Achieving a successful Calxa implementation is the topic of this article. A successful implementation of any system requires you to have a clear plan. However, a plan on its own is not sufficient. You will need to bring other stakeholders on board. This can be your finance team. Or, if you are working on your own, it may include your CEO or even the board. Changing management reports affects all audiences equally. Whether they are the main operators or just the receivers of the insights.
Planning your Calxa Implementation
The idea of changing the current processes may not resonate with everyone. So, communication should be a critical focus to get around that. Here, we have come up with some strategies on how you can deliver a successful Calxa implementation to help you plan and manage the rollout.
- Be clear of the advantages of using Calxa in your organisation. Quantify the benefits your organisation is getting from this rollout. What are you expecting to change in your work day/week/month with Calxa at your side? Having a shared understanding of the benefits your team will gain will create a compelling reason to make the change. A few tips to help you bring the team on board:
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- Involve your team early in the implementation process.
- Share your process used during the evaluation. Your team is more likely to share Calxa’s values if they understand how you evaluated the tools and why it stood apart from other options.
- Encourage questions and make sure you deliver transparent answers.
- Help your Champions understand exactly what Calxa does. They are going to be the ones spreading the values of the new process.
- Be aware what the critical ingredients are that you and your team need to adopt the new system.
- Allow yourself and your team dedicated time to learn and train in the new system.
- Find a Calxa Champion within your team. Task this person to schedule and lead a daily Calxa session with your team.
- Adopt some changes to your day to allow the focus of this next 5 Days to be on your new system.
This article on How To Implement New Software Without Stressing People has a few more ideas.
Preparing for a Successful Calxa Implementation
Before involving your team, get the Calxa app ready to receive additional users. There are few things that need checking:
- Make sure to invite your individual team members into your Calxa workspace.
- Give them the right permissions. This can be partial access based on business units or areas within the app.
- If you are planning to use Account Trees, prepare at least one for the team to use in their homework. Using a pre-existing Account Tree will help them learn the basics on how to run reports. This will buy you time to onboard individual members to this more advanced functionality at a later stage.
- Similarly, if cost centres or program activities are needed, you can restrict your team members to just the tracking categories or jobs you want them to work on. In this case, prepare some Business Unit Trees for each member containing just their business units. Again, this will fast track their basic learning and give you some time to train the more complex stuff at a later point.
- Where you are planning to include cash flow forecasts into the reporting, check the configuration before involving your team. Essentially, you just go over the Cashflow Settings and make sure the nominated accounts are right. Here you can also check the GST schedules and other payroll related settings.
Now, you are ready to invite your team and receive these additional users into your workspace. The training journey may begin.
Calxa Implementation in 5 Days
Firstly, we have broken down the rollout across 5 working days. You may find that choosing a period from Monday to Friday gives cohesion in the learning process. Secondly, the structure below is built to give you an idea of the content for each session. Then, it is supplemented with some targeted homework for each team member and some helpful links. At the end, you will find a table outlining the plan. So, let’s get started.
The rollout can be driven by yourself or your inhouse Calxa Champion, if you have appointed one.
Day 1 – The Overview
In this session, your champion will focus on providing the new users with an overview.
Session Content:
- Software capabilities outlining the benefits of adopting this technology based on the reasons for the change.
- Details on the Calxa implementation and how the rollout will work over the next 5 days.
- Then, move to a demonstration of Calxa at a high level. This overview should cover the Report Builder, Report Bundles, Document Editor, Reporting on Business Units, Reporting with Account Trees as well as Budgets & Actuals, depending on the precise requirements of your organisation.
Homework for Today:
- Watch Calxa’s Getting Started Webinars
- In the app, run some reports adding Business Unit Trees and Account Trees. Select different report templates for various periods. This is mostly a play session.
Help Material to Use:
Day 2 – The Budgets
Budgeting will be the focus of this session. As the outcome, you want to aim at providing your team with the knowledge on how to create their budgets.
Session Content:
Start with the concepts on budgeting in Calxa.
