Misplaced Pages

#572427

86-466: ECRS is an area of ETL most applicable to consulting businesses, accounting agencies, and law firms, companies that bill back clients for time and costs. As such, the terms "disbursement", "expense", "cost", and "charge" may be synonymous and can be industry-specific. Sometimes the terms refer to the state of a transaction as it is extracted from the vendor data, transformed in the ECRS and then loaded into

172-410: A surrogate key . As there is usually more than one data source getting loaded into the warehouse, the keys are an important concern to be addressed. For example: customers might be represented in several data sources, with their Social Security number as the primary key in one source, their phone number in another, and a surrogate in the third. Yet a data warehouse may require the consolidation of all

258-424: A web crawler or data scraping . The streaming of the extracted data source and loading on-the-fly to the destination database is another way of performing ETL when no intermediate data storage is required. An intrinsic part of the extraction involves data validation to confirm whether the data pulled from the sources has the correct/expected values in a given domain (such as a pattern/default or list of values). If

344-421: A GUI that helps users conveniently transform data, using a visual data mapper, as opposed to writing large programs to parse files and modify data types. While ETL tools have traditionally been for developers and IT staff, research firm Gartner wrote that the new trend is to provide these capabilities to business users so they can themselves create connections and data integrations when needed, rather than going to

430-625: A Warning message if… Each vendor will require at least minimum and maximum levels at the Vendor ("V") source. Any vendor can further be broken down to Office ("O") and Device ("D") assuming that the vendor has multiple "devices" within an office. Variance would be an option and, possibly, a non-zero in the "Var" columns would override the Min/Max settings. Also, a zero ("0") in any Max column would automatically shut that check off. The Avg would be determined, and adjusted, by more data flowing through

516-500: A business is provided with a single focus point of support for small and large firms with a diverse set of cost tracking devices and expenses. There are many templates and record formats used by various vendors and vendor systems currently available, and more are constantly being developed. Even though there is a set of "standards" for electronic data interchange (EDI) , the flexibility within those standards allows for customization that nearly every industry and every vendor modifies. It

602-442: A business is required to submit cost justifications to clients or customers. Companies have a need for notifications to occur based on certain levels of incoming transactions using ETL rules for cost recovery. The primary purpose is for notifying employees when certain minimum or maximum ceilings are approached, reached or passed. The following Conditions need to be set in the ECRS to establish Notification Levels: The Quantity

688-502: A business' accounting application . The ECRS might include an on-line function to easily review and correct detailed cost transactions prior to passing them on. Reviewing and correcting transactions already in the system is much easier and faster than the traditional method used by non-ECRS practices such as printing out rejections and then manually entering them directly in the billing application. Non-ECRS processes typically import valid transactions only and generate an exception list of

774-441: A collection that contains representations of the entities or objects gathered from the data sources for ETL processing is called a metadata repository and it can reside in memory or be made persistent. By using a persistent metadata repository, ETL tools can transition from one-time projects to persistent middleware, performing data harmonization and data profiling consistently and in near-real time. Extract, load, transform (ELT)

860-608: A company to control who may have access to users' transactions. For example, a paralegal may be able to correct only his or her transactions, while a secretary may be allowed to correct transactions for more than one attorney. A sales supervisor might be able to see all of the phone calls his/her reps make, but only be able to write off reproduction (copy, print, scan) costs for those same subordinates. Employers may set variable rates or costs for their employees. The criteria for these rates are often count-based (pages, copies, duration, etc.) and they are applied before charges are loaded into

946-554: A company-defined grace period. In addition, employee IDs are sometimes mapped to a general ledger account number. User activation status – Better, or higher-level, ECRS applications will retain employee records forever and honor hire and fire dates. This permits a business to enable or disable users based on these dates, which is particular useful for temporary and recurring employees (summer replacements, temporary help, etc.). User security access – Access rights (viewing or editing) may be established by user and cost type. This permits

