al Reporting in Microsoft Excel for Sage 50 Accounts 1 Introduction Whilst Sage 50 Accounts does already offer integrated Excel reporting functionality, we found that it was often missing the flexibility needed to create the reports and management accounts needed by our clients. With this in mind, Trax UK have created a reporting function which allows fully customisable management accounts to be produced easily in Excel, linked to Sage and refreshed at the touch of a button. You will be able to report by: any nominal code or group of nominal codes any date range any department or group of departments any charity fund or group of funds Key advantages over Sage standard integrated reporting: Sage is unable to report a departmental sub balance within a nominal code Sage can only report on one nominal balance at a time Sage can only report by monthly period balance, meaning that: Four weekly reporting is unsupported Annual balances can only be produced by extracting and totalling 12 individual period balances All of these problems can be solved using al Reporting in Microsoft Excel for Sage 50 Accounts. Templates can be created to fit your existing layouts, and are easy to modify when you need to make a change, such as adding a new nominal code or department. Duplication of data entry is removed, making the benefits clear in terms of cost and efficiency. 1
2 Installing your software Please see your product pack for detailed system specifications before beginning installation. 2.1 Installation Browse to setup.exe and double click the file to start the installation This will be located on your installation disc or, if you obtained the software via our web download, in whichever location you chose to save the file when prompted. Follow the onscreen prompts to accept the default settings If you wish to install the software in a specific location, make sure to alter the path when prompted. When installation if complete, open Excel to check that the departmental toolbar is present In Excel 2007 the toolbar will be displayed in the add ins tab on the control ribbon. In Excel 2003 the toolbar will appear in the toolstrip at the top of the screen with the other formatting toolbars. 2.2 Setup Before you can start reporting, some settings will need to be entered to link the add in to your Sage data. Click the settings button on the toolbar as pictured above This will open a new window containing the access settings for your data Username/Password: enter the Sage user name and password to be used to access your data We recommend that you set up a dedicated user for this purpose within Sage to avoid any login conflicts. Version: enter your Sage version number If you are unsure of your version, please open Sage and go to help and then about. On the general tab you will see a version number in the format XX.xx.xx.xxxx. The number before the first. is the version number that should be entered into the settings box, e.g. 15.01.18.0190 is version 15. Company Name: enter your company name Data Path: enter the path to the Sage accdata folder on your computer or server For version 14 (Sage 50 Accounts 2008) onwards, the path is most likely to be C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Sage\Accounts\200X\Company.XXX\Accdata For older versions, the path will be similar to C:\Program Files\Sage\Accounts\Company.XXX\Accdata Click save to complete the settings entry 2
3 Creating your first report al Reporting in Microsoft Excel for Sage 50 Accounts is based on our auditbal function, which Excel uses to retrieve a balance from Sage based on the date, department and nominal code parameters referenced inside the parentheses: These balances will combine to form the basis of any report you wish to produce, from a departmental expense report to a full set of management accounts. 3.1 Extracting a balance from Sage =auditbal(nominal code, department, date from, date to) The following simple example demonstrates how the auditbal function retrieves data from Sage. To retrieve the balance of nominal code 4000 for all transactions posted to department number 1 dated between 1st January 2007 and 31st January 2007, you would enter the following formula as shown in the illustration. Each parameter is entered inside the parentheses in quotation marks and separated by a comma. The function works out the total balance for the specified transactions and populates the cell with this result, ready for you to use it in your report. 3.2 Formatting your result Since the cells linked to Sage are part of an ordinary Excel spreadsheet, you can combine them with any other formulae you wish to use, including sums, averages, counts, profit percentages etc. You could also use the data as a basis for pivot tables or charts. The reports can be formatted using any of the normal Excel functionality including adding borders, changing fonts, column/row widths and alignments. The auditbal function will display a negative result for a credit balance and a positive result for a debit balance. For purposes of calculation or aesthetics it can be necessary to reverse the sign of the result, which you would do by adding a minus sign after the equals sign inside the formula (= auditbal...). In the simplified example below, the cell outlined in red uses the auditbal function as per 3.1 whilst the rest of the spreadsheet is manually entered or calculated based on this result. When the report refreshes, it will recalculate the value in the red box without deleting any of the surrounding calculations or formatting. 3
