Top 115 HFM Interview Questions Part-1

Here we are starting the series on HFM Interview questions. We would be presenting 115 frequently asked HFM interview questions in Four-part series

Here are Part -1 Questions.

Question 1: What is EPM or Hyperion?
Answer

EPM Stands for Enterprise performance management and it is a set of analytic processes and tools that allow businesses to identify, track measure, and achieve goals. The oracle tools focus on the most common EPM Domains like Planning & Forecasting, Financial Management, Strategy Formulation, Supply Chain Effectiveness

Question 2: What is HFM (Hyperion Financial Management)?

Answer

Oracle Hyperion Financial Management is a financial consolidation and reporting application built with advanced Web technology. It provides financial managers the ability to rapidly consolidate and report financial results, meet global regulatory requirements, reduce the cost of compliance and deliver confidence in the numbers.

Question 3 Describe HFM architecture?

Answer

Financial Management is designed to operate as a multi-tier system.

1.  The client tier contains the user interface and the ability to communicate with the application tier. You can display data and metadata, enter data, and maintain metadata in this tier.

2.  On the Web server tier, you access the Web-enabled portions of Financial Management.
3.  The middle tier contains the HFM services and connections to the relational database.
4.  The data tier contains the relational database and all Financial Management data and metadata.

Question 4 What is HFM services do you go to start?

Answer:

HFM- DME Listener

Hyperion Foundation Open LDAP

Hyperion Foundation Shared Services – Web Application

Hyperion Workspace- Agent Application

Hyperion Workspace- Web Application

Question 5 What are the main Windows processes of an HFM application server?
Answer The main Windows processes of an HFM application server are HsxService.exe, HsxServer.exe, CASSecurity.exe, and HsvDatasource.exe.

Question 6 What happens when I start the HFM Windows Service?
Answer Oracle’s Hyperion Financial Management can be started by starting the Windows Service “Hyperion Financial Management – Management Service”. When this service is started, a process called HsxService.exe will become visible in the Windows Task Manager and will remain running until the Windows Service is stopped. The HsxServer.exe, CASSecurity.exe, and HsvDataSource.exe processes are also started.

Question 7 What happens when I stop the HFM Windows Service?
Answer

When the Hyperion Financial Management Windows service is stopped, the HsxService.exe process will be stopped along with the HsvDataSource.exe, CASSecurity.exe, and HsxServer.exe processes.

Question 8 What is Consolidation?

Answer

Consolidation is aggregating the Base level entities amounts with the Parent level entities amounts.

Question 9 What is Translation?

Answer It is Currency translation happens when a parent entity’s default currency is different from a child entity’s default currency. Runs when you choose Translate or Consolidate.

Question 10 What is Adjustment?

Answer

Adjustment is to correct the data. It is done by Journals at value dimension member Entity currency Adjs and Parent curr Adj.

Question 11. What is the difference between consolidate, consolidate all and consolidate all with the data?

Answer

Consolidate	Consolidate All with Data	Consolidate all
only entities that require logic or consolidation are updated by the system.	the option is available for any parent entity regardless of its status. NODATA has skipped	any Parent entity regardless of its status. NODATA is also consolidated.

 Question 12.  What are the types of consolidation and methods of consolidation?

Answer

Types	Methods
1. Legal Consolidation   2. Geographical Consolidation 3. Consolidation by entity	1. Consolidate   2. Consolidate all 3. Consolidate all with data

Question 13   How do you enable Rules to customize consolidation?

Answer

Application Settings -> consolidation Rules -> Y

Question 14 How can you cancel consolidation?

Answer

HFM Web client -> Administration -> running Tasks -> click on the Red button

Question 15 What is an ‘Income Statement’?

Answer 

An income statement is a financial statement that reports a company’s financial performance over a specific accounting period. Financial performance is assessed by giving a summary of how the business incurs its revenues and expenses through both operating and non-operating activities. It also shows the net profit or loss incurred over a specific accounting period

The income statement, also called the profit and loss statement, is a report that shows the income, expenses, and resulting profits or losses of a company during a specific time period.

Question 16 What is a Balance Sheet?

