Dimensions

Please contact [email protected] to activate dimensions in your organization.

Dimensions let you add depth to your models by categorizing data across key business attributes—like department, region, vendor, customer, or product line.

They’re a powerful way to track, organize, and analyze financial data beyond the chart of accounts.

Why Use Dimensions?

While variables are the backbone of your financial model, dimensions help you slice and segment those variables in meaningful ways.

For example:

• Break down headcount by department

• Track revenue by region

• Allocate expenses across projects

• Analyze COGS by SKU

Dimensions allow you to ask better questions and get clearer answers, without duplicating models or hardcoding every line item.

When to Use Dimensions

You’ll want to use dimensions any time you’re managing repeating categories that share the same structure. This is especially useful when:

• You want to compare multiple entities or segments side by side

• You want to build formulas that adapt to different dimension values

• You want to roll up or filter data in reports without manual rework

They’re a game-changer for scalable planning and reporting.

Example: Forecasting Salaries with Hierarchical Dimensions

Let’s say you’re building a salary forecast for your company.

Without dimensions, you’d need to create separate variables for every department or team—like Salary_Engineering, Salary_Sales, Salary_CS, etc. That gets messy fast, especially if your org grows or restructures.

Instead, you create a single variable: Employee Salaries Then, you assign a Department dimension to it, which might look like:

• Engineering

• Sales

• Customer Success

• Marketing

Now, each row in your salary model can be tagged to a department, and you can input salaries by department directly in one place.

Adding a Hierarchical Dimension

Let’s say your company operates in multiple regions—US, EMEA, and APAC—and each department exists in each region. Rather than creating 15+ individual variables (Sales_US, Sales_EMEA, Sales_APAC…), you add a Region dimension nested under Department.

For example:

Department → Region Engineering → US Engineering → EMEA Sales → US Sales → APAC

Now you can plan and report salaries at any level of granularity:

For Reporting

• Roll up salaries across all departments in APAC

• Compare Engineering salaries between US and EMEA

• Show total Sales salaries across all regions

• Filter a report down to just Customer Success in EMEA

Because the hierarchy is built in, Pluvo understands how to group and aggregate automatically—no extra formulas or duplicated data.

For Planning

• Model hiring plans by department and region (e.g. 3 engineers in EMEA, 5 in US)

• Apply different assumptions by region (e.g. higher salaries in the US)

• Forecast regional expansions just by adding a new region to the dimension—no need to restructure your mode

Why It Matters

Dimensions make your models scalable. Hierarchical dimensions make them powerful.

They allow you to:

• Keep your models clean, even as your org becomes more complex

• Plan and report across many views—without duplicating logic

• Build once, then slice, filter, and explore however you need

It’s the difference between a spreadsheet that works for now and a financial model that grows with your business.

Ready to get started with Dimensions?

• Dimension Basics Learn how to create and manage dimensions, and see examples of common use cases.

• Dimensions in Formulas Learn how to reference dimensions in formulas, use functions like sumif and countif, and build dynamic logic across categories.