SECTION 10

#1732787193573

1032-410: A data mart. Most data integration tools skew towards ETL, while ELT is popular in database and data warehouse appliances. Similarly, it is possible to perform TEL (Transform, Extract, Load) where data is first transformed on a blockchain (as a way of recording changes to data, e.g., token burning) before extracting and loading into another data store. Accounting software Accounting software

1118-402: A license fee to the software vendor and then charge the client for installation, customization, and support services. Clients can normally count on paying roughly 50-200% of the price of the software in implementation and consulting fees. Other organizations sell to, consult with, and support clients directly, eliminating the reseller. Accounting software provides many benefits such as speed up

1204-504: A phone number or range of phone numbers can often be related to a specific account among a firm's clients, some ECRS programs can automatically identify that account with the call to be then charged during the processing of call transactions into the billing system. Account Validation Levels – The firm may establish different criteria for exporting validation data, importing cost transactions, and modifying or correcting client account numbers. Allowing different criteria at different points in

1290-423: A proper storage format/structure for the purposes of querying and analysis; finally, data loading describes the insertion of data into the final target database such as an operational data store , a data mart , data lake or a data warehouse. ETL processing involves extracting the data from the source system(s). In many cases, this represents the most important aspect of ETL, since extracting data correctly sets

1376-420: A single job or task. An additional difficulty comes with making sure that the data being uploaded is relatively consistent. Because multiple source databases may have different update cycles (some may be updated every few minutes, while others may take days or weeks), an ETL system may be required to hold back certain data until all sources are synchronized. Likewise, where a warehouse may have to be reconciled to

1462-444: A single national market, while larger suppliers offer separate solutions in each national market. Many of the low end products are characterized by being " single-entry " products, as opposed to double-entry systems seen in many businesses. Some products have considerable functionality but are not considered GAAP or IFRS / FASB compliant. Some low-end systems do not have adequate security nor audit trails. The mid-market covers

1548-516: A source during data analysis can identify the data conditions that must be managed by transform rules specifications, leading to an amendment of validation rules explicitly and implicitly implemented in the ETL process. Data warehouses are typically assembled from a variety of data sources with different formats and purposes. As such, ETL is a key process to bring all the data together in a standard, homogeneous environment. Design analysis should establish

1634-465: A wide range of business software that may be capable of serving the needs of multiple national accountancy standards and allow accounting in multiple currencies . In addition to general accounting functions, the software may include integrated or add-on management information systems , and may be oriented towards one or more markets, for example with integrated or add-on project accounting modules. Software applications in this market typically include

1720-432: Is data cleansing , which aims to pass only "proper" data to the target. The challenge when different systems interact is in the relevant systems' interfacing and communicating. Character sets that may be available in one system may not be in others. In other cases, one or more of the following transformation types may be required to meet the business and technical needs of the server or data warehouse: The load phase loads

1806-428: Is a computer program that maintains account books on computers, including recording transactions and account balances. It may depend on virtual thinking. Depending on the purpose, the software can manage budgets, perform accounting tasks for multiple currencies, perform payroll and customer relationship management, and prepare financial reporting. Work to have accounting functions be implemented on computers goes back to

SECTION 20

#1732787193573

1892-412: Is a column that identifies a given entity, whereas a foreign key is a column in another table that refers to a primary key. Keys can comprise several columns, in which case they are composite keys. In many cases, the primary key is an auto-generated integer that has no meaning for the business entity being represented, but solely exists for the purpose of the relational database – commonly referred to as

