In Black & White

How to Improve IT Project Success with One Calculation

Jamie Black
Efficient, Effective and Reliable
minute(s)Information Technology projects can be the most complex and high-profile you will encounter as a finance team member. Perhaps you have read about the trouble with the Phoenix payroll system implemented by the Canadian public service. Or maybe you have direct experience with severely compromised IT investments at your place of work. There is no shortage of such examples. So, what can finance do to help? In October of 2016, the Auditor General of British Columbia made some suggestions in their report "Getting IT Right: Achieving value from government information technology investments." A 60-Second Overview Regardless of your industry, the report is a valuable read for accountants, and we recommend reading it in full. Here is a quick summary of its major points: IT is important because "every aspect of government depends on IT." Only 29 percent of IT projects globally are rated "successful." Success is defined as: On Time On Budget AND Value Success depends on: People Planning Consultation Governance The report is an absorbing read, but it fails to elaborate on a significant element: What is "value" and how do you calculate it? What about "Value"? The report uses the word "value" 57 times without defining it explicitly. The only comment on how to achieve it is to assess: Alignment of the project with the organization’s specific needs, priorities, and strategies Contribution to the organization’s desired outcomes Cost Level of risk While these are good points, they provide no particular direction to those attempting to assess a project's value or measure the success of a project during or after completion. ROI to Assess Value Before & After Perhaps it's because we believe that numbers are the key to all universal truth (no really, we do), but we argue that finance should calculate proposed and achieved value for IT projects. The accountant in us is very comfortable with Return on Investment (ROI) calculations: This type of calculation should be used to determine optimal use of your organization's investment. But in our experience, these calculations are rarely utilized when considering IT solutions, particularly in the public sector. Why? There are at least two problems with the word "profit" in the context of public sector IT projects. Public sector organizations typically do not think in terms of profit. Even if you work outside the public sector, you may reasonably ask, "How does an ERP system (for example) generate profit for any organization?" "Profit" (and therefore "ROI") may seem like a non-starter. But with a minor change in terminology—replacing "profit" with "calculable benefit"—the concept is applicable to the public sector. The "calculable" part is important; you don't want this exercise to dissolve into imprecise speculation about intangible benefits. Those may also warrant a discussion, but you should not give up the important quantitative analysis. You should focus on those aspects to which you can assign a real dollar value. There are two broad categories of calculable benefits that you should consider: Efficiency of Staff Resources Your staff spends their entire working lives involved with IT systems. A more efficient, convenient, and highly automated solution will help them do their work faster, more reliably, and with less cross-checking and manual review required. If you estimate the hours that a new IT system might save, and multiply it by your staff's hourly cost, you can measure the economic impact of those time savings. Reduction or Avoidance of Direct Expenses There are many direct expenses that a new IT system can help reduce or eliminate. You pay fees to an external accountant—would those fees be reduced if you automated a significant portion of the work they performed? What if your new system could help avoid late payment of invoices and thereby reduce your late fees and penalties to vendors? Perhaps a new system would provide a reduction of ongoing annual maintenance and support costs. An Example Consider a scenario where your current ERP system is no longer supported. You determine that the risk level of continuing with an unsupported system is unacceptable. You have identified three possible solutions and are working through the selection process. You have seen demonstrations and received fee estimates. You have contacted references and determined each option's strengths and weaknesses. Clearly, there are many considerations (some of which are intangible). But don't underestimate the value of performing an ROI calculation. Calculable Benefit: How much money will we save with each solution? For example, estimate the following separately for each solution: Hours of staff time saved by reduced data processing Hours of staff time saved by automating report creation Estimate avoided late payment fees to vendors due to improved A/P processing abilities Decreased finance costs due to accelerated AR collections Cost: What is the cost of each solution including all features/modules etc. necessary to facilitate the above benefits over a 5 or 10 year period? 3 Advantages of This Approach 1) Forces Detailed Assessment: All too often we see clients who have only a general understanding of how a particular system will help them. Vendors often do little to help, aside from offering marketing double-talk: "Work Smart", "Improve Productivity", or "Improve Efficiency." These aspirational comments are great, but you need measurable results. 2) Easy Comparison of Alternatives: You can immediately begin to see some interesting relationships between the options that were hard to see at first: Solution 3 is four times as expensive as Solution 1, but it provides 4.5 times the value. If all else is equal, and the organization can find the $100,000 budget, Solution 3 is the better choice for your organization. Solution 2, while more expensive than Solution 1, does not provide a commensurate increase in benefit. Thus, if the budget did not allow for $100,000 investment, the next best option is Solution 1. 3) Clear Monitoring of Performance: Another advantage of this approach is that your team has identified very specific, measurable goals to monitor the project and assess success. For example, you estimated a calculable benefit value based on specific time savings in report creation and data entry. These time savings should be measured to determine whether you achieved the benefit. Moreover, if your vendor is confident in their abilities to deliver these time savings, you can attempt to include attainment of the advantages into the contract. "IT-enabled projects aren’t just about technology—they involve substantial changes to an organization’s culture, business processes, and customers. These projects are really IT-enabled business change. A successful project improves services and allows for more effective use of taxpayer money. And their success or failure is about more than just being on time and on budget, it’s also about achieving expected value." –Carol Bellringer, FCPA, FCA Auditor General, British Columbia In sum, ROI calculation is an important tool that allows finance teams to estimate, measure, and demonstrate the value of their IT project.

