Design help - incorporating Budget information into star schema

Question

I currently have a star schema.
At the fact level the data is broken down to be as grannular as possible, one row per order line Item with the line price being the main measure.
There is a DimDate
The DimProduct Dimension has ProductCode & Product Category ( I may break this up into two dimensions)
I have now been given a budget that contains Monthly and annual estimates of each test category and expected sales and sale prices,  and asked to produce a report that:
On a monthly basis, shows if the actual sales match up with estimates in budget, and if not, lists if its due to insufficient quantity sold, discounted pricing or a combo of the two.
Im not sure how to implement this budget data. Should i:
Create a Budget Dimension that has a row for each month of the budget that contains the estimates?
Should this be imported directly into the fact table without a budget dimension?
Create a seperate new fact table that is a Periodic Snapshot . Would contain One row for each test category per month, with measures for expected and actual amounts.
Any advice on the best way of adding a budget to my model would be appreciated.
Thanks a mil

Answer 1

I was posting in the public forum as someone who may have tackled this before might be able to advise on a solution that may be better than what i come up with. I will try another public forum like sql server central. Thanks
I think what you can do is this
Populate budget info by reducing to day level granularity ie while putting in fact table make date as first day of the month ie datekey corresponding to start of the month from DimDate
This will you can use the existing DimDate itself for relating within the cube
While analysing because you analyze it at month level it will work fine
ie for actuals it will aggregate every transaction (sales) from day level to month and compare it with month level budget (single entry at start of the month)
so you'll get % attained and you can find reasons for that from other sales attributes like discounts etc
Please Mark This As Answer if it solved your issue
Please Mark This As Helpful if it helps to solve your issue
Visakh
My MSDN Page
My Personal Blog
My Facebook Page