TRANSFORM YOUR REPORTING IN LESS THAN A WEEK!

Precision aims to improve the quality, accuracy and timeliness of financial information to help make informed decisions.

2020 has been the year that has highlighted the importance of timely and accurate reporting, and Precision has assisted many schools to be more efficient and productive with their financial reporting. For many schools, there has been an increase in the reporting periods and the information that is required by the School Board which has drastically increased the workloads of finance departments. Unfortunately, it is common for these financial reports to be manually prepared, with some reports taking days to create. Maintaining manual reporting is inefficient and very stressful for staff, and Precision has seen a huge increase in clients investing in automated reporting solutions.

Precision has been asked to create some really interesting automated financial reports for many different clients across Australia and we want to share some of these ideas with other schools. These financial reporting models have saved Business Offices weeks of report preparation time, enabling Finance Managers and Accountants to focus on more important areas such as forecasting, budgeting and planning.

A few of these financial reporting solutions are explained below, but we love a challenge…. so what questions or other information would you like to produce at the click of a refresh button?

Financial Reporting Solutions That We Offer

Cash flow REPORTING & forecasting

Cash flow reporting is tricky, and cash flow forecasting can seem impossible. Precision creates monthly cashflow forecasts based on simple 3-way financial reports that can produce your cash flow movements as a year-to-date actual, forecast and budget. Ideally, your budget (including balance sheet budget) would be entered into your financial system, but we do have work-arounds if this is not the case. The models provide for transparent and accurate cash flow reporting, forecasting, and budgeting, which is an essential tool for any school. These models can also be used to report on year-to-date cashflow versus budgeted cashflow to highlight any discrepancies.

Cashflow reports can be updated automatically using queries direct to your financial system, or set up to be a simple “copy & paste” format from your current financial report structures.

Creating automated monthly cash flow reports using queries, means you can easily jump between financial years to analyse trends and variances.

For Synergetic users, cash flow reporting structures can also be written in a few hours!

Annual Financial Statements

For those schools who need to produce the Annual Financial Statements themselves, isn’t it frustrating when the auditors ask for a minor journal to be processed and then you have to update and cross check every number in the Financial Statements? If you are new to working in your School, then you might find that there are minimal working papers to explain how the Financial Statements are created.

Precision has assisted schools to automate the creation and updating of the Annual Financial Statements using queries linked to the financial system. These models provide a clear audit-trail for how the Financial Statements are created and can be updated for a new financial year at the click of a button!

Save your finance team days (or even weeks) of work with an automated Annual Financial Statement model.

Budget Templates for Budget Holders

Gathering and collating budget information from the various budget holders is confusing and often involves multiple versions of updated budget requests.

Precision can help to create a model to ensure that budget information is sent out and received in a consistent format. You can provide budget holders with the data they need to complete their budget requests for recurrent expenditure and capital etc. that also creates an easy import function into your financial system.

The budget model can show data for each budget holder such as; previous years actual spend, previous budgets, % change in budget requested etc.

BOARD DEBTOR Reporting

Covid-19 has impacted debtors and the collection of tuition fees in many ways, such as granting tution fee discounts, increased family bursary requests, and offering extended payment plans etc. For some fortunate schools, they may have never needed to closely monitor debtors prior to Covid-19, but now find that they are required to produce detailed debtor management reports for Finance Committees and Boards.

Precision has been able to help create 1-page summary debtor reports to answer specific debtor management questions such as:

• How many current families have paid their tuition fees in full?

• What percentage of families are on direct debit arrangements?

• Have cash collections slowed down?

• How much debt is at risk with past families?

• What is the status of the top 20 debtors?

For assistance with Debtor Management, take a look at the Precision Debtor Action Items Dashboard

HOW ARE THE FINANCIAL REPORTS CREATED?

The above-mentioned financial reports are created using Microsoft Excel which can be linked directly to your financial system using a query, PowerQuery or PowerPivot. Please note that these financial reports are different to the dashboard reporting models that Precision also creates. Although some models will include graphics/ charts/ graphs, these financial models are concentrating on number-crunching to produce accurate financial statements.

What is the difference between Microsoft Excel reporting and PowerBI?

• Using Microsoft Excel queries, PowerQuery and PowerPivot are FREE under your Microsoft Education License

• In an Excel model, you can choose when you refresh the data and even save copies of files at key dates that can be reviewed later

• PowerBI does not enable advanced formula that can be required for creating financial statements

• Excel models and financial reports are formatted to be printed for distribution to readers

• Microsoft Excel is not as secure as PowerBI, which is why our models have passwords and extra security features

• Sensitive financial reports can be stored in finance network drives, and not be available to ICT and other staff on a shared PowerBI platform

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Reporting FAQ’s

• How much do these financial models cost?

The complexity of the financial models depends on the size of your general ledger and the information you wish to produce. A cash flow model takes on average between 2-4 days to create.

• We don’t have basic finance reports written in our finance system, so can we create models?

You can still create finance models connected to your finance system (Synergetic, Maze, TASS etc). If you need standard finance reports written such as Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss, then we can also help you write these in less than a day.

• We are thinking of changing our General Ledger, do we have to wait until we have a new GL structure?

Models can be re-linked to new GL codes and/or modified so old and new GL codes can be used.

• Our financial data has errors and inconsistencies, can you help with this?

Don’t worry, if this is an issue then we can produce reports to highlight any missing and incorrect data that needs updating and build in cross checks to your models. Gain oversight and peace of mind that your data is complete and accurate.