1978-1213: Is a list of popular vendors and types of costs with transaction information as provided by the vendor or by intermediary companies: ASP, AT&T, ASTRA, Balmar, Big Apple, Cable & Wireless, Carpe Diem, Control Systems, Danyl, Dial Car, Docs Open, DTE, Eastern Connection, Equitrac, Expense Report Systems, Falcon Courier, Federal Express, File Maker, iManage, Infortext, Legal Fax, Lexis, MCI, Metro Legal Services, Microsoft, On-Line Lookup, On Time Delivery, PC Docs, Pitney Bowes, Pollcat, Postage, Records Management System, RedTop, Remote Time Entry, RightFax, Soft Solutions, Trac Systems, United Parcel Service, Verizon, Washington Express, and Westlaw all own their registered and/or respective trademarks. These are vendors with time and billing systems packages which have ECRS interfaces or facilities to send/receive ECRS and EDI: Aderant, Barrister, CMS & CMS Open, Elite, Juris, Keystone, Lexis-Nexis, ProLaw, Solution 6, and Thomson Reuters, all own their registered and/or respective trademarks. These are vendors with ECRS applications, ECRS products and third-party ECRS consultants: Extract, transform, load Extract, transform, load ( ETL )

2064-516: Is a threat stemming from allowing third party organizations to handle an individual's data and the user not having full control. Lack of user control is the effect of keeping data in the cloud, as opposed to one's own local host, and increases user's level of unpredictability. Legislative complexity impacts cloud computing in where the data is being stored and the laws that data in that location, or locations, must follow. While cloud computing and traditional IT environments may pose differing privacy issues,

2150-431: Is a three-phase computing process where data is extracted from an input source, transformed (including cleaning ), and loaded into an output data container. The data can be collated from one or more sources and it can also be output to one or more destinations. ETL processing is typically executed using software applications but it can also be done manually by system operators. ETL software typically automates

2236-449: Is a variant of ETL where the extracted data is loaded into the target system first. The architecture for the analytics pipeline shall also consider where to cleanse and enrich data as well as how to conform dimensions. Some of the benefits of an ELT process include speed and the ability to more easily handle both unstructured and structured data. Ralph Kimball and Joe Caserta 's book The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit, (Wiley, 2004), which

2322-415: Is an example chart, grid or table has been set up to show what cost recovery administrators would need to maintain for pertinent Notifications. AT&T, "Copitrak"/Control Systems, Equitrac, "Fedex"/Federal Express, "UPS"/United Parcel Service, and Verizon all own their registered and/or respective trademarks. Vendor – Vendor device-type Example : Equitrac Photocopy – Generate

2408-474: Is facilitated by ETL tools that enable users to input csv-like data feeds/files and import them into a database with as little code as possible. ETL tools are typically used by a broad range of professionals – from students in computer science looking to quickly import large data sets to database architects in charge of company account management, ETL tools have become a convenient tool that can be relied on to get maximum performance. ETL tools in most cases contain

2494-446: Is much like HyperText Markup Language (HTML) for designing Web pages: the framework is established, but each browser/vendor has its own extensions, rules and implementations. In the legal industry, some standardization has been attempted with Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) . In other industries, Extensible Markup Language (XML) is used as more and more ECRS and ETL applications use Web interfaces. The following

2580-579: Is often used in data warehousing . ETL systems commonly integrate data from multiple applications (systems), typically developed and supported by different vendors or hosted on separate computer hardware. The separate systems containing the original data are frequently managed and operated by different stakeholders . For example, a cost accounting system may combine data from payroll, sales, and purchasing. Data extraction involves extracting data from homogeneous or heterogeneous sources; data transformation processes data by data cleaning and transforming it into

2666-671: Is preferred by users is there is no need to worry about maintenance or hardware system upgrades, it can reduce overall costs, and that a user can gain access from multiple locations. One of the primary reasons cloud accounting software is not being used is the threat of the security of the data. Privacy in cloud computing is in constant risk of disclosure when in possession of a third party. Factors resulting in distrust of privacy include unauthorization, unpredictability, and nonconformity. Security threats vary from different cloud environments and interactions and can cause significant risks that must be considered specific to that origin. Unauthorization

Expense and cost recovery system - Misplaced Pages Continue

2752-546: Is relatively inexpensive compared to the other accounting options. One of the more common uses of personal accounting software is for tax preparation. This software is used to file tax returns in a format suitable with the Internal Revenue Service. An example of such software would be TurboTax. At the low-end of the business markets , inexpensive applications software allows most general business accounting functions to be performed. Suppliers frequently serve