Answer The balance sheet provides information on what the company owns (its assets), what it owes (its liabilities), and the value of the business to its stockholders (the shareholders’ equity) as of a specific date.

Total Assets = Total Liabilities + Shareholders’ Equity

Question 17 What is an Assets?

Answer Assets are economic resources that are expected to produce economic benefits for their owner.

Question 18 What are Liabilities?

Answer They are obligations the company has to outside parties. Liabilities represent others’ rights to the company’s money or services. Examples include bank loans, debts to suppliers, and debts to employees.

Question 19 What is Shareholders’ equity?

Answer it is the value of a business to its owners after all of its obligations have been met. This net worth belongs to the owners. Shareholders’ equity generally reflects the amount of capital the owners have invested, plus any profits generated that were subsequently reinvested in the company

Question 20 What is trial Balance?

Answer

trial balance is a summary of all the balances of ledger accounts irrespective of whether they carry a debit balance or credit balance. Since we follow a double entry system of accounts, the total of all the debit and credit balances as appeared in the trial balance remains equal. Usually, you need to prepare a trial balance at the end of the said accounting period.

Question 21 What is General Ledger?

Answer A general ledger account is an account or record used to sort and store balance sheet and income statement transactions. Examples of general ledger accounts include the asset accounts such as Cash, Accounts Receivable, Inventory, Investments, Land, and Equipment

Question 22 What is ICP?

Answer 

The Intercompany Partnership Dimension provides an efficient way to identify, report, and reconcile intercompany account differences. With the ability to view detailed transactions at any time, you can reconcile intercompany account differences frequently and thus minimize their impact on the closing cycle.

Question 23 What is the Tolerance amount?

Answer Tolerance amount is small discrepancies in the amounts in Intercompany Transactions.

Question 24

What is the difference between switch sign for and switch type for and in which dimension it exists?

Answer

It exists in custom dimension

Switch sign for: It is ticked to change

• ASSET to LIABILITY
• LIABILITY to ASSET
• EXPENSE to REVENUE
• REVENUE to EXPENSE

Switch type for: It is ticked to change

• ASSET to EXPENSE
• EXPENSE to ASSET
• LIABILITY to REVENUE
• REVENUE to LIABILITY
• BALANCE to FLOW
• FLOW to BALANCE

Question 25 How do you eliminate intercompany transactions?

Answer

Intercompany transactions are eliminated through a plug account.

Steps:

Create plug account in account dimension

Tick the check box called IS ICP in account dimension

Tick the check box called IS ICP in Entity dimension

Load the ICP rule file.

Then automatically the difference between the Intercompany transactions will be transferred to plug account

Question 26 What is triangulation?

Answer A means of converting balances from one currency to another via a third common currency. In Europe, this is the euro for member countries. For example, to convert from French franc to Italian lira, the common currency is defined as the European euro. Therefore, in order to convert balances from French franc to Italian lira, balances are converted from French franc to European euro

Triangulation means doing translation from source currency to any currency other than destination currency.

Example:

If u have USD, EURO & YEN our source currency is USD & destination currency is YEN if u want to translate from USD to EURO, the system will translate first from USD to YEN & then YEN to EURO in a reverse manner.

Question 27 What is a data lock?

Answer

A user-controlled mechanism that prevents changes to data according to specified criteria, such as period or scenario

Question 28

How do you lock the data?

Answer

Select Lock/Unlock IC Entities and Select Scenario, period year and click lock

Question 29

How do you load the data into HFM?

Answer

There are many ways to load it

1) FDM or FDMEEE

2) Flat files can be directly loaded in HFM

3) ODI can be used to load metadata in HFM

Question 30

What is the server working folder in the HFM server?

Answer The application server has included a feature of paging data records to a file system during periods of high activity.  This feature was added to the application server to provide a performance gain in situations where repeated requests to and from the relational database were seen to be having a performance impact in larger applications (applications with dense subcubes).

The data files of this paging mechanism are written to a folder named “Server Working Folder” in the Financial Management file path

So When loading application information like Data, Metadata, and Journals, some temporary files like .tmp and .db are getting created under the Server Working Folder location on the HFM application server