Next week’s release will just about complete the budgeting functionality online.
In the next few days we’re releasing an update to Calxa online that will take the budgeting abilities up a significant notch – you’ll be able to export and import budgets.
In addition to this, we’re giving you the option to automatically consolidate your project or department budgets and we’ll provide better notifications when things go wrong – as they sometimes will in even the best systems!
Here is more on the key changes.
Exporting and Importing
We’ve always had good feedback on our budget import feature – especially the ability to do a partial import and just update selected rows. Our team has gone a step further this time and given you the ability to import multiple years in one go. This means that you can have a spreadsheet that calculates your sales budget for this year and next and import that in one step rather than the 2 that were previously required.
The budget export is no longer restricted to a financial year. If you have a project that runs from February to November, just select that range and that’s what’s displayed – and now exported.
If you’re a QuickBooks Online user, we’ve improved the import functionality for you by exporting the full path to the detail accounts – this gets around the problem we’ve had in the past with duplicated account names.
Our team are working on budget formulas (a big step up from the shortcuts we currently have in the desktop software) but this should fill the gap while you wait for that to come out.
Organisation Budgets
Many people budget at the cost centre/job/program/project level and then want to roll up these budgets to the organisation level. In the Calxa desktop application this was achieved at the reporting stage by choosing to consolidate projects or departments then. We’ve improved that process now and moved the choice to where it belongs – in the organisation budget. Make the choice once and it will flow through to all of your reports and dashboards.
Cashflow Coaching Kit
This one is mainly for the accountants and bookkeepers – a new Report Bundle Kit modelled on the ATO’s Cashflow Coaching Kit. This is a tool prepared by the Australian Tax Office to help business advisors work with small businesses on improving their cashflow and we’d suggest you read their full documentation to get the most benefit from it.
But, the Change Lever cards that are included in the bundle are useful to any business – they include lots of questions to get you thinking about what you can improve and we’ve paired each of them with a relevant KPI.
Have a look and see what you think.
Notifications
We have introduced notifications now so we can let you know when something has gone wrong – better messaging at the time an event happens and a log of events that you can see at any time. When you sign in, look for the bell in the top right corner. If it’s green and has a number on it, there’s a message for you. You’ll also see it marked in the favicon (the icon in the tab at the top of your browser).
The first phase of this process will be released in the coming week, with more to follow shortly.
Read our Change Log to find out the full details of this release.