3.3 Referencing report parameters Rather than entering fixed values for each parameter inside the formula, values can be placed elsewhere on the spreadsheet and then referenced by the formula as shown in the example below: 3.4 Absolute, mixed and relative cell references The formula still references code, department, start date and finish date, but as an absolute cell reference rather than as part of the formula itself. This allows for greater flexibility overall, as the settings need only be changed in one place rather than in each cell throughout the spreadsheet. For example you could create a set of reports over multiple tabs which use a common set of parameters held in its own tab at the front, allowing users less confident with Excel to run the reports without making more complicated changes. This more complex example shows how you can start to build up bigger reports such as a profit and loss account or a balance sheet. Cell C9 references the nominal code in cell A9, the department number in C3 and the dates in B1 and B2 (as outlined in red). When creating reports similar to this one, you will often start by setting up the formula in a single cell and then copying and pasting the formula over the columns and rows you intend to use. The $ signs in the formula specify whether a reference is absolute (fixed) or relative. This determines how Excel will change a formula when you copy it from one cell to another and is therefore important to get right when setting up your template. The table below describes the impact of copying each kind of reference: Copying A1 to C3 Reference in copied cell: Changes to: $A$1 (absolute column and absolute row) $A$1 A$1 (relative column and absolute row) C$1 $A1 (absolute column and relative row) $A3 A1 (relative column and relative row) C3 To swap between each type of absolute or mixed reference, highlight the cell reference in the formula and press F4. This will cycle through the variations shown in the table. In our example, the reference to cell A9 containing the nominal code is a mixed reference, $A9. The $ sign anchors the reference to column A, but the row number will change relative to cell position. This means that if we copy the formula from C9 to D10 Excel will correctly change the reference from $A9 to $A10, rather than B10 which would result had we left the reference as A9 instead of $A9. The references to cells $B$1 and $B$2 are absolute as these values will remain the same, wherever they are referenced from in the sheet. 4
3.5 Specifying parameters When entering your parameters you can choose to reference individual codes, ranges or groupings of specific codes. The table below shows some of the syntax you can use to specify your codes: Syntax Result Use =4800 or in(4800) Balance of nominal code 4800 Report individual balance in(4801,4802,4810) Sum of the balances of nominal codes 4801, 4802 and 4810. Separate each code to be added with a comma. between 4800 and 4810 Sum of the balances of all nominal codes between 4800 and 4810 >=4800 Sum of the balances of all nominal codes greater than or equal to 4800 Report total balance of small group of balances or group of non consecutive codes Report total balance of a continuous group of nominal codes Report total balance of a continuous group of nominal codes with no end limit Applying the above to your report parameters will allow you to create versatile filters for any of the scenarios shown in the following table of examples: Duplicate existing Sage functionality Report by department Report a range of nominal codes in(1) Report a range of department codes in(4000, 4002) between 4000 and 4002 in(1,2) between 0 and 3 Report by a date range 1 month 6 months 12 months 30/06/2007 >=4000 >=1 31/12/2007 Operator Meaning = Equal to > Greater than >= Greater than or equal to < Less than <= Less than or equal to <> Not equal to Any of the examples above can be combined to filter by nominal code, department and date at the same time. Entering the nominal code or department code parameter as will give you the total result for all codes. 5
4 Additional options for charities If you make use of the charity functionality within Sage you will be familiar with the use of funds to further analyse expenses. You may also want to report at a fund level as well as by department and nominal code. 4.1 Reporting by fund All of the functionality described in section 3 can also be used in conjunction with the auditbalfund function. This works in the same way as the auditbal function, but with the addition of the fund ID parameter. =auditbalfund(nominal code, department, date from, date to, fund ID) If you are already using the charity functionality in Sage, you can find the fund ID numbers by going to the company screen and selecting funds from the links menu. The additional fund parameter will enable you to split expenses via fund number into restricted and unrestricted funds. You can then break figures down further into department and code, making it easy to create highly detailed reports for your management accounts. 6
5 Running your report Every month, creating your management accounts or other reports is simply a case of refreshing the contents of the Excel templates you have created. Open your report template Change your report parameters Amend the report dates, department and nominal codes as necessary. Click Cache Sage Data on the Trax add in toolbar This will retrieve information from Sage ready to fill in the template. A message box will appear to tell you when this is complete (it may take some time) click OK to continue. Click Recalculate Workbook on the Trax add in toolbar This will fill in the information from Sage to complete your report. When you are happy with your report, click Fix Values to create a fixed copy of your report This copy will no longer be linked to Sage and therefore will not get accidentally changed. 7