Navigating the Activities Tab

The Activity tab is the workspace where marketing spend data is tracked. It is the data entry area of Allocadia and allows you to compare your Plan, Forecast, Purchase Orders (POs) and Actuals seeing how the bottoms up plan has changed throughout the year, and view your current spend at any given time. The Activity tab has numerous basic and enhanced features to assist you at all stages of the planning phase.

Out of Box Columns

These are the default columns that come with your Allocadia instance and can be configured as needed.

• Plan: A column that displays the initial estimate of your marketing spend
• Forecast: A working column for the latest expected costs
• POs: A column that displays contracted purchase amounts associated with a Marketing Activity
• Actuals: A column that records the precise amount of money actually spent on goods or services, as brought in by your finance or ERP system

Filters

You can filter your Activity Plans to target specific information as needed.

• Views define which columns display on the Activity grid. Views are page layouts that display specific columns of measures, streamlining your input process by giving you the ability to sort your Activities by Plan, Forecast, or other input columns. You can use the View drop down to switch between Views.

• Scenario Tags are used to plan Activities in the event of budget fluctuations. They assist in building a more dynamic plan by displaying different scenarios to help understand the impact that a change in the budget would have. Filtering the Scenario Tags enables you to look at your budget plus activities tagged to a scenario, such as an increase in budget.

• Forecast Tags are used to communicate the status of Activities. Using the Forecast filter, you can filter outspend, and look at specific categories of spend. For example, if you filter for spend tagged as Committed and Occurred, you can see how much you have spent to date. Out of the box tags include:

• Forecast – This activity has been planned, but not yet executed
• Committed – The execution of this activity is contractually committed to.
• Occurred – This activity has occurred.

• Pivot by Details Panel Attribute: This displays your activities in groupings based on your key performance indicators. You can organize your Activity Plans in groupings that make sense to your organization and pivot those activities to see them according to their assigned attributes. 

• Quick Views Filters
  • The $0 filter displays only activities that have a dollar amount associated
  • The Show Original Currency filter displays multi-currency entries along with the base value and the currency

Categories, Sub-categories, and Line Items

Categories and Sub-categories are a way of grouping spend in Allocadia. On the Activities tab, the folder category structure helps group spend activities that have related details and displays a rolled-up aggregate total of the activities within.

• Category: A folder for a group of related marketing activities
• Sub-category: A sub-grouping of related marketing activities
• Marketing Activity (Line Item): A marketing spend activity. Also referred to as a campaign or tactic. Names vary between organizations and marketing teams
• Placeholder: A lump sum amount assigned to an activity such as a trade show where specific activities may not yet be known but money needs to be accounted for

Performance Insight Cards

Performance Insight Cards contain key marketing plan indicators and are displayed above the Activities tab for ease of access. This can assist when reallocating costs in your Activities and provides key information through all stages of your fiscal year.

• The Metrics card displays your Top-down allocation. Common Metrics cards include:
  • FY Investment Target, is total amount of budget allocated for the fiscal year
  • FY Left to plan, is remaining budget left to allocate to marketing activities during the planning phase. This number will decrease as additional activities are planned
  • FY Plan, is total aggregated value of activities planned for the fiscal year
• The Impact Modeller card shows the estimated revenue impact and funnel metrics for marketing activity
• The Alignment Scorecard shows what percentage your budget is aligned with strategic investments defined by your organization to help you meet strategic goals