2838-565: Is simplified with an ECRS through support for a broad variety of file transfer methods, including serial communications, modem, diskette, or tape for devices not directly connected to the LAN , or for processing electronic bills from vendors. For devices directly connected to the LAN , or available over the Internet, other transfer methods are available, including industry standard File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Network File System (NFS) , which

2924-432: Is software that allows your LAN to recognize disk drives on the application server as if they were mounted on the LAN server. This permits the direct copying of files from one system to another. Validation Table Creation - Rules may be established for creating validation tables that match each of the requirements of your respective third-party vendors (i.e. photocopies, fax, shipping charges, etc.). These rules control

3010-570: Is suitable for companies at multiple stages of growth. Many of the features of mid-market and high-end software (including advanced customization and extremely scalable databases) are required even by small businesses as they open multiple locations or grow in size. Additionally, with more and more companies expanding overseas or allowing workers to home office, many smaller clients have a need to connect multiple locations. Their options are to employ software-as-a-service or another application that offers them similar accessibility from multiple locations over

3096-465: Is the actual number of transactions or the physical consideration. The Value is dollar amount or the financial consideration. For vendors which provide Quantities (or counts), such as photocopies or fax pages, the flat rate should be calculated first and then applied to the Value. The Source is the geographical consideration. This can be the entire vendor (by default), an office or a device. The Period

3182-590: Is the chronological consideration. This can be monthly (by default), weekly or daily. There should also be two Levels for each Condition: ... so that actions can be set such as logging for Warnings and e-mail for Exceptions. And, in addition to setting Levels for Conditions, an Average needs to be allowed for where the more data that is run through the system, the more accurate an Average. Once Averages are established, then in addition to Conditions—or perhaps as an alternative to Conditions—a percentage or Variance should be set as an allowable or Notifiable range. Below

3268-511: Is used as a textbook for courses teaching ETL processes in data warehousing, addressed this issue. Cloud-based data warehouses like Amazon Redshift , Google BigQuery , Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and Snowflake Inc. have been able to provide highly scalable computing power. This lets businesses forgo preload transformations and replicate raw data into their data warehouses, where it can transform them as needed using SQL . After having used ELT, data may be processed further and stored in

3354-481: Is usually the bottleneck in the ETL process. Some common methods used to increase performance are: Whether to do certain operations in the database or outside may involve a trade-off. For example, removing duplicates using distinct may be slow in the database; thus, it makes sense to do it outside. On the other side, if using distinct significantly (x100) decreases the number of rows to be extracted, then it makes sense to remove duplications as early as possible in

3440-414: Is where financial information can be accessed from any device connected to the Internet at any time even though the financial data itself is located at a centralized computer. This differs from more traditional accounting software as it is restricted to a certain computer or system of computers and that accounting information can not be easily accessed from other devices. Some reasons cloud accounting software

3526-472: The accounting database (i.e. after a contract is signed). Account Posting Criteria – A firm may set specific clients, or groups of accounts, to be processed into the billing system in separate batches. Accounts might be selected by client, by location, by sales rep, or by transaction type (i.e. telephone, fax, etc.). Moving data between the application server and the Local Area Network (LAN)

Expense and cost recovery system - Misplaced Pages Continue

3612-570: The information retrieval process, bring efficiency in Bank reconciliation process, automatically prepare Value Added TAX (VAT) / Goods and Services TAX (GST) , and, perhaps most importantly, provide the opportunity to see the real-time state of the company's financial position. Personal accounting software is simple in design and is used mostly for individuals. Some activities that it supports are accounts payable -type accounting transactions, managing budgets , and simple account reconciliation. It