From replacing your ERP to implementing a new payroll system we illustrate just how powerful ROI is for setting & measuring IT project success.

Is Self-Implementation right for you?

Jamie Black
Efficient, Effective and Reliable
minute(s)For government finance officers looking to make the most of tight budgets, efficiency is key. The RIGHT tools and technology can significantly improve efficiency, provided you can muster the resources to purchase and implement them. Many of our clients are looking to implement technology as inexpensively as possible. Some consider self-implementation. How do you know when this approach is right for your finance or budget department and when it is a mistake? This article examines the criteria that determine whether you are likely to succeed in self-implementing a new finance-related system (ERP, payroll, Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) or financial statement automation etc.). Over the past 20 years, we have implemented hundreds of technology solutions for clients—CAFR and financial statement automation systems, custom-designed mobile applications, ERP systems, local and wide area networks, servers, and, of course, continuous monitoring systems. During the course of these implementations we have tried any number of models: 100% delegation of implementation tasks to client's staff 100% retention of implementation tasks by our team Every task-sharing split possible We have achieved successful outcomes with each of these options. But frankly, we have also had some disappointments. Our wealth of experience has informed the following guidelines for determining the right approach. Self-implementation Requirements: When you engage consultants/vendors to help with implementation, there are really two major benefits that they provide: relevant expertise and time to dedicate to the project. As you consider whether your organization can self-implement a particular system, assess your team to see if you have the "right stuff" in these categories. 1) Expertise: An objective assessment of your team's expertise is critical to ensure you are capable of taking on the implementation yourselves. Technology: The initial configuration of some systems requires considerable technological knowledge, at a level not necessary for day-to-day operations. Server setup, database configuration and optimization, and development of custom code for integration with existing tools, are a few common areas of expertise required for initial setup. Do your team members have this expertise already? If not, you should carefully consider whether it is wise to invest your time and money to develop this expertise internally in order to self-implement the project. On the other hand, some systems do not require such sophisticated technological expertise about support systems. Perhaps all that's necessary for self-implementation is strong knowledge about that particular application and its day-to-day features. In some cases, a strong user of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office could have all the technological expertise required to self-implement. Questions for the software vendor: What technology does your system rely on? Are there servers to set up or databases to administer? Is there any programming or scripting required to implement this system? Specific subject-matter: The level of subject-matter expertise required depends upon the system you are implementing. If you are implementing a new ERP system, are you expert in the functioning of your current system? Have you worked with many different systems? Have you ever been responsible for administering a new ERP system? If you are considering self-implementing a year-end reporting automation tool (CAFR/financial statements), does your team have ample experience preparing these reports today? Do you understand how these balances come together and know what G/L accounts get grouped into each number on your statements? Or perhaps this your first year-end cycle, and you do not have the support of those who prepared prior year reports? Questions for the software vendor: What subject-matter skills do you require of your implementation consultants? What experience is essential for a successful implementation? When you have seen implementations fail, what skills were implementation team members lacking? Project management: The size and complexity of the project will determine how sophisticated your project management skills will need to be. For example, if the project requires collaboration across a large team, over many months/years, with many individual milestones, lots of complexity and great risk should the project fail, you will want a very seasoned, professional project manager. On the other hand, if the project will only involve one or two people, is reasonably straightforward, and you have a great fallback plan in the event of delay or failure, basic project management skills may suffice. At a minimum, we recommend assigning project management duties to someone who exhibits great attention to detail and strong organization and communication skills. For some systems, this approach might be sufficient to guide self-implementation. Questions for the software vendor: How long and complex is a typical implementation project? Do you offer project management services if we decide they're necessary? What guides or checklists can you offer us to assist in managing a self-implementation? 2) Staff Availability: One of the many reasons organizations pay for professional implementation is not due to a lack of expertise but a lack of available staff time. Being short-staffed or just overloaded with work likely means that you will not be able to prioritize required implementation tasks and you will wind up with a system that is never fully/properly implemented. For many systems, considerable time is required to successfully implement the tool. The tasks may or may not be complex from either a technology or subject-matter perspective, but they may take considerable time. You need a clear understanding of how much time is required of your team and how much time your team has available. Consideration should also be given to how frequently you will need to break off from the project to tackle your other duties. The more frequent the interruptions, the more difficult it will be maintain momentum, remember training, etc. Questions for the software vendor: How much time would you allow for your consultants to implement this system for our organization? How much more time should we allow, given we do not have your level of experience? Should we multiply the vendor's time estimate by 2? By 3? Measure Your Options As you obtain answers from your vendor, score and plot the responses on a graph like the one pictured here. Projects that fall into the green zone are obvious "self-implementation" candidates. If you plot your project in the yellow or orange zones, the demands of the project are higher and careful consideration of your availability and/or expertise is warranted. Should you determine that the project falls into the "red zone" it usually means that it would be wise to abandon self-implementation and investigate other options. Joint Implementation The decision between self-implementation and fully outsourced implementation is not an all-or-nothing choice. Another option to consider is sharing the workload with the vendor in a joint or guided implementation. You may be able to do large portions of the work yourselves, which will yield significant fee savings and make strategic use of the vendor team's expertise and time. Use their team to provide oversight, remedy any expertise weaknesses, or cover any resource availability issues you may have. By balancing the use of your time, your expertise, and your budget for external services, you can often develop an implementation plan that provides the highest return on your technology investment.

