Like the Roman god Janus, the end of financial year is when we both look back and look forward.
It’s a time to review the past year, see what’s worked and what hasn’t and then to plan for next year.
We’ll suggest some useful reports to help you do that in Calxa. For the purpose of these examples, we’ll assume you have the Report Month set to the last month of the financial year.
Review what’s happened in the year gone by
A good report to start with is the Budget Analysis report.
You can run it for a date range (Tip: choose Financial Year Period 1 to Report Month to work in any year) and you’ll get the actuals, the budget, a dollar variance and a percentage variance. Use the Exception Reporting criteria to highlight lines with a high dollar or percentage variance. You can run this report at the organisation level or at the department or project level. This makes it an excellent report for managers at all levels.
The Business Unit – Income & Expense Summary for those of you who need an overview or projects without all the detail – or run this one first and then a detailed Budget Analysis report on those projects that do have significant variances.
Consider also using a report that gives you a month by month view of the year (such as the P & L with Projected Total). It’s a good perspective of your results, allowing you to see patterns or interruptions to regular patterns.
As well as comparing your results to budget, match them to the previous year as well. How have things improved? Or not? Understand what’s worked this year in your organisation and think about what you need to do differently in the future.
To get a good understanding of your cash position and how it’s changed during the year, run the Where Did Our Money Go? report. This will compare your net profit to your bank movement and show what else has changed. The Bank Movement Waterfall chart can give useful insights as well.
Compare your Balance Sheet to the previous year and see what has changed in your assets and liabilities. Is there anything that concerns you? Are your suppliers being paid? Are you paying GST and superannuation on time?
Review your Cash Reserves. It’s important to keep a buffer of cash (or equivalent) to ensure your resilience when something doesn’t go to plan.
Finally, use KPIs and the KPI spreadsheet chart or the KPI Comparison Chart to look at particular numbers that are important to your business. Look for trends (hopefully yours are all heading in the right direction!) and aberrations – this will give you a deep insight into your business.
Looking forward to next year
The best combination for looking to the future is the classic 3-way forecast. Use the P & L vs Last Year Actual/Forecast . Assuming you have your Report Month set to the last month of the financial year, start from Report Date +1 and use Actuals up to Report Date to get a comparison to the year just finished), Add in a Balance Sheet Forecast and the Cashflow Forecast to give you a complete picture of your expectations for the next year.
When running your reports, consider your audience and provide the right amount of detail. Summarise for boards and senior management, provide more detail to department managers and the finance team. Give people enough information to understand and make decisions without overwhelming them.
Put it all in a Bundle
As you select each report and set the criteria, add it to a Report Bundle. Then next year, it’s just one click generate the whole lot – or next week if you need to re-run any or all of them.