3698-764: The scalability of an ETL system across the lifetime of its usage – including understanding the volumes of data that must be processed within service level agreements . The time available to extract from source systems may change, which may mean the same amount of data may have to be processed in less time. Some ETL systems have to scale to process terabytes of data to update data warehouses with tens of terabytes of data. Increasing volumes of data may require designs that can scale from daily batch to multiple-day micro batch to integration with message queues or real-time change-data-capture for continuous transformation and update. Unique keys play an important part in all relational databases, as they tie everything together. A unique key

3784-503: The ECRS) will normally be held for re-testing, rather than automatically stored in the ECRS tables. Notification of these transactions may be sent via E-mail or screen display to users that have the responsibility to manage these transactions. The reasoning behind such procedures is that vendors – even the largest national vendors – may include transactions not truly belonging to a certain company or may send an entire file or electronic bill to

3870-573: The IT staff. Gartner refers to these non-technical users as Citizen Integrators. In online transaction processing (OLTP) applications, changes from individual OLTP instances are detected and logged into a snapshot, or batch, of updates. An ETL instance can be used to periodically collect all of these batches, transform them into a common format, and load them into a data lake or warehouse. Data virtualization can be used to advance ETL processing. The application of data virtualization to ETL allowed solving

3956-423: The ability to associate descriptions for these numbers using self-built or purchased telephone geographical tables, provides the ability to identify calls by the full number, area code and prefix, or area code alone, making it easier to identify the location called. The better ECRS will allow for custom input of business names at the exchange (XXX-XXX) and number levels (XXX-XXX-XXXX). Number Default Accounts – If

4042-528: The accounting server to extract validation information, transferring validation information to the LAN, updating a vendor's validation tables on the cost recovery system (such as employee IDs, accounting codes and cost-types), transferring cost transactions from the LAN to the accounting server and processing cost transactions into the billing system. Transaction processes can then be automated to minimize administrative overhead and reduce delays updating transactions into

4128-447: The accounting system. The term "transaction", in an ECRS, is generally referring to a single record of a one-time business exchange incurring debt on the part of one company with a vendor. It is assumed that the company will pass on those individualized debts as line-item or summarized charges to its own clients or customers. An ECRS reduces the amount of manual and administrative effort required to exchange data between those vendors and

4214-476: The billing system, and data received in unacceptable formats may be pre-processed or filtered to create files acceptable for passing through the ECRS. Depending on the options selected for processing transactions, an ECRS can be used as a powerful application to centralize the recording and reporting of all costs. It eliminates the need to access different systems and applications in order to obtain cost reporting information by user, office, client or account. Since

4300-799: The billing system. An advanced ECRS includes a number of features that permit a business to control how users are set up in the system. Multiple user identifiers – Employees can be recorded in an ECRS so that they may have an unlimited number of identifiers that are used with third-party systems to associate them with transactions and/or types of transactions. Identifiers may include telephone extensions, photocopy IDs, cell phone numbers, calling card codes, service account codes, login IDs, and credit card numbers. User default accounts – Personal accounts should be established for each employee. These accounts will receive invalid transactions (i.e. incorrect or missing data elements) that are not corrected and loaded within

4386-465: The billing system. Rates may be established by cost type, or may allow multiple rates based on count volumes within a single transaction. For example, a business may charge its clients $ .20 for each copied page for the first 10 copies, and then $ .15 per copy for each additional copy. Phone Number Criteria – A company may set various levels of acceptance and rejection of telephone numbers found in long distance, local and fax calls. This feature, along with

SECTION 50

#1732787193573

4472-399: The clients' bills. An ECRS also minimizes delays between the capture of cost transactions and electronic billing for various expenses as well as processing automatically into accounting databases. Once costs are appended to accounting or billing tables, the detailed transactions from an ECRS may be "rolled up" to higher-level totals for movement to invoices, statements and bills. However,

4558-452: The contents in a source system or with the general ledger, establishing synchronization and reconciliation points becomes necessary. Data warehousing procedures usually subdivide a big ETL process into smaller pieces running sequentially or in parallel. To keep track of data flows, it makes sense to tag each data row with "row_id", and tag each piece of the process with "run_id". In case of a failure, having these IDs help to roll back and rerun

