Written by Nils R. | Jan 10, 2022 8:00:00 AM
How can
Financial Dashboard
s Drive Faster and Better Decisions? As CFOs increasingly become key advisors in the Monthly Reporting and Consolidations Process, they must rely on modern self-service corporate performance management (CPM) and business intelligence (BI) tools. Using interactive Financial Dashboards like the Expense Comparison Dashboard template shown below enables them and users from finance and leadership teams to experience near real time expense metrics that help drive faster and better decisions.
Who uses
Expense Comparison Dashboard
s and What are Some Key Analytical Features? In today’s fast-paced business environment, CFOs are under high pressure to supply end users like managers and cost accountants with timely and concise Financial Dashboards. Companies use key features like the ones below to support their users with effective analysis that helps drive expense management and profit maximization:
- Year-to-date (YTD) expense views by general ledger (GL) Category and Account
- Charts that compare and consolidate actual and budget expenses across subsidiaries
- Entity filter that enables the user to quickly exclude or include any subsidiary
The Expense Comparison Dashboard template can be used as a key element of the Monthly Reporting process: [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2560"]
Example of an Expense Comparison Dashboard to Streamline the Monthly Reporting Process[/caption] The Expense Comparison Dashboard is a ready-to-use Financial Dashboard from the
Solver Marketplace.
A Brief Description of the
Expense Comparison Dashboard
Template Financial Dashboards like the one seen in the image above are interactive and parameter driven and typically contain sections with expense tables linked to comparative charts. One of the important features that aid the user in the analysis process is the ability to instantly zoom in on any expense Category or Account by clicking on a row in the tables and see that item represented by the charts. Expense Comparison Dashboards are often used in conjunction with expense trend and variance dashboards, KPI dashboards, profit & loss reports, and expense budget models.
Data Integration to Transaction Systems Most organizations these days want automated and streamlined
planning,
reporting and
analysis. However, many of the benefits described earlier rely on best of breed Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools and/or Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities as well as data marts or data warehouses that use pre-built integrations to the organization’s ERP system. Oftentimes, they also need integrations to other key data sources like CRM, subscription systems, payroll tools, etc. Modern, cloud-based ERPs like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance (D365 Finance), Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC), Sage Intacct, Acumatica, Netsuite and SAP have robust APIs which allow for dynamic integrations to CPM and BI tools that are fully automated and flexible to run on a schedule or on-demand.
Additional Resources to Aid with Research of Templates, CPM and BI Tools
- Templates from Solver that are pre-built and that work out-of-the-box using the Solver CPM cloud. Click here.
- Template examples: You find more than 500 CPM and BI Template examples here.
- Interactive Dashboard examples: Try Power BI dashboard templates from Solver here.
- Software evaluation and selection:
- Creating efficient processes:
