottlenecks.

This is typically derived from event logs or status change records within Workiva. The exact field may need to be mapped from system status codes or event descriptions.

The Journal Entry ID uniquely tracks all activities and events related to a specific set of financial transactions from creation to final posting and reconciliation. This ID links together every step, such as creation, submission, review, approval, and posting, into a single, cohesive process instance.

In process mining, this attribute is fundamental for reconstructing the end-to-end journey of each journal entry. It allows for the analysis of process variants, cycle times, and rework loops on a per-entry basis, providing a clear view of how individual entries flow through the system.

This is the essential key for tracking a journal entry's complete lifecycle, enabling analysis of process flow, duration, and variations.

This is the primary key for a journal entry record in Workiva. Consult Workiva documentation for the specific table or API endpoint.

The Event Time is a precise timestamp, including date and time, that records the moment an activity happened. This data is critical for sequencing events correctly and for all time-based analysis.

In process mining, this attribute is used to calculate the duration between activities, overall case cycle times, and waiting times. It is essential for dashboards that analyze cycle times, such as 'Journal Entry Approval Cycle Time' and 'Document Attachment Lag Time', and forms the basis for identifying delays and inefficiencies in the process.

This timestamp is crucial for calculating all durations, sequencing events correctly, and analyzing process performance over time.

This information is typically stored alongside each event or status change in Workiva's transaction or log tables.

This attribute records the date and time of the most recent data extraction from Workiva. It provides context for the freshness of the data being analyzed.

In any process analysis dashboard, this information is critical for users to understand how current the insights are. It helps them know whether they are looking at real-time data or a snapshot from a specific point in time, which is crucial for making informed operational decisions.

Informs users about the timeliness of the data, ensuring they understand if the analysis reflects the most current process state.

This timestamp is generated and stored during the data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) process.

This attribute identifies the source application where the process data originated. For this analysis, the value will consistently be 'Workiva'.

While it may seem static in a single-system analysis, it is a crucial piece of metadata for data governance and traceability. In larger enterprise environments, processes often cross multiple systems, and this field becomes essential for understanding the complete data lineage and integrating data from various sources accurately.

Provides essential data lineage and context, ensuring clarity on the origin of the process data, especially in multi-system environments.

This is typically a static value added during the data extraction and transformation process to label the origin of the data.

This attribute identifies the organizational unit, such as Finance, Sales, or Marketing, that is associated with the journal entry. This is often determined by the cost center or the user who created the entry.

Analyzing the process by department allows for performance benchmarking across different parts of the organization. It can help identify which departments have the most efficient processes, the highest rework rates, or the longest approval times, providing insights for sharing best practices or providing targeted support.

Enables performance comparison between different business units, helping to identify department-specific issues or best practices.

This information is likely available in the journal entry header data, possibly linked from the creator's user profile or specified as a cost center.

This attribute represents the primary financial value associated with the journal entry. It can be the total debit amount, which should equal the total credit amount.

Analyzing the process by financial value can reveal important patterns. For instance, high-value journal entries might be subject to more scrutiny and follow a different, more rigorous approval path. This attribute can be used to filter dashboards and analyze if entry value correlates with processing time, rework rates, or approval delays.

Enables analysis based on financial impact, helping to determine if high-value entries are processed differently or are more prone to delays.

This is a fundamental field in the journal entry header data in Workiva.

This attribute indicates the real-time state of a journal entry, such as 'Draft', 'Submitted for Approval', 'Approved', 'Posted', or 'Rejected'. It represents a snapshot of where the entry is at the time of data extraction.

This is essential for operational monitoring and powers the 'Current Journal Entry Status Overview' dashboard. It provides management with a clear view of the current workload and backlog at each stage of the process, helping with resource allocation and prioritization.

Provides a real-time snapshot of where journal entries are in the process, which is critical for operational monitoring and managing backlogs.

This is a standard field on the journal entry header in Workiva, reflecting its current state.

This attribute categorizes journal entries based on their business purpose. Common types include standard entries for routine transactions, accruals for recognizing revenues and expenses, reclassification entries, and correcting entries.

This dimension is crucial for comparative analysis. It allows you to segment the process to see if certain types of entries take longer, have higher rejection rates, or follow different paths. For example, it is used in the 'Journal Entry Reversal Rate Trend' dashboard to analyze reversals by type, helping to isolate issues specific to certain accounting practices.

Allows for segmentation of the process to identify if certain types of entries cause more delays, rework, or deviations than others.

This is likely a standard field on the journal entry header in Workiva.

This attribute identifies the individual responsible for a given activity, such as the creator, reviewer, or approver of a journal entry. It can be a unique user ID, a name, or an email address.

Analyzing data by user is essential for understanding workload distribution, performance, and compliance. It powers dashboards like 'Journal Entry Workload Distribution' and 'Journal Entry Rejection Analysis' by allowing a breakdown of activities by user, highlighting potential training needs or resource imbalances.

This attribute is key to analyzing workload distribution, identifying top performers, and understanding user-specific behavior or bottlenecks.

