Extend Accrual Aggregation with Custom Anchors

By default, the Advanced engine aggregates accruals by Member only. The engine supports up to five aggregation anchors in total — Account, Product, and three custom anchors (Anchor1, Anchor2, Anchor3). To track liabilities by dimensions such as Region, Territory, or Channel, you must configure custom anchors. This ensures the Data Cloud engine knows how to group your transaction data for financial forecasting. This requires configuring three DPEs in your accrual calculation workflow.

Required Editions

Available in: Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions that have Rebate and Accrual Management Advanced enabled.

Note Product is a built-in anchor with its own dedicated field in the Pre-Processing DPE — it does not use the custom anchors (Anchor1, Anchor2, Anchor3), which are reserved for dimensions such as Region, Territory, or Channel. The steps in this section use Region (mapped to Anchor1) as the example. To aggregate by Product instead, follow the same node-mapping pattern but map to the built-in Product anchor field rather than a custom anchor.

1. Clone the three DPEs you'll modify:
   • Advanced Rebate and Accrual Pre-Processing - Rule Configuration
   • Advanced Rebate and Accrual Pre-Processing - Data Preparation
   • Advanced Rebate and Accrual Post-Processing - Source Generation
2. Identify the custom field(s) you want to aggregate by (e.g., Region__c, Territory__c)
3. Understand which anchor to use: Anchor1, Anchor2, or Anchor3 (you can configure up to three custom dimensions)
4. Configure Advanced Rebate and Accrual Pre-Processing - Rule Configuration DPE
5. Configure Advanced Rebate and Accrual Pre-Processing - Data Preparation DPE
6. Configure Advanced Rebate and Accrual Post-Processing - Source Generation DPE
7. After configuring the DPEs, run them in sequence:
   • Advanced Rebate and Accrual Pre-Processing - Rule Configuration
   • Advanced Rebate and Accrual Pre-Processing - Data Preparation
   • Accrual and Payout Engine - Delta Calculation
   • Accrual and Payout Engine - Rule Processing
   • Advanced Rebate and Accrual Post-Processing - Source Generation
   • Advanced Rebate and Accrual Post-Processing - Status Update

When the process is complete:

• Accrual Source records will be created with your custom dimension populated
• You'll see accrual liability broken down by your custom anchor (e.g., separate Accrual Source records for "North America" vs. "EMEA")
• Reports and dashboards can now aggregate accruals by your custom dimension

To learn more about Data Processing Engine, see Data Processing Engine

• Configure Advanced Rebate and Accrual Pre-Processing - Rule Configuration DPE
  This stage tells the system which custom field(s) to use for aggregation.
• Configure Advanced Rebate and Accrual Pre-Processing - Data Preparation DPE
  Map your custom dimension values through the pre-processing workflow so Data Cloud can use them during calculation. Activating an anchor in the Rule Configuration DPE tells the engine a custom dimension exists. This DPE populates that anchor with actual field values from your Transaction Journal so the engine has data to process.
• Configure Advanced Rebate and Accrual Post-Processing - Source Generation DPE
  Write accrual calculation results back to Salesforce Core, aggregated by your custom dimension.