To implement technology as inexpensively as possible many governments consider self-implementation. How do you know if this is right for your organization?

Lipstick on a Pig: 6 Spreadsheet-based Financial Reporting Tool Flaws

Jamie Black
Automating Financial Reporting
minute(s)You may be familiar with the expression "Lipstick on a pig". Variations of the expression date back nearly 130 years but the meaning has not changed; Superficial improvements that do not change the underlying nature of something. Spreadsheets by any other Name We have seen an increasing number of spreadsheet-based reporting automation tools promoted as ultimate solutions for Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports & Budget Books. This is ironic considering many organizations are using spreadsheets today and are looking for a better approach. Sometimes these solutions are desktop add-ons to enable better connections to a source of data. Sometimes these are cloud-based solutions that rely on spreadsheets to maintain their data and develop their reports. Hard to Tell They are Spreadsheets The fact that these are spreadsheet-based tools may be hard to tell on initial review. You can spend hours reviewing their websites and sitting in presentations and still not recognize it. It's not surprising they don't advertise their reliance on spreadsheets given the scientific evidence of their weaknesses and the numerous stories of very public disasters caused by spreadsheets. The Lipstick In fairness, these tools often have improvements over the desktop spreadsheets you are used to, such as: Better collaboration abilities for sharing comments, tracking changes or assigning tasks. Better audit trails and change management. Ability to tie supporting documents to a given value / cell. More granular security / permissions. The Pig But the core of these products are still spreadsheets. That means they suffer from the traditional spreadsheet weaknesses: No database - All data resides in spreadsheets / workbooks not in a database. This means you must build all your own personalized systems to: ensure your G/L balances identify the 100 - 1000 new G/L accounts added each year No processes/workflow - There is no structured system that you can leverage to support industry best practices. What steps should be followed and in what order? You must develop all of these processes on your own and maintain them separately from your reporting environment. No grouping mechanisms - The G/L accounts that sit in your spreadsheet must be summarized in numerous different ways (by object, by fund etc.) to power your Comprehensive Annual Financial Report or Budget Book. If you use spreadsheets, formulas must add the right accounts together. This is fragile and susceptible to error. Moreover, unless you interrogate every formula, there is no way to know what is being included in a given number; there is no legend. Assuming you do get this right in year one, all the new accounts next year means these formulas must all be updated. Tons of custom formulas - All values are derived by "linking" - which is to say writing spreadsheet formulas of varying complexity. Any mistakes you make means errors in your report. Consistency in how these formulas are written or maintained is entirely dependent on the user's expertise, accuracy and completeness. No content libraries - Reporting standards are continually evolving. There are new GASB pronouncements all the time and keeping up with them and what new statements, schedules or footnotes are required this year can be daunting. Spreadsheet solutions do not come with any content. It is entirely up to you to figure out what must be presented and how. No adjusting journal functionality - Adjusting or changing balances is an absolute requirement for financial statement /Comprehensive Annual Financial Report production. In spreadsheets you are left with no tools for the following: The values in your G/L are typically maintained on a modified accrual basis. For many of your statements, you need full accrual. Debit balances in A/P accounts or credits in A/R are just two examples of balances you need to reclassify. Prior year adjustment / restatement caused by changes in accounting policy. Our message in this post is not that the additional features - the "lipstick" - have no value, or that there is no situation when spreadsheets should be used. We are saying that when finance & budget officers evaluate possible solutions for their most complex reporting tasks (Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports & Budget Books), they must exactly match the critical requirements of their processes to the solution's abilities. If they do this carefully, they will find that spreadsheet-based "solutions" are only marginally better than their own collection of desktop-based spreadsheets.

Comprehensive Annual Financial Reporting and Budget Book tools based on spreadsheets are all the rage. Don't overlook their considerable weaknesses.

