For years, CPA’s have been forced into one of two camps: live with the financial statement formatting offered in QuickBooks, or spend hours adding the final “finishing touches” to a client’s financial statements in Excel. Adagio FX (http:\\www.GreatStatements.com) from Softrak Systems Inc. (http:\\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 users enjoy the following benefits:
• 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.
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.
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 (Class) figures
• Account numbers and ranges