Monthly close
Overview
Francis relies on actuals data from your ERP. Once the books are closed, you can import the data into Francis to complete your monthly FP&A tasks. These typically include:
Importing new actuals data
Controlling
Re-forecasting
Analyzing variance
Creating management reports
Basics
Importing new actuals
To import your latest actuals:
Press sync in the top right corner to import your booked entries.
Set the Last Close date to your last closed month so that the platform knows what months to include actuals for.
Controlling
We recommend that you start by comparing forecasts vs. actuals to find the largest variances. From there, you can drill down into forecast values, actual values, and even further into booked entries.
Use the following three buttons to toggle between different views:
Compare: Shows the difference between forecast and actuals values
Follow-up: Shows the actuals values
Transactions: Shows booked entries for actuals numbers based on the cell you've selected
Showing actuals in a month-by-month view makes it easy to see trends and analyze deviations, e.g., from bookkeeping errors.
Re-forecasting
Once you're done with controlling and ready to re-forecast, update the Forecast Start date to swap forecast values with actuals values and recompute all forecasts. You can also make manual edits as you see fit. Once done, save a version of the new forecast.
Variance analysis
Head to the Report view to complete a classic variance analysis for the Last Month, Year to Date, and Full Year. In there, you'll be able to compare budgets, forecasts, actuals, and actuals from last year. You'll need to configure what budget and forecast versions to pull numbers from.
You can also compare different versions (e.g., budget, forecast, and actuals) in charts.
Management reports
All of the month-by-month views, charts, and variance analyses can be exported as PDF packages.
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