XCubes Manual

• XCubes overview — XCubes is a multidimensional-spreadsheet (OLAP) system for structured financial and business data — cubes built from reusable dimensions, shown on dashboards.
• Projects — A project is the top-level container for dimensions, cubes and dashboards, and objects inside one project can freely reference each other.
• Dimensions — A dimension is a reusable list of items that defines one axis of a cube, so adding or renaming an item propagates to every cube that uses it.
• Dimension types — XCubes supports four dimension types — free-form, hierarchical, time-scale, and scenario — each with different item structures.
• Cubes & coordinates — A cube is a multidimensional spreadsheet: every cell sits at the intersection of dimension items, so structure replaces the arbitrary cells of a worksheet.
• Coordinates — A coordinate is the tuple of one item per dimension that identifies a single cell in a cube — the address used when reading or writing data programmatically.
• Cube references — A cube reference is a named link that lets formulas in one cube pull values from another, resolved live at compute time instead of copied.
• Reference transfer options — How a cube reference decides which source cell to read — the six transfer rules, one per source dimension, and the inline path shorthand.
• Schema attributes — A property carried by a dimension's items that points at an item of another dimension, optionally dated, which cube references follow to resolve a lookup.
• Formulas — Formula items compute their value from other items in the same dimension, written in the XCubes formula language and evaluated when the cube computes.
• Spreading a total — Type a value on a total — a parent, a quarter, a year — and spread it to the input cells under it: proportionally, evenly or by profile, around locked cells.
• Cost allocation rules — Rules that move a shared cost centre's costs to the centres that use it, in steps, by fixed weights or a driver line. Preview, run, revert.
• Dashboards — A dashboard is a collection of widgets — charts, scorecards, tables and pivots — that visualize live cube data across one or more slides.
• Price, volume and mix — Split the change in revenue or margin between two slices into price, volume, mix and new/lost products, per item and in total, tying exactly.
• Data tables — The row-and-column grid for records a cube cannot hold — journals, registers and task lists — with typed columns that feed cubes through Links and back widgets.
• Populating cubes — Links & integrations — A Link is a saved definition that fills a cube from a file, another cube, a URL, or an external integration — with mapping, refresh, and revert.
• Translating codes — Mapping tables — A saved crosswalk that translates a source system's codes into your model's item codes as a Link runs, with prefix patterns and sign handling.
• Snapshots — A snapshot is a frozen, read-only copy of a cube's values at a point in time — freeze it, compare it against live, and restore it.
• Finding silent errors — diagnostics & check rows — Two different checks for errors a model never announces: a static pass over configuration that silently reads zero, and an evaluated pass over its check rows.
• Excel add-in — Install the add-in, load a cube slice into Excel, and push edited inputs back under the same access rules and locks as the web grid. Read cells with GETCELL.
• Sharing cubes & dashboards — Share a cube or dashboard read-only with specific people, or publish a dashboard as a public link — with optional scoping, password, and expiry.
• Agents — A shipped agent reads your cubes and proposes rows into a proposals table; a reviewer approves them. Nothing reaches a cube unreviewed.
• Collaboration — roles, access rules & approval — Invite people with roles, scope what each user can see and edit per cube with access rules, and gate contributions through a submit → approve workflow.
• Build your first model — End-to-end walkthrough — create dimensions and a cube, enter data, add a formula rollup, and place a chart on a dashboard.
• Import a spreadsheet into a cube — Move an Excel or CSV file's values into a cube — the two sheet shapes, and the preview discipline that stops a footnote row becoming a permanent dimension item.
• Build financial statements from a ledger export — Method for turning a journal or trial-balance export (such as a French FEC) into a balance sheet and P&L that tie to the source line-by-line on the first run.
• Asking the model questions — what-if, goal seek, sensitivity, explain — Interrogate a model without changing it: the impact of a hypothetical value, the input that hits a target, sensitivity tables, and where a number comes from.
• Formula function reference — Every formula function, grouped by category, with human-readable signatures and examples; typed signatures for MCP are in a collapsed section at the bottom.
• Link transform functions — Every function a Link transform column can use — date, text, math, logic and conversion — with a worked example for each, kept in step with the evaluator.