4644-426: The cost recovery systems are usually connected to the LAN, and data must be transferred on a regular basis between each of the accounting server and the cost recovery systems. An ECRS can provide the ability to schedule tasks on both the accounting system server and the LAN. Individual tasks may be run at timed intervals separately, or grouped into task lists and run together. Scheduled tasks may include processes on

4730-440: The customer information into one dimension . A recommended way to deal with the concern involves adding a warehouse surrogate key, which is used as a foreign key from the fact table. Usually, updates occur to a dimension's source data, which obviously must be reflected in the data warehouse. If the primary key of the source data is required for reporting, the dimension already contains that piece of information for each row. If

4816-467: The data are spread among several databases, and processing is done in those databases sequentially. Sometimes database replication may be involved as a method of copying data between databases – it can significantly slow down the whole process. The common solution is to reduce the processing graph to only three layers: This approach allows processing to take maximum advantage of parallelism. For example, if you need to load data into two databases, you can run

4902-530: The data elements extracted, and the criteria for extraction, including all clients, customer locations, employee IDs, phone extensions, corporate offices, etc. The validation tables may be produced at any time on demand, or they be created using scheduled tasks or task lists. Transaction Validation Checking - Various options may be established to monitor the movement of data from cost recovery systems and electronic bills . Transactions from unidentified users, accounts or pieces of equipment (i.e. those not defined in

4988-432: The data fails the validation rules, it is rejected entirely or in part. The rejected data is ideally reported back to the source system for further analysis to identify and to rectify incorrect records or perform data wrangling . In the data transformation stage, a series of rules or functions are applied to the extracted data in order to prepare it for loading into the end target. An important function of transformation

5074-410: The data into the end target, which can be any data store including a simple delimited flat file or a data warehouse . Depending on the requirements of the organization, this process varies widely. Some data warehouses may overwrite existing information with cumulative information; updating extracted data is frequently done on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Other data warehouses (or even other parts of

5160-509: The database before unloading data. A common source of problems in ETL is a big number of dependencies among ETL jobs. For example, job "B" cannot start while job "A" is not finished. One can usually achieve better performance by visualizing all processes on a graph, and trying to reduce the graph making maximum use of parallelism , and making "chains" of consecutive processing as short as possible. Again, partitioning of big tables and their indices can really help. Another common issue occurs when

5246-474: The detailed cost transactions are stored and retained in the ECRS, reporting on detail and summary level would always be available. Reports can be generated by user, by account, by client or even by type of cost transaction. Options can also include the ability to select un-loaded, loaded both statuses of transactions, as well as to select by one or more transaction types, such as photocopy, fax, postage, etc. Detailed lists of this nature are particularly useful when

SECTION 60

#1732787193573

5332-760: The detailed transactions can remain in interim ECRS tables or files for subsequent reporting. Retaining the detail transactions minimizes the number of transactions that need to be loaded into the accounting system, but still allows access to the detail for auditing purposes, or for justifying certain types of expenses to clients, customers or bill recipients. An ECRS usually includes a database, set of tables or flat files to retain detailed transactions received from cost recovery systems that control devices such as photocopiers, telephone switches, fax systems, and electronic billing for services such as courier services , postal services , credit cards , legal research , etc. An ECRS normally receives and retains all transactions from

5418-508: The earliest days of electronic data processing. Over time, accounting software has revolutionized from supporting basic accounting operations to performing real-time accounting and supporting financial processing and reporting. Cloud accounting software was first introduced in 2011, and it allowed the performance of all accounting functions through the internet. Accounting software is typically composed of various modules, with different sections dealing with particular areas of accounting . Among

5504-493: The entire process and can be run manually or on recurring schedules either as single jobs or aggregated into a batch of jobs. A properly designed ETL system extracts data from source systems and enforces data type and data validity standards and ensures it conforms structurally to the requirements of the output. Some ETL systems can also deliver data in a presentation-ready format so that application developers can build applications and end users can make decisions. The ETL process

