It is no secret that I love accounting and yes taxation. Understanding and reporting on the debits and credits of a business is special.
I use to spend a significant amount of my time generating reports. My colleagues regularly referred to me as Mr Excel, which I was proud to be. Excel is my jam!
But since starting MyBI and spending time with my business partner and friend, Kenton, who is a data specialist and programmer (I call him Mr Bot.....he wants to automate everything) I now understand spending time generating a spreadsheet was not my true value for my company. As financial people our value lies in our ability to read and interpret numbers and help the business and the team make more informed financial decisions.
When we spend time compiling a report or spreadsheet we are not reading and interpreting the report. We are compiling it. It may sound similar, but it is not. Ever hear somebody say: "You are so caught up in the detail, that you cannot see the big picture."? The compilation of a report fatigues you, and the more fatigued you become the less your brain is able to give your true value to your business / company. Now please do not get me wrong, our business slogan is "A report a day keeps you business in play.", so financial reports are crucial. But your interpretation of it, even more so.
Thankfully technology is truly helping us to get our brain time back, even in the SME business space. Up to now quality business intelligence (BI) and data analytical tools where expensive. Or they were just open source tools such as Excel, which requires the user to spend time in it to generate reports, BI etc...
So what is my suggestion? I propose you sit and consider which part of your tasks really needs your brain power and which are repetitive tasks that can be optimised and automated. When you optimise repetitive tasks you free up time which you can now wisely spend to engagement with your team and customers to give the value your company deserves from you.
At MyBI our focus is to develop optimisation tools for SME businesses using Pastel Partner or Pastel Xpress.
MyBI App is a comprehensive Business Intelligence and Auditing app that integrates directly with Pastel Partner & Pastel Xpress. In the app you can automatically generate a full set management accounts and also see your business statistics and trends, such as top customers and suppliers, top items sold and purchased, balance sheet and income statement ratios, transactional cash flow statement. Each value is built up from original transactions as they occurred in Pastel. Accordingly all values can be drill into to display the detail. The MyBI App comes with a Dashboard that indicates sales trends, net and gross profits, working capital cycle and ratios and operational information such as open quotes, sales orders and month to date results.
MyVAT Reconciliation Tool simplifies the VAT reconciliation process for VAT201 returns and IT14SD reconciliations.
Other MyBI products for Pastel Partner and Pastel Xpress include MyConsolidation, MyBudgets, MyCustomers and MySuppliers.
All MyBI Apps can access Pastel data without the need for additional Pastel licences and the data syncronises with a secured cloud environment enabling users to access their Pastel data from anywhere.
