Having made the decision that Calxa is the product for you, which plan do you choose? Calxa Express vs Calxa Premier? How do you decide which best suits your needs? Here we discuss the differences between the two plans.
Calxa Express for Simple or Complex Needs?
First, start with the complexity of your needs. If you’re running a single business and you like to keep things simple, Express is likely to be the first choice for you. There is a lot you can achieve like:
- Creating a full cashflow forecast;
- Reporting against multiple budgets to test different scenarios;
- Automate updates from your accounting system and the delivery of bundles of reports.
Users and Companies in Calxa Express
While Express starts with 1 user and 1 organisation, there’s no reason you can’t add more. If you have 2 or 3 companies, add them in.
Just remember that while you can report on each one individually, you can’t consolidate them in Express.
If you want to share access to Calxa Express with a colleague, add an extra user and invite them. Though don’t forget that you can invite your external accountant or bookkeeper as a Free Advisor for no charge.
Who is Calxa Express For?
Who uses Express? Mostly it’s either small businesses managing their own reporting or bookkeepers providing reports to their clients. Sometimes it’s smaller charities (though they can get complex long before they get big and that’s why we initiated our donation program for Calxa Premier). Sometimes it’s accounting firms looking for simple reporting for a few clients.
When Do You Choose Calxa Premier?
Because our subscriptions are flexible and can be changed any time, some people start on Calxa Express and then move up to Calxa Premier when they need the more advanced features and capabilities. Others know from the start what they want.
Group Consolidations
Consolidation of multiple entities is a popular reason for using Calxa Premier. Being able to consolidate reports, regardless of the underlying accounting system, is a major time-saver for groups of companies. Account Trees simplify the elimination of inter-company accounts and there are a range of reports to compare the different organisations in summary or detail. Consolidated cashflow forecasts for multiple companies can be easily achieved in Premier in a fraction of the time taken with a spreadsheet.
Cost Centre Reporting
Business Units, Projects, Programs, Jobs, Categories, Tracking Categories, Classes – call them what you will but they do increase the complexity of reporting. This is one area where Calxa Premier shines. You can budget by business unit and have them roll up to the organisation level. You can use tools like the Budget Factory to create and update multiple budgets quickly and easily.
And then Premier has a range of reports designed to help you manage your business units the way you need. You can run detailed reports or summarise them; view them side by side or row by row, or report on just one, or a selection or all of them.
Customisation
The third big reason for choosing Premier over Express is that you want things your way. And, there’s nothing wrong with that!
KPI Builder
Often, it’s creating KPIs matched to your own needs. For example, build the formula you want based on groups of accounts or bring in non-financial metrics. While there are common KPIs across many industries, it’s sometimes important to be able to measure and focus on the handful that are most relevant to you currently.
Account Trees
Depending on the accounting system you use, you may or may not have Header accounts to summarise your reports. And even if you have, they are most likely to have been designed to meet the needs of the finance teams and compliance with regulations. For management reporting, it’s important to be able to group and summarise your accounts in the way that meets your information needs. A board member, a CEO and a department manager all have different requirements. They each want different levels of detail.
Using Account Trees, you can construct, group and summarise the information in your accounts in a way that suits each audience. You can add new top-level Categories, you can add Header Accounts and you can easily drag accounts from one category or type to another. There are multiple uses for Account Trees and Calxa Premier users can take full advantage of them.
Report Designer
And then there is the powerful Report Designer that gives you detailed control over the report and chart templates. Calxa Premier users can do an array of things with the Report Designer:
- Add and remove columns
- Change styles and colours
- Add logos and much more
If it’s important for you to have your reports looking the way you want them, then Calxa Premier is the choice for you. While the existing report templates give ample choice of layouts for most of our users, there are others who are prepared to customise a report template to get the columns they want in the sequence they want them.
Calxa Express vs Calxa Premier?
When making your decision, make it with the confidence that you can change at any time. If your needs are simple or your time is limited, start with Calxa Express. When you’re ready for more you can switch to Premier at any time.
If you know from the start that you want the advanced features like consolidation, business unit budgets and reporting or the customisation options, then dive straight into Premier. With the additional users that come with the standard subscription you can immediately share the load with your team and involve everyone.
Both plans come with full access to our Customer Support team and our money-back guarantee so you can make your choice between Express and Premier with full confidence.
If you’re still not sure, visit our pricing page. Here you will find a comparison table showing you Calxa Express vs Calxa Premier side-by-side.