I am having trouble setting up my data as a panel in SAS. My id variable is company ticker. As such, it is categorical in nature. Do I need to encode it before I set it up as a panel in SAS or is it okay to keep it as it is?
In STATA I use encode for that purpose.
As seen from the following snapshot, 'symbol' is my id variable.
![Data_Snapshot Data_Snapshot](https://communities.sas.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/7660i868F3D39BE98255A/image-size/original?v=1.0&px=-1)