Financial Statement Automation Saves Time & Money for Lethbridge

Jamie Black
Success Stories
minute(s)Lethbridge, is a commercial, financial, transportation, and industrial centre with a population of 89,000. The City of Lethbridge provides both essential and nonessential services to its residents, from fire and emergency response to museum and library operations. The City’s Financial Services department is staffed by a team of professionals charged with bringing efficiency, accuracy, and transparency to the organization. CaseWare Working Papers and Financials are the tools the department relies on to fulfill that goal. More and More Spreadsheets As the PSAB (Public Sector Accounting Board) requirements changed, organizations like the City of Lethbridge were forced to change the presentation of their financial statements. Many turned to spreadsheets to accommodate the changes. Municipal governments within the province of Alberta are required to file a Municipal Financial Information Return (MFIR), which must be submitted to the Municipal Affairs office along with audited financial statements by May 1 of each year. At the City of Lethbridge, preparing it involved a multitude of spreadsheets and the dedicated work of one of the City’s most tenured employees. The City of Lethbridge has been using CaseWare Working Papers for many years, although in a limited capacity. “We were just using CaseWare for our balance sheet items,” recalls Tricia Fraser, Financial Reporting Supervisor for the City. “Essentially it was serving as a document holder only. We created our financial statements and other financial reports in Excel®. We needed a better way, as it was just too manual and time consuming.” Embracing Efficiency The City engaged F.H. Black & Company, a CaseWare certified consultant, to help it gain efficiency and reduce manual data entry tasks. “F.H. Black has been a tremendous resource,” says Fraser. “Their knowledge and experience with CaseWare has helped us make more strategic use of the product.” Financial Statements Completed in Record Time Using CaseWare Financials the City tackled financial statement automation. Now the City’s annual financial statement is completed substantially faster than before. “In fact, I had staff asking me what we had forgotten because they were so surprised that we were done so quickly.” That time savings is being put to productive use, Fraser says. “We used to spend so much time preparing documents and assembling the report, that we had little time to analyze the data and look for improvements. CaseWare buys us strategic planning time, time where we can consider what didn’t work, what worked well, and what we can do better. That’s priceless.” Three Weeks Saved in Production of MFIR F.H. Black showed the City how to use CaseWare Working Papers and CaseWare Connector to populate the MFIR report directly. “As a test, we prepared last year’s MFIR both ways, the old way and using CaseWare for the portions we automated,” says Fraser. “Both ways produced the exact same result, only CaseWare did it instantly. Now, instead of handing our auditors a series of spreadsheets and a binder of supporting documentation, we will hand them a CaseWare file.” Fraser says this single change will likely result in lower audit fees, and enables the City to complete its MFIR three weeks sooner than in the past. Improved Accuracy and Security Another benefit the City is realizing through CaseWare is increased accuracy. In the past, personnel would be assigned to troubleshoot and validate the Excel spreadsheets. “Now, when something is out of balance, we can easily follow the trail to the source and make the corrections,” says Fraser. “And because there is no manual input, the opportunity for errors is greatly reduced.” The move to CaseWare Financials has led to improved data security. “I used to be scared to give anyone else access to the spreadsheets, fearing someone would change something and I wouldn’t know who did it or why,” Fraser explains. “In CaseWare, I’m able to set up security so that I can control who has access to what. Now, we have 20 people working in CaseWare, and the data is accessible, auditable, and secure.” Leverage the Investment The City is leveraging its use of CaseWare by using it to produce other financial reports, including sections of its unaudited financial statement that is sent to council prior to the publication of the audited report. “This report is due during our busiest time of the year,” notes Fraser. “We were able to put it into CaseWare and the time savings is unbelievable. Frustration levels of staff during this crunch time are dramatically reduced.” Fraser and her family are relocating soon, and as she discusses new employment opportunities with potential employers, she is certain to ask one question: “I always ask if they use CaseWare. If the answer is no, the conversation is over.”

