5 features for efficient financials and operations

Just believe, every accouter, financier and planner dreams that building a financial plan will be as easy as trying on a new model of sneakers in AR. Despite the seeming plenty of various business solutions, finding the most flexible one that fully meets the company's business expectations is sometimes like a challenge.

While companies try to increase the productivity of the finance department by attracting new staff or extending working hours, let's look at what economists really want to see in their everyday life.

Excel is our power

Regardless of the degree of digital maturity of the company, employees still do almost all the work and data analysis in Excel spreadsheets. Of course, it leads to the problem of double entry and double work, but it is still difficult to suggest a more flexible tool for adding and changing financial and planning models, forms and calculations. For extra advantage, we should add the large set of familiar and convenient formulas. Of course, Excel has its limitations, which we wrote about earlier here, but Excel remains an essential tool for financial and operational planning.

Dynamic modification of templates and forms

Your employees from planning and financial departments will be grateful for the software which allows one to make changes only in one place rather than adjust all calculation forms. For instance, when a new accounting item appears, it will be great to enter it in one form and then automatically extrapolate it to others where it is necessary. 

Flexible change of calculation models

Of course, everyone can make mistakes. Errors in formula calculations can appear both at the initial stage of preparation for the implementation of systems, and in the process of software adaptation by developers. The main advantage of software is that such errors can be eliminated quickly and at minimal cost. It is common that making changes involves interaction with the development team, since ordinary employees do not have the ability to edit the code. On the one hand, this is correct. On the other hand, the solution to the problem is delayed for an unlimited amount of time with the involvement of a large number of staff.

Export formulas from database to Excel

The best option can be provided by software if budget and planning models can be downloaded from the database in Excel format with all calculation algorithms and formulas. It can help avoid errors and make the calculations more transparent for every interested party.

Flexible Data Register

For planning and budgeting, the ability to drop to different levels of detail is important. Companies can run many projects, and sometimes each project requires one to maintain its own calculation of the balance sheet, costs and operating plan. In addition, planning and budgeting across the whole company is still obligated, so construction of a budgeting and planning matrix, which considers all areas of activity, is quite necessary. All data should be linked and there should be no problems with verification.