Introduction to Financial Metrics in Basis
Now that we have many line items in the Input Data and Dimensions that describe them, we can talk about the fun part—creating financial metrics.
Most financial metrics are simple aggregates or counts of line items. For example, the COUNT of employees in a certain region (we call this Headcount) or the SUM of their salaries (we call this Wages & Salaries).
What are Rollups?
Rollups are Basis-generated aggregates of Input data. By default whenever you create a Block, we create SUM and COUNT aggregates of the values in that Block automatically for you to use in your models.
Sometimes, it's also useful to access the SUM and COUNT aggregates of slices of your data based on categories defined in Dimensions. Basis can also automate creating automatic Rollups for dimension data.
Adding a Rollup
Here's a use case where I have a Block tracking AE Performance. I've created a Dimension to categorize the Country the AE is serving and I'd like to figure out monthly Quota for just the US segment.
To do this, I can access the Add Rollup feature in an Outputs table and select the auto-generated Rollup.
💡 Rollups can also be accessed in regular formulas just like any other line item.