The City of Lethbridge uses CaseWare Working Papers to automate annual financial statements and the MFIR, driving significant time savings and reducing cost.

CaseWare Feature Spotlight: Content Library

Jamie Black
CaseWare Feature Spotlight
minute(s)CaseWare Working Papers is the first choice of finance professionals around the world for automating complex financial reporting. When spreadsheets are the problem, CaseWare's sophisticated features are the solution. We've developed this article series to outline many of these features for two reasons: so prospective users can appreciate all of CaseWare's power and to encourage existing users to maximize their utilization of the software. One of the CaseWare's features that will reduce time spent on the year end and yield better quality results is its Content Library. If you are used to maintaining your financial reports in spreadsheets, you know it is all up to you. You have to develop your own formats and content whenever there is a new pronouncement and you are responsible for updating and maintaining your own custom Excel worksheets forevermore. Rather than building your reports from scratch, you can leverage the power of CaseWare's platform for management and use of standard content. Major features include: Predefined & updated content - CaseWare Financials comes pre-packaged with extensive libraries of content that are pre-configured to use standard group codes. The library includes standard statements, schedules and hundreds of notes. There are different libraries (ASPE, GAAP, GASB & IFRS) and your annual software license provides content updates, providing you with tested and reviewed content to ensure compliance with new standards. Thus, when a GASB pronouncement dictates you need a new pension note, it is ready and waiting for you to insert into your financial statements. Add your own content - While the content library can certainly aid when a new report or disclosure is required, you can always add your own content to the library. This allows you to reproduce any existing statements or handle a special reporting requirement. Adding your content is simple and you can even integrate directly into the library's strong content management and organization features.

Rather than building your reports from scratch, yourself, leverage the power of CaseWare Working Paper's GASBE / IFRS / ASPE content library.

Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health Automates Financial Reporting