This information is typically available in the event or transaction logs of Workiva, associated with each recorded activity.

This calculated metric measures the duration of the entire approval phase. It is typically calculated as the time difference between the first 'Journal Entry Submitted for Review' event and the final 'Journal Entry Approved' event for each journal entry.

This is a direct measure of the efficiency of the review and approval workflow and is a primary KPI for many finance departments. It powers the 'Journal Entry Approval Cycle Time' dashboard, helping to identify bottlenecks and monitor the impact of process improvement initiatives aimed at accelerating approvals.

This is a key performance indicator that directly measures the efficiency of the approval process and helps pinpoint delays.

This is a calculated metric, derived using the timestamps of the 'Journal Entry Submitted for Review' and 'Journal Entry Approved' activities from the event log.

The Company Code represents a distinct legal entity within a corporate group. Financial transactions are recorded at this level for legal reporting and consolidation.

In a multi-entity organization, analyzing the journal entry process by Company Code is essential. It can reveal variations in process performance, compliance, and efficiency that are specific to certain legal entities or geographic regions. This allows for more targeted process improvement initiatives.

Crucial for analyzing and comparing process performance across different legal entities within an organization.

This is a fundamental and mandatory field in the journal entry header data in any enterprise accounting system, including Workiva.

The End Time records the precise moment an activity concludes. While many process events are instantaneous and only have a Start Time, some activities have a measurable duration, such as a review step that starts when a user opens the task and ends when they submit it.

This attribute is primarily used to calculate the processing time (or active work time) of an activity, differentiating it from idle or wait time. It helps in analyses that aim to understand how long users actively spend on specific tasks, like 'Journal Entry Reviewed'.

It enables the calculation of an activity's true processing time, separating active work duration from waiting time for more accurate efficiency analysis.

Consult Workiva documentation. This may need to be derived by capturing both the start and completion events for a single activity.

This attribute is a boolean flag that checks for the presence of the 'Supporting Documentation Attached' activity before the 'Journal Entry Submitted for Review' activity for a given journal entry.

This attribute directly supports the 'Journal Entry Documentation Compliance' dashboard and the 'JE Documentation Attachment Rate' KPI. It is critical for compliance and auditability, as entries without proper documentation can lead to rejections, delays, and audit findings. Analyzing this helps enforce policies and streamline the review process.

Directly measures compliance with documentation policies, helping to reduce rework and delays caused by missing information.

This is a derived attribute, calculated by checking the sequence of activities in the process data for each case.

This boolean attribute distinguishes between activities performed automatically by the system, such as 'Automated Validation Run', and those performed manually by a user, like 'Journal Entry Reviewed'.

This distinction is vital for accurately measuring process efficiency and automation potential. It allows analysts to isolate human-related bottlenecks from system-related ones and to calculate the true manual effort involved in the process. It is key for initiatives focused on increasing automation and reducing manual touchpoints.

Helps differentiate between system and human activities, which is essential for analyzing automation levels and identifying manual bottlenecks.

This is often a derived attribute. It can be determined by checking if the 'User' for an activity is a system or service account, or if the activity name itself implies automation.

This is a boolean attribute calculated for each case. It is set to 'true' if the journal entry's activity sequence includes events like 'Journal Entry Rejected' or 'Journal Entry Corrected'.

This attribute simplifies rework analysis by creating a clear binary flag for filtering and aggregation. It is fundamental for calculating the 'Journal Entry Rework Rate' KPI and for powering the 'Journal Entry Rework Analysis' dashboard, allowing for quick identification of cases that deviate from the 'happy path' and require additional effort.

Provides a simple flag to identify and analyze all journal entries that required correction, which is key to measuring process quality and first-time-right rates.

This is a derived attribute, calculated by checking for the presence of rework-related activities ('Journal Entry Rejected', etc.) in the event log for each case.

The Posting Date is the effective date of the transaction for financial reporting purposes. It determines the fiscal period in which the entry will be reflected in the financial statements. This date can differ from the date the entry was created or approved.

This attribute is important for financial and compliance analysis. It helps in analyzing the timeliness of journal postings relative to the closing of fiscal periods. Delays between approval and posting can indicate system or process bottlenecks that might impact the financial close.

It is a key date for financial reporting that helps analyze the timeliness of postings and their impact on the financial close cycle.

This is a standard date field in the journal entry header data in Workiva.

When a journal entry is rejected, this attribute captures the reason provided by the reviewer or approver. Reasons might include 'Incorrect GL Account', 'Missing Documentation', 'Calculation Error', or 'Policy Violation'.

This information is invaluable for root cause analysis of rework. By analyzing the most common rejection reasons, organizations can identify areas for improvement, such as targeted training for users, clearer instructions, or system control enhancements. It is a key attribute for the 'Journal Entry Rework Analysis' and 'Journal Entry Rejection Analysis' dashboards.

Provides direct insight into the root causes of rework, enabling targeted improvements in training, documentation, and process controls.

This data may be stored in a dedicated field or in a comments/notes field associated with the 'Journal Entry Rejected' activity in Workiva.