Exam PL-300 topic 7 question 4 discussion

A) - LASTDATE() as we do not sum the balances of last 3 months

B) DATESQTD The Balance sheet report is a quarterly report so it needs to have the sum of the last three months. The Balances table is reporting in monthly intervals, so it needs to be summed up to produce a quarterly result. That is where DATESQTD comes in, as it states: "Returns a table that contains a column of the dates for the quarter to date, in the current context." LASTDATE() will instead produce a result: "Returns the last date in the current context for the specified column of dates." Which would only show the last month's result.

this question is out context, this comes from a use case . case : you to get the following information from the quarterly reports. the answer is B.

This question revolves around calculating values for a balance sheet report. In financial reporting, balance amounts (like assets, liabilities) are typically semi-additive, meaning you use the value from the last period (e.g., the end of the quarter) rather than summing up balances from each month. Option A (LASTDATE): Returns the balance for the last date in the quarter. This is correct for balance sheet data since it reflects the final state for the reporting period. Option B (DATESQTD): Calculates a sum of balances for all dates in the quarter. This is typically used for metrics like sales or revenue, but not appropriate for balances because adding balances over time doesn’t make sense. Conclusion: The correct answer is A (LASTDATE), as it accurately represents the final balance at the end of the quarter.

In the discription they say about the type of report: "Analysts must be able to create new reports from the dataset that contains the profit and loss data, but the reports built by the analysts must NOT be included in the quarterly reports for the board. Analysts must NOT be able to share the quarterly reports with anyone. Changes in long-term liabilities from the previous quarter".

I was little mislead with the fact reports are intended to be used in the QUARTERLY board meetings so I was thinking of option B to get the result of the entire quarter (there it's used the DATESQTD function), but there is no sense at all to sum the inventories (and other items in the balance sheet) for each month in the period, report must only show the current final amount so we need to take the LASTDATE. It looks to me this question is more about evaluating your understanding of what a balance sheet is rather than PBI analysis.

Daily balance should not be added, or there will end up with counted items multiple times.

CALCULATE ( SUM( BalanceSheet[BalanceAmount] ), LASTDATE ( 'Date'[Date] ) ) This expression sums the BalanceAmount from the BalanceSheet table and uses LASTDATE to consider only the amounts up to the last date in the Date table, which is typically the end of the period like a month, quarter, or year. This is a common way to calculate ending balances in financial reporting1. The other options provided are not standard for calculating ending balances:

In Exam, 06/04/2024 Calculate/SUM/LASTDATE

A- IS CORRECT

The correct answer is B. The DAX expression in option B uses the CALCULATE function to sum the balance amount for each quarter, based on the date column in the Date table. The DATESQTD function returns a table of dates in the same quarter as the last date in the current filter context. This way, the ending balances in the balance sheet reports are calculated for each quarter, regardless of the granularity of the date column.

A) LastDate As per the case study, there must be at least one balance sheet report in the quarterly reporting package that will demonstrate the ending balance for the quarter and also the previous quarter. Semi-additive calculations, like the balance at end of the month, apply LASTDATE Function.

A) - LASTDATE()

Balance report is quarterly so DATESQTD is the correct answer.

LASTDATE, please please do not add up the last 3 months (or any quarters) ending balance to get your quarters total

They don't say every balance sheet is in quarterly form. They say "At least one of the balance sheet reports in the quarterly reporting package must show the ending balances for the quarter, as well as for the previous quarter." Question texts are so ambiguous, confusing.

The correct answer is LASTDATE. We don't need Quarterly Running Total of the Balance Amount.