Jamie Black
Success Stories
minute(s)Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health works to improve the health of 250,000 residents of Wellington and Dufferin counties and the city of Guelph with a wide range of health services and resources, including immunizations, dental care, parenting support services, travel information, and infectious disease control. With 230 employees spread across six locations and an annual operating budget of $27 million, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health embraces technology and the efficiencies it can provide to enable it to devote more resources to its mission. CaseWare Working Papers and Financials are two pieces of technology the organization relies on to streamline their financial reporting. Working Papers for Municipalities “We implemented CaseWare in 2013,” recalls Shanna O’Dwyer, Manager of Finance for Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health. “My first year here at the organization I used Excel® spreadsheets - and a lot of them - to produce the annual financial statements. I remember being concerned through the entire cycle that something would get missed and not updated properly. It was a stressful time.” O’Dwyer had used Working Papers in her prior position with an accounting firm, so was familiar with the solution and its capabilities when she saw it in action at a Municipal Finance Officers conference. “I met F.H. Black & Company Incorporated at the conference and learned how they have successfully implemented CaseWare for dozens of municipal organizations like ours across Canada,” she says. “We determined CaseWare would be an ideal fit for us.” Professional Implementation The implementation went very well says O’Dwyer. “F.H. Black & Company was fantastic. They were highly organized and very methodical in their approach. They kept the project on schedule and saw that we were informed and involved throughout the process.” Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health also appreciated the easy access to members of the F.H. Black’s consulting team. “We are able to view their calendars online and book a time slot that’s convenient for us,” O’Dwyer says. “But if we have an urgent matter, they are always directly available.” Simplifying Complex Tasks After receiving training in the solution and the mechanics involved in generating the financial statement templates, O’Dwyer was able to create the organization’s templates herself. She then set about duplicating the prior year’s financial statements in Working Papers as a proof of concept. “F.H. Black & Company helped with the export of the trial balance data from our accounting system,” O’Dwyer says. “It’s complex data with many different departments, segments, and funds but with their help we got it done.” During the past fiscal year, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health has made a number of changes to its financial statement layout. “F.H. Black & Company helped us modify the templates to meet our needs and we were good to go,” says O’Dwyer. “It would have been a nightmare to try to incorporate all those changes if we were still using spreadsheets.” In subsequent years, O’Dwyer anticipates the time savings that Working Papers will deliver will be substantial. “In a short time frame, we are able to produce accurate, consistent financial statements.” Quality, Confidence, and Control Using Working Papers has improved the quality of Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health’s financial statements and made them more consistent O’Dwyer says. “Before CaseWare, we were copying rows of data from our financial statements and dropping them into the spreadsheets. Now we establish the account groupings in CaseWare and it does the work for us. Changes made to the working papers flow to the statements so we are confident that it’s right.” Previously, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health’s auditors would take the organization’s spreadsheet data and produce the financial statements for them. Now, the organization produces its own statements through Working Papers. “We feel we have much more control over the process now,” says O’Dwyer. Paperless Process O’Dwyer says the first year with Working Papers, the organization continued its practice of building a paper binder, but that they have now eliminated paper entirely. “CaseWare is so reliable and secure, and we are able to link various references to outside documents such as funding agreements, that we determined paper was no longer needed.” Streamline Quarterly Reporting Building on the successful roll out of Working Papers for its financial statement generation, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health plans to expand the solution’s use to quarterly reporting. “We’re still doing this in Excel, and there’s no reason why CaseWare can’t be leveraged to help streamline this task as well,” says O’Dwyer. She concludes, “We are really pleased with CaseWare. It has proven to be a real asset to us, and the great support we receive from F.H. Black & Company makes it all the better.” Ready to learn more about what CaseWare® Working Papers could do for your organization? Join us for a free webinar.

Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health automates financial reporting with CaseWare Working Papers and increases efficiency, effectiveness & reliability.