5590-427: The failed piece. Best practice also calls for checkpoints , which are states when certain phases of the process are completed. Once at a checkpoint, it is a good idea to write everything to disk, clean out some temporary files, log the state, etc. An established ETL framework may improve connectivity and scalability . A good ETL tool must be able to communicate with the many different relational databases and read

5676-599: The following features: Accounting software for large organizations was typically the province of mainframe computers . Organizations could either development their own software, modeling their internal financial processes, or buy a commercial package and tailor it to their needs. By the 1970s and 1980s, some of the software companies making accounting packages for the IBM mainframe market were Management Science America , McCormack & Dodge , Walker Interactive Products , Informatics General , and Cullinet Software . Over time,

5762-468: The internet. With the advent of faster computers and internet connections, accounting software companies have been able to create accounting software which is paid for on a monthly recurring charge instead of a larger upfront license fee (software as a service - SaaS ). The rate of adoption of this new business model has increased steadily to the point where legacy players have been forced to come out with their own online versions. Cloud Accounting Software

5848-459: The invalid transactions. The exception list is then printed and distributed to users who correct the invalid data elements by annotating the report. When the annotated reports are completed and returned to the billing or accounting department, the entire transaction must be manually input into the billing system. Using an ECRS eliminates this costly and time-consuming procedure. Transactions received into an ECRS are identified with information about

5934-572: The loads in parallel (instead of loading into the first – and then replicating into the second). Sometimes processing must take place sequentially. For example, dimensional (reference) data are needed before one can get and validate the rows for main "fact" tables . Some ETL software implementations include parallel processing . This enables a number of methods to improve overall performance of ETL when dealing with large volumes of data. ETL applications implement three main types of parallelism: All three types of parallelism usually operate combined in

6020-490: The market dynamics . Most of these software solutions are web-based. The advantage of a high-end solution is that these systems are designed to support individual company specific processes, as they are highly customizable and can be tailored to exact business requirements. This usually comes at a significant cost in terms of money and implementation time. As technology improves, software vendors have been able to offer increasingly advanced software at lower prices. This software

6106-450: The most common ETL tasks of data migration and application integration for multiple dispersed data sources. Virtual ETL operates with the abstracted representation of the objects or entities gathered from the variety of relational, semi-structured, and unstructured data sources. ETL tools can leverage object-oriented modeling and work with entities' representations persistently stored in a centrally located hub-and-spoke architecture. Such

6192-462: The most common are: Note that vendors may use differing names for these modules. In many cases, implementation (i.e. the installation and configuration of the system at the client) can be a bigger consideration than the actual software chosen when it comes down to the total cost of ownership for the business. Most mid-market and larger applications are sold exclusively through resellers, developers, and consultants. Those organizations generally pass on

6278-570: The most complex and expensive business accounting software became frequently part of an extensive suite of software often known as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. These applications typically have a very long implementation period, often greater than six months. In many cases, these applications are simply a set of functions which require significant integration, configuration and customization to even begin to resemble an accounting system. Many freeware high-end open-source accounting software are available online these days which aim to change

6364-628: The nature of the source data. There are 5 types to consider; three are included here: ETL vendors benchmark their record-systems at multiple TB (terabytes) per hour (or ~1 GB per second) using powerful servers with multiple CPUs, multiple hard drives, multiple gigabit-network connections, and much memory. In real life, the slowest part of an ETL process usually occurs in the database load phase. Databases may perform slowly because they have to take care of concurrency, integrity maintenance, and indices. Thus, for better performance, it may make sense to employ: Still, even using bulk operations, database access

6450-466: The overall data quality performance of the ETL process. A real-life ETL cycle may consist of additional execution steps, for example: ETL processes can involve considerable complexity, and significant operational problems can occur with improperly designed ETL systems. The range of data values or data quality in an operational system may exceed the expectations of designers at the time validation and transformation rules are specified. Data profiling of