- How to use budget versions
- What are budget views and layouts
- Data entry by periods
- When to use the Budget Factory
- Import / Export Budgets
- Using the Loan Wizard to build balance sheet reports
Homework for Today:
- How to use budget versions, emphasising that each version covers all business units for all years. You don’t need a new one each year.
- What are budget views and layouts.
- Data entry by periods, whether that is months, quarters or years.
- When to use the Budget Factory.
- Import / Export Budgets if necessary.
- Using formulas and metrics to drive budget outcomes.
- Using the Loan Wizard to build balance sheet reports.
Help Material to Use:
Import Budgets & Export Budgets
Day 3 – The Reports
The focal point on the third day of your Calxa implementation, will be reporting. Your champion will go through the staples of the report builder and how to come up with the end result: Management Reports.
Session Content:
- Set up Report Bundles
- Find reports in the report builder and add to bundle
- How and when to select a Business Unit Tree and an Account Tree
- Date Selections and Report Criteria
- Add Cover Page to Bundle
- How workflows work
- Published Reports
Homework for Today:
- Set up at least one Report Bundle
- Add 3-5 Reports to the Bundle as well as a cover page
- Set up a workflow to send the bundle daily to yourself starting the following day.
- Publish a report.
Help Material to Use:
Date Selection and Report Criteria
Day 4 – Advanced Features
At this point, your team should be able to create a budget and report on their individual business unit(s). Hereon, the fourth session is dedicated to some more advanced functionalities. To make the Calxa implementation successful, you want to build some confidence. Having a good grasp on business units and account trees, will do that.
Session Content:
- Review Business Units including how to create/edit a Business Unit Tree, Business Unit Configurations and Reporting on Business Units
- Review Account Trees, again, starting with how to create/edit an Account Tree, Account Tree categories & running totals and Account Tree headers & detail accounts
- Finish with an Introduction to Budget Formulas
Homework for Today:
- Create and edit additional business unit trees to report on a single or multiple tracking categories or jobs. Review the business unit consolidation settings.
- Create and edit at least one account tree. Add some headers and categories here. The run some reports to test the outcome.
- Review your budgets and add some formulas where this makes sense.
Help Material to Use:
Create & Edit Business Unit Trees
Create, Configure & Edit Account Trees
Day 5 – KPIs and Non-Financial Metrics
In Calxa, you can add KPIs to many reports at the bottom of the page. Or, you can run some separate KPI reports and charts. If this is something you are planning to incorporate into your reporting, today’s the last session will focus on KPIs and Metrics.
Session Content:
- Review default KPIs
- How to create custom KPI
- Adding KPIs to reports
- Creating Metrics
- Entering Metrics Budgets and Actuals
- Reporting on Metrics
Homework for Today:
- Create Custom KPI and Add to Report and then to Bundle
- Create Metric and add budgets and actuals
- Prepare Report using Default KPI, Your new Custom KPI, Your Metrics Actuals vs Budget
- Add KPI Reports to your bundle
Help Material to Use:
Making the Calxa Implementation a Success
Rolling out this plan over 5 days is a great way to introduce your team to the chosen technology and get them started with the new process. Over time, you probably want to cement and grow their knowledge. Doing ongoing training sessions will help you keep the momentum going.
These sessions can be scheduled as a ‘Lunch and Learn’ or even delivered remotely. To make it more interesting, you can mix up the content presented in a more solution-based format. We have a lot of content already prepared as blog articles or recorded webinars. So, feel free to use some of these topics that focus on either your business needs or the Calxa features you are using the most:
- How to Calculate Payroll Budgets for your Business
- Best Practice Management Reporting
- 5 Types of Budgeting Methods for Business
- 10 Examples of KPIs for Travel Agency Managers
- Making Sense of Balance Sheet Budgets
- Nailing Multi-Currency Reporting in Xero and Calxa
- Preparing Budgets for Next Year
- Costing Bed-Nights for the NDIS Accommodation Provider
- Streamlining Grant Acquittals
- Designing your own Charts and Graphs
Anyway, you get the idea. Also, keep in mind that Calxa offers free monthly Web Chats that you and your team can attend to maintain up-to-date software knowledge.