CaseWare Feature Spotlight: Document Management

Jamie Black
CaseWare Feature Spotlight
minute(s)CaseWare Working Papers is recognized as a global leader in the Financial Reporting industry. This is a well-deserved reputation. However, it's a mistake to think of CaseWare as "just" a report writer - it contains a huge number of features and tools to assist the entire financial reporting work flow. We've developed this article series to outline many of these features and demonstrate how to maximize your utilization of the software. Clients want to save time and they would love to lower audit fees. One of the many features of CaseWare that delivers these very benefits is often-overlooked: Document Management. Document Management When preparing a year end file, Finance needs to be able to support the values they are presenting, both for their own certainty as well as for the auditor. Note 6 to your financial statements says total receivables are $12,932,000 with a table showing the aging analysis. We must evidence the underlying accounts that comprise this total. The first line of your Balance Sheet (Statement of Financial Position for Canadians) presents your current year cash balance of $3,866,345. How can the auditor be sure this is correct? The answer is (of course), we provide documentation that supports these values. CaseWare Working Papers provides a completely customizable Document Manager for generating & collecting all the documentation you require. Below is part of a document manager we use in our presentations to represent a typical local government Document Manager: Automatic Leadsheets The first, most obvious type of support to a financial balance on a statement, schedule or note is a leadsheet. CaseWare's Automatic Leadsheets are maintained by the system and provide a detailed listing of all the G/L accounts that comprise a total. These leadsheets are automatically updated every time data is imported, journal entries are recorded or G/L accounts are re-grouped. The example below shows a lead-sheet that has been grouped into meaningful sub-totals which facilitate more detailed reporting in notes. Clicking on the + sign to the left of any of the subtotals shows all the G/L accounts that make up the total: These documents are incredibly important for understanding why a number is what it is. The second step for many balances is providing other supporting documents (bank statements, reconciliations, contracts etc.). Supporting Documents In the image above, we see a Receivable - Utilities account with a balance of $23,578. We know the auditor is going to need to see the lists of individuals / corporations that owe that money. This is likely easy to generate from your ERP system. With CaseWare, all you need to do is drag and drop it onto the document manager to ensure you have one central repository. CaseWare intelligently numbers the supporting document and makes it available to your team and your auditor (assuming you provide your CaseWare Working Papers file to them) for subsequent review. Placeholders You determined you needed to support Receivables - Utilities, went to your ERP system and printed the report. Very likely, you will need to support this amount next year too. CaseWare will maintain the list of required supporting documents. On any supporting document, mark it to "Roll Forward as Placeholder". When a roll forward is performed, CaseWare finds every document with this property, removes the current year's content and replaces it with a shell (a placeholder). These placeholders are clearly identified so you can find what support you still need to provide. And then you can hand the complete file over to your auditor, fully supported and referenced.

One of the CaseWare's unsung features is Document Management - the easy for Finance to support their reports.

CaseWare Working Papers 2016 Released

Jamie Black
What's New
minute(s)Software: Working Papers Prior Version: 2015.00.192 (Release 3) New Version: 2016.00.065 Release Date: Jul 20, 2016 A new version of CaseWare Working Papers was released last week. We recommend our clients schedule the update. Remember that once you open a Working Papers file in the 2016 version, it cannot be accessed using the older 2015 software. For this reason, all of your staff who collaborate on files in common should be upgraded at the same time. You may have received an email from CaseWare International announcing the release and inviting you to download the installation files. If, however, you do not have that email, contact the CaseWare Sales department at +1 (416) 867-9504 or sales@caseware.com to request your download. Details: This new version includes many enhancements & fixes: Enhancements related to: Fixes related to: Issues Copy Components Excel Export Check In/Check Out Annotations New File Adjusting Journal Entries PDF Export Mapping and Grouping Excel Export Year End Close Annotations Document Manager Calculations Connector Add-on Imports Automatic Documents Document Manager Calculations Automatic Documents Export Packager Interface Calculations Cells Cells Graphs Exports Look for more blog posts and Feature Spotlight articles from FHB in the coming weeks and months talking about the enhancements and improvements in the latest version of the software.

CaseWare Working Papers 2016 was just released with many fixes and improvements.

CaseWare Feature Spotlight: Rounding Relationships

Jamie Black
CaseWare Feature Spotlight
minute(s)CaseWare's financial reporting solutions provide massive benefits. Auditors in public practice, finance officers in government, and controllers in large corporations use CaseWare to automate their most complex financial reports faster, with fewer errors, and more reliably than with any other tool. How? By providing the most sophisticated features in the industry. Each of our "Feature Spotlight" articles discuss one of these features. Rounding Relationships Reduce Risk Rounding is a very challenging problem. We have discussed techniques for addressing it in Excel on several occasions. Because of the complexity and the frequency that accountants, auditors and finance professionals encounter rounding errors, CaseWare Working Papers provides a number of tools to solve this problem. In this post we'll review one of them: rounding relationships. In many scenarios (like the ones described here), differences can be expected. But typically the difference is an immaterial amount. To deal with this issue, we have CaseWare's Rounding Relations feature. Rounding Relations allows the end user to define an unlimited number of relationships to monitor and automatically resolve out-of-balance issues. To use this feature, all that is necessary is: Identify two cells to compare (Difference cells), identify a third cell (Plug cell) which, when adjusted, will cause one of the first two cells to change Set the maximum amount of the adjustment (Limit) Once the accountant has these options configured and enabled, CaseWare continuously monitors the cells and keeps them in balance. No computer programmer or external consultant required. We can even be a bit more sophisticated if we like. Using the Advanced option for the plug cell, we can specify a Plug Condition. The Plug Condition is the condition that makes this cell get skipped as the plug cell. That is, if the condition for a plug cell is evaluated to be true, the difference is not plugged to that cell and the next Plug Condition in the Rounding Relationship is evaluated. If the condition for a plug cell is evaluated to be false, the amount necessary to resolve the disagreement between the difference cells is plugged to that cell. Should the disparity between the "Difference cells" exceed the defined "Limit", CaseWare will immediately notify the end use of the problem complete with hyperlinks allowing you to jump to all the cells involved. This notification ensures discrepancies are not overlooked and allows the end user to investigate the cause and resolve the underlying issue. You're not forced to constant re-read the report, scanning for disagreements, and that directly translates into less time spent reviewing to ensure agreement. It also guarantees fewer errors in your reports. CaseWare Working Papers has multiple systems available to warn you of discrepancies and/or automatically fix them. Look for upcoming CaseWare Feature Spotlight articles to talk about how to get closer and closer to fully automated, agreed financial reports!

