Softrak's Adagio FX - Enhanced Financial Reporting

Adagio FX (www.GreatStatements.com) from Softrak Systems Inc. (www.softrak.com) is designed to allow consultants to quickly create presentation quality financial statements, and automate their production at month end and year end.

Adagio FX provides the following:

• Financial statements automatically adjust presentation to suppress inactive accounts, or move bank accounts between the Asset and Liability section of the balance sheet depending on account balance.
• Automatically highlight over or under budget accounts, or unusual variances to prior year.
• Instant feedback as the fiscal period and department selector is changed, with drill down to the posted transactions to explain figures.
• Automatic printing of entire "statement sets" at period end.
• Portability of financial statements between companies and organizations without complex account mapping.
• Statements combining multiple accounting datasets without recourse to Excel.

Report Specification Files

Each financial statement is defined in a separate specification file. Specification files may be copied from company to company and used "as is" if the chart of accounts is the same. Adagio FX also allows you to drag-and-drop directly from a company's chart of accounts onto a pre-formatted financial statement, making it simple to adopt a standardized set of statements for a broad range of clients. Adagio FX's cell, row and column formatting are similar to what you are used to when using Excel. In fact, Adagio FX includes a single button export directly into Excel for simple e-mailing of formatted statements.

Adagio FX includes a set of standard report specifications that are compatible with any chart of accounts that uses the standard account group classifications. You can inspect a comprehensive set of example statements for companies and not-for-profits at the web site http://www.GreatStatements.com.

Financial Reporter Strengths

• Data selection. In addition to providing full access to account and company data, the Financial Reporter allows account and department selection using wildcards. Departmental comparatives are available as a simple specification option, with user selection of departments and the option to include a consolidated column, or a column summing the selected departments. A simple drop-down selects the desired financial period, with all figures instantly updated. Departmentalization can be turned on or off from the toolbar, with a similar instantaneous updating of figures.
• Print options. Adagio FX includes "hide when print" as a row and column attribute, to easily suppress statement notes and improve formatting. SmartSheets, unique to Adagio FX, automatically hide columns A and B, and allow statements to be printed in either expanded or collapsed form. A single menu choice, File | Departmental Print, lets a user print out a set of statements for any or all departments (classes). Toolbar buttons provide print time suppression of inactive accounts and zero cell contents. Statement Groups can be defined to automate month-end statement printing.
• Formatting and graphing. Adagio FX provides full control over cell, row and column formatting, including font selection and character attributes. Company logos can be inserted directly onto the financial statement, to provide that "finishing touch". Graphics and cell attributes are maintained when the financial statement is exported to Excel, should you wish to include a chart or graph.
• Ease of use. Adagio FX's user interface is intuitive, with many small conveniences available during statement design. Columns and rows may be selected and dragged into new positions on the statement. Account ranges can be printed directly on the statement if necessary.

Financial Reporter Weaknesses

• Data must be retrieved prior to reporting. This represents an extra step at the end of every reporting period. However, it does allow individuals to analyze financial statement figures without requiring access to all of the accounting functions.
• Cash-based statements may be a problem. Adagio FX is designed to report statements on an accrual basis. Some cash based statements do not report correctly. The developer is working on this issue.

Data You Can Include on Reports

Financial statements can include as many columns of data as you wish, and can contain any of the following account information:

• Current or historical balances for any range of accounts
• Net changes for a fiscal period, quarter, half-year or year
• Comparative figures from complete or to-date time spans
• Budget figures
• Department figures
• Account numbers and ranges

Because statements are created in a worksheet, you can use any formulas and functions to perform relative change calculations on General Ledger figures to express them as percentages or ratios.

You can also use any of the following information in a financial statement:

• Company information such as the name, address, phone number and company contact
• The start and end dates of a given fiscal period
• The options selected for printing the financial statement (such as the print date, the department range, or the period-end date)

This information is retrieved from your dataset, allowing you to create a single statement template that can be used for multiple companies.

Numbering the Chart of Accounts

Adagio FX relies on a numbered chart of accounts to decide which account balances should be displayed on the statement. Softrak recommends that account numbering be turned on in QuickBooks, but Adagio FX will also auto-number the chart of accounts as the information is retrieved.

Consolidating Accounts

With Adagio FX, consolidating a range of accounts is as simple as including all the necessary accounts in the formula. The financial reporter will automatically compute the required number for the range, whether it is a balance or net change over some period. With SmartSheet, ranges can be displayed in expanded or collapsed form by including the ".Range" command in column A of the statement.

Standard Financial Statements

Adagio FX comes with over 60 standard financial statements that you can customize or use as is:

• Balance Sheets presented for various organization types.
• 12 Month Income Statement, both rolling and static, by month and quarter
• Income Statement, with various presentation options.
• Trial Balance Worksheet
• Balance Sheet and Income Statement with Common Ratios (Acid test, Current Ratio etc.)
• Automatically adjusting Actual+Budget=Forecast P&L to track anticipated performance against budget.
• Balance Sheet with automatic movement of bank account into Asset or Liability section depending on account balance.

Creating a statement

Specification files are usually started by dragging an Account Group range onto the financial statement work area. The columns for the statement are then selected and arranged into the desired left to right sequence across the statement. If a Departmental Comparative statement format is selected, additional choices select the departments to be reported and the left to right order of the departments.

The following screen shot shows a sample Account Group tree.

• Note the following about Account Groups:
• You may have as many account groups as desired
• Account Group and Range titles can be changed by pressing F2 and typing a new title
• Account Ranges can be arbitrarily complex ("1000:1399,1480,1485,1500:1599" is valid in a single range)
• You can cut, copy and paste ranges using the right mouse button
• You can drag accounts from the account chart into ranges

After an Account Group has been dragged onto the Financial Statement, the following screen is presented to choose the columns on the statement:

Note the following about the Account Data selection:

• You may select as many columns as desired
• There are data elements for account balances, net changes and budget figures
• You rarely mix account balances and net changes on a single statement

Once the columns have been selected, their order may be chosen:

Note the following about this dialog:

• Select the columns first, and then drag them to the desired position
• When getting started with a blank statement, select Enable SmartSheet and Add Titles
• To create a Departmental Comparative, enable the option in this dialog, and then select the departments to compare

After these choices are made, a basic statement is created. Use standard formatting and spreadsheet calculations to add rows and columns to finalize the statement. Then use File | Save as... to store your financial statement in its final form. Next month, simply open your statement, select the correct fiscal period and print the financial statement with the updated figures.

Sample Income Statement with Logo and Formatting

Specification File for Sample Balance Sheet

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