The Benefit of Using Excel for Financial Reporting

A common frustration among many Finance and Accounting departments is the difficulty associated with modifying financial and operational reports. Users often resort to manually adjusting their reports in Excel to get them into their preferred format for distribution. This can become a very time consuming process when multiple drafts of the same report need to be prepared month after month.
My favorite aspect of BI360 is the familiar Excel-based environment, which allows users to
easily make these types of changes to existing reports. This means you only have to make each change one time for it to be incorporated into all future versions of that report. Changing fonts, highlighting rows, adding verbiage, or inserting in ratio calculations are no problem for Finance and Accounting users who are already well versed in Excel and often make these types of changes.
You can even take things a step further by adding conditional formatting to highlight variances and trends or by inserting a simple graph or pie chart for a quick visual snapshot of your receivables and payables. If you have a balance sheet item that might be classed as an asset or liability (depending on whether it has a credit or debit balance), use an Excel IF statement so it always shows up in the correct section of your balance sheet without manual manipulation.
With an understanding of Excel functionality, all of the above can be easily achieved and will deliver reports with strong visual impact that are fully formatted and ready for immediate distribution and use.

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