00 Getting Started - Templates & Drill Through

Overview

There are two main modes in which people work with FastClose:

1. The first is as an interactive tool to help the user navigate and understand the accounts. This is critical for operational users as they try to close the books at the end of the month. FastClose can greatly accelerate this process helping users find discrepancies and solve trial balance variance and close their books fast. This time saving is a key return on the investment in FastClose. The ability to navigate the data to rapidly understand what is going on is key to this and is what we shall focus on in this session.

2. The second, is largely post month end, to produce beautifully laid out reports to provide information to the Management Team, for example a Management Report Pack. Whilst simple in itself, there are many elements to this and many training sessions that pick up on each element of this.

Here is a video, or read below.

Templates & Solutions

FastClose ships with a set of standard templates and solutions that can be accessed from the “File->Home” menu item:

FastClose templates, grouped as Modules, representing the different operational areas of your ERP such as Accounts Receivable (AR), Accounts Payable (AP), Inventory and of course the General Ledger or GL.

These are as much starting points for interrogating and understanding your accounts, as they are unformatted starting points for creating management and other reports.

FastClose solutions are predefined reports that intend to provide certain types of report such that they require little or no further editing. For example a pre-formatted P&L that just requires your accounting structure to be imported.

Drill Through and Follow the Money - an ERP Magical Mystery Tour

Behind the scenes, many templates are linked to other templates within the same and other modules, allowing you to look at a value in one area of your accounts and see how it impacts another area.

For example follow an AR invoice and see where the revenues recognised are held in the GL.

to the GL Transactions for that

To the number it rolled up into in the GL Balances for the period

Similarly starting from a consolidated Trial Balance, drill through to a more detailed template that gives a view that splits up a number into its constituent transactions, or navigate to the ledger, subledger or subsystem the number comes from.

For example start with an accounts receivable number in an aggregated chart of accounts:

from there to a template showing the detail of the division or department it came through from:

to a template showing the journals that make up that number:

to the AR Invoice Details:

to the Sales Order Detail to see the quantity sold:

FastClose enables you to navigate the flows in your accounts as they move from place to place.