6536-413: The processing and exchange of data provides a greater degree of flexibility. For example, new or pending accounts may be extracted from the billing system and sent to external cost recovery system(s) so that costs incurred for those accounts may be pre-identified. However, cost transactions for the new or pending accounts may not be able to get loaded into accounts receivable until they are formally added to

6622-455: The same data warehouse) may add new data in a historical form at regular intervals – for example, hourly. To understand this, consider a data warehouse that is required to maintain sales records of the last year. This data warehouse overwrites any data older than a year with newer data. However, the entry of data for any one year window is made in a historical manner. The timing and scope to replace or append are strategic design choices dependent on

6708-418: The source data uses a surrogate key, the warehouse must keep track of it even though it is never used in queries or reports; it is done by creating a lookup table that contains the warehouse surrogate key and the originating key. This way, the dimension is not polluted with surrogates from various source systems, while the ability to update is preserved. The lookup table is used in different ways depending on

6794-660: The source system or electronic bills . This includes valid transactions where all data is correct and invalid transactions that have invalid or missing elements. (Note: an ECRS can accept transactions into its database that have all fields valid or a minimum number of valid data elements.) Interactive portions of some ECRS packages allow review, updating and correction of individual costs. Transactions with invalid data in some columns are held for subsequent correction, transformed based on "business rules" or rejected, dictated by industry—and individual company—policy. Only transactions considered valid may be moved along to be loaded into

6880-449: The source used to create the cost (i.e. telephone, photocopier, delivery service, outside reproduction, etc.) and the employee who created the transaction. An on-line correction feature can allow users to display the transactions for which they are responsible, and to easily correct invalid transactions (e.g. invalid dates, time of day, etc.) so they can be processed into billing. Security features are sometimes available to control access by

6966-587: The stage for the success of subsequent processes. Most data-warehousing projects combine data from different source systems. Each separate system may also use a different data organization and/or format . Common data-source formats include relational databases , flat-file databases , XML , and JSON , but may also include non-relational database structures such as IBM Information Management System or other data structures such as Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM) or Indexed Sequential Access Method (ISAM) , or even formats fetched from outside sources by means such as

7052-451: The system over longer periods of time to a probably maximum of one year. If a Freq of "Daily" is used, a grid or table should be built for Mon-Fri and Sat-Sun/Holiday. An ECRS allows a company to use one comprehensive solution for managing cost recovery. Combining a fully functional Expense and Cost Recovery System dramatically reduces the administrative overhead and improves the efficiency of recovering firm costs and expenses. With an ECRS,

7138-408: The time available and the business needs. More complex systems can maintain a history and audit trail of all changes to the data loaded in the data warehouse. As the load phase interacts with a database, the constraints defined in the database schema – as well as in triggers activated upon data load – apply (for example, uniqueness, referential integrity , mandatory fields), which also contribute to

7224-597: The user to only those transactions they are directly or indirectly responsible for correcting (e.g. a secretary responsible for a department, supervisor managing sales reps, etc.). In a typical installation that incorporates cost recovery systems and electronic billing , there is a dedicated server to support the billing system (Host); a Local Area Network (LAN) to support user applications such as word processing, graphics, document management, spreadsheets; and cost recovery devices used to input data such as employee ID, client names, account numbers, etc. The accounting server and

7310-504: The various file formats used throughout an organization. ETL tools have started to migrate into enterprise application integration , or even enterprise service bus , systems that now cover much more than just the extraction, transformation, and loading of data. Many ETL vendors now have data profiling , data quality , and metadata capabilities. A common use case for ETL tools include converting CSV files to formats readable by relational databases. A typical translation of millions of records

7396-521: The wrong business. This sort of pre-validation will prevent purging of ECRS tables and, possibly, clean-up in the A/R or billing system. Transactions with missing or invalid company account codes are typically written into an ECRS database while notifying appropriate users of their need to be corrected. These transactions are not loaded into accounting until they are corrected or altered. Finally, invalid formats and specific data may be excluded from loads into

#572427