We’ve all experienced it. After just finishing a financial report, the email notification pops up in the corner of your screen from your CFO. “Last minute change needed” it reads, however you are plainly aware that the last minute change will not take just one minute. What may seem to be a trivial change could require touches in multiple systems and/or processes. Rather than completing a simple revision, your time is now being taken up with having to fix one thing in several different places.
The fact is that last-minute requests aren’t going away and there will always be new changes to be made. While we can’t save you from the changes, we’d like to introduce a product that can help you overcome them – ActivReporter by AccountingWare. ActivReporter is an Excel-based financial reporting tool that gives insight into your Dynamics GP data. That’s right, it is an Excel-based financial report writer. Every accountant is familiar with Excel and how to use it. This takes away any new learning curve that most new programs would require, as you are using a familiar Excel ribbon and user interface. All your financial statements can now be created in one place – Excel.
By centralizing all aspects of the reporting process inside Excel, report modifications will no longer cause a ripple effect downstream. A visual change such as changing a grouping level for a GL account is now done in one place only. In contrast with a Management Reporter (MR) based reporting system, MR uses separate applications for report design and report viewing. In addition, print layout must also be taken into consideration when a change is made, because many organizations export their MR reports to Excel or print to pdf for final distribution. ActivReporter believes that if you do have to make a change, you should only have to make it one place.
Some key elements of ActivReporter are the report generation, report collaboration, and the added flexibility. The flexible security model allows multiple users to view the selected report while seeing different results based on their security settings. Because reports are Excel files, there are no new applications to install and learn. Users can collaborate on reports in the same manner as they would collaborate on any other Excel file. Additional flexibility is given as reports on ActivReporter are given the option to pull actual or budget data, or a combination of both.
Besides simplifying the typical cumbersome financial reporting process, ActivReporter also saves time in the monthly financial reports publication processes. This pays rich dividends as saving time in the month’s end closing time is critical. You now will have more time for analysis and quality control, and management will get actionable information faster than ever before. ActivReporter helps simplify, but it also gives what every accountant needs more of – time.
ActivReporter has helped cut reporting time from days to hours for some companies. It is the “budget friendly” replacement for Management Reporter or FRx that could completely change your reporting process. For more information on the product and how to install it, please visit the links below:
