08.09 Reporting on the Plan

Once figures start coming in, reports are needed that put actuals and plan side by side. FastClose ships with a set of prebuilt P&L report templates specifically designed for this, removing the need to build reporting from scratch.

Here is a video, or read below.

Finding the solution templates

Go to File → Home → Solutions in FastClose Designer. Two sets of P&L templates are available:

Actuals from ERP, budget also from ERP — for organisations that import budgets directly into the ERP GL. We are not interested in these here.
Actuals from ERP, budget from FastClose Planning — this is the set to use.

Within each set, further variants handle signing conventions:

Sales and Expenses both shown as positive numbers
Sales positive, Expenses negative
Natural sign (Sales negative, Expenses positive — as they appear natively in the GL)

The available P&L templates

01 GL Balances for Management Reporting - A GL balance report with calculations pre-configured to sign data correctly for management use. The best starting point if you want to build your own P&L from this base.
P&L Cumulative This Year to Date with Target - Columns: Actual YTD / Budget YTD / Variance YTD / Budget Full Year
P&L Quarterly with Target - actuals and budget for each quarter, with variance
P&L Rolling Three Months - the three most recent months, actuals and budget side by side
P&L This Year to Date by Month - each month of the year; actuals to the current month, budget from current month forward
P&L This Month vs YTD vs Last Year - current month actuals / YTD actuals / same period last year / budget
Projected Latest Estimate - actuals to the current reporting month , then planning figures for the remainder of the year. A practical way to track how the year is developing against the original budget.

Adapting a solution to the organisation

The solutions when initially shipped, contained P&L and BS hierarcies with sample account ranges and sample structures, these may well already have been updated to your own organisation's structures during the implementation of FastClose.

As mentioned in the planning overview, It is assumed that suitable P&L and Balance Sheet hierarchies have been built prior to looking at planning. A quick start to build a P&L can be found here, with more detail on building hierarchies here.

The steps to adapt one of these solutions are:

Open the solution from File → Home → Solutions.
Set the Scenario filter to your planning scenario.
Run the report and review. Adjust period filters as needed - if the report matches your expectations, you're done.
If the hierarchy looks like a sample:
1. Open the hierarchy dialog and remove it.
2. Using the Library button, try to locate your organisation's P&L or Balance Sheet and link to it.
3. If it isn't stored in the Library - try to locate a report that has it, and either place it in the library and repeat the above - or copy and paste it, which will also bring it into the solution. It is generally better to use the library to stop multiple variants being created.
4. Re-run the report and review
Save the report with a suitable name.

Exercises

Now try the downloadable exercises below:

08.09 Reporting against Plan - Exercises.pdf

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Move on to the first of the variations 0810 - Planning using a PL Structure or skip to 0813 - Reviewing and Auditing Submitted Data