Opening Up Insights Into Your Accounting Data
- Accounting packages generally have internal reporting tools that are somewhat basic.
- This is because they are designed to store and categorise information in a robust manner, rather than to output data in intuitive ways.
- There are many advantages to creating additional reports outside of your accounting system, which include a greater level of visibility of the numbers, and that ability to present in graphical formats. Furthermore, selected stakeholders can access information for themselves, performing their own drill-down and data filtering (e.g. by accounting period / prior year etc.).
- In addition, full-year results can be generated on a month-by-month basis, overcoming the Xero restriction of only allowing visibility of a maximum of four prior months. Furthermore, standard accounting reports can be run, e.g. Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Cashflow etc. with the ability to also view underlying transactions.
- Report distribution (generally either via Power BI or Excel) can be made securely under your Microsoft 365 secure environment, enabling individuals to log in from their online device and to refresh data as required.