If reducing the risk of errors while decreasing time investment is your goal, the rounding relationship is one feature of CaseWare Working Papers you need.

CaseWare Feature Spotlight: Modifiable Groups

Jamie Black
CaseWare Feature Spotlight
minute(s)CaseWare's financial reporting solutions provide massive benefits to more than 500,000 users in 130 countries. Accountants, from auditors in public practice to finance officers in government, use CaseWare to automate very complex financial reports faster, with fewer errors, more reliably than with any other tool. How does CaseWare do this? By providing the most sophisticated features in the industry. Each of our "Feature Spotlight" articles discuss one of these features. Groups For a report of any sophistication, you need to group items (general ledger accounts, performance metrics etc). In fact it is typical that you need to combine those accounts in several different ways in a single report. For example one schedule may show expenses grouped by nature, and another schedule shows expenses grouped by department. Further, because you may want to generate reports that the software vendor might not have anticipated, you need modifiable groups. In other words, customizable by you and not require a consultant or the software vendor's intervention. All of this is true of CaseWare. CaseWare provides standardized groupings to simplify your reporting For example, CAFR groupings are provided in the GASB template. You can also modify or import your own groupings if you have them defined elsewhere. In fact, CaseWare Working Papers has this and more. 10 Groupings that can be named and organized any way you need (note Group 3 in the screenshot below called "Any Name I Want"). Each grouping can have 40-digit codes and 50-character names all specified by you. They also have some sophisticated features: Flipping - consider AR & AP. Imagine that this year one of your receivable accounts has a credit balance. No problem - in CaseWare you can configure the group code to automatically "flip" that account to the payables group code with no intervention from the user required! Calculation - Consider AR. Most often you will want to show receivables net of allowances for doubtful accounts. Not always though. Calculated groups allow you to instantly add other groups (the AR group and the Allowance group) together to get AR Net of Allowances. Extended & Calculated Descriptions - Need a longer description? How about changing the description automatically in the situation where the "Due To" becomes a "Due From"? Check & Check! Mapping has all the features of the above groups and a number of extra features too. Mapping allows you to default account properties and automatically assign any or all of the other 10 groups. Map numbers can be 40 digits long with 50-character names, all fully modifiable by the end user. Entity code - this mechanism is often overlooked by CaseWare users. Not only does it do all the work of the other 10 groupings but it also gives you a very simple way to create what Excel users call a pivot table. This turns out to be an amazing feature when trying to tackle complex governmental reporting (GASB / PSAB) or dealing with large consolidations. Entity numbers (called abbreviations) can be 40 digits long and the descriptions can be 100 characters long. If you are keeping track that is 12 concurrent grouping mechanisms that can all be customized and modified by the end user! PS: There are actually 2 more ways to combine accounts: Tax Export Code & GIFI. Both of these are used to automate the population of your corporate tax software (very useful for public accountants and accountants in large corporations). We have not counted these two as true grouping mechanisms as they are built for very specific purposes, and are not that modifiable.

Customizable groupings are key to saving time, reducing errors, reducing audit fees & improving the reliability of your reports. CaseWare has you covered.

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