Use your trial

When you sign up, your tenant contains sample data of a fictitious company in several countries. It also includes simplified examples for data structures, importing data, reporting, budgeting, and consolidation. You can change and amend these examples to your own needs. We'll take you on a quick tour.

1Run reports

Click on Run reports (watch the tutorial) to view our sample reports that demonstrate key features:

• Profit & Loss - shows the consolidated Profit & Loss, with period-by-period and actuals vs budget comparison.
• Balance sheet - shows the consolidated Balance Sheet.
• Review revenue - shows revenue analysis, with period-by-period and actuals vs budget comparison.
• Review expenses - shows expense analysis, with period-by-period and actuals vs budget comparison.
• Trial balance - shows the consolidated trial balance, down to GL account detail.

Reports are fully configurable and can contain multiple layouts. Each layout shows a different presentation of the same underlying numbers.

All demo reports are defined on the data set Financial data which contains actuals and budget data. This data set is linked to 2 other data sets: Companies and Accounts which brings up information about the companies and the chart of accounts.

2Run models

Click on Run models (watch the tutorial) to view our sample models that demonstrate key features:

• KPI dashboard - shows a number of KPI's and standard financial ratios.
• Cashflow Statement - shows a formatted Cashflow Statement with actual numbers.
• Management report - shows a formatted Management Report with actual numbers.
• Enter budget - shows a simplified budget model for Profit & Loss, using sales and headcount parameters. You can submit by company, and it will be automatically consolidated.
• Consolidate - shows a simplified consolidation model that retrieves equity relationships and intercompany balances, and prepares a monthly elimination journal.

Models are fully configurable and combine data queries with spreadsheet-like templates, enabling you to build advanced reporting and interactive planning models.

All demo models are defined on the data set Financial data which contains actuals and budget data. This data set is linked to 2 other data sets: Companies and Accounts which brings up information about the companies and the chart of accounts.

If you want to understand how the demo models are defined, click here.

3Edit your data

Click on Edit data (watch the tutorial) to enter your companies and chart of accounts:

• Companies - enter manually, or import your companies (download our template)
• Chart of Accounts - enter manually, or import your chart of accounts (download our template)

Please note that these are just examples. You can add extra fields to your companies and chart of accounts, and you can create additional data sets for extra details such as cost centers or business units, departments, product groups, currencies etc.

Often, clients want to perform re-mapping of accounts or translate different currencies. Here are some common scenarios, and tips how to define them:

• Cost centers or business units
• Chart of Accounts mapping
• Currency translation
• Financial periods
• Variance analysis

4Import your data

For a quick demo, you can copy-paste your own data into our Excel templates. If you start using XLReporting for real, we'll help you to connect directly to your accounting system or other data sources (watch the tutorial).

Click on Import data - Excel to import your own financial data using our Excel templates:

• Import actuals - import your trial balance (download our template)
• Import budget - import your budget data (download our template)

Alternatively, you can use our predefined imports to accounting systems to import your data. As an example, below is the process for Xero: click on Import data - Xero to see the following imports:

• Companies - import your list of companies from Xero (ID and name). You only need to run this once, so XLReporting knows which companies you use.
• Chart of Accounts - import (and periodically update) your Chart of Accounts from Xero.
• Balances - import the period-end balances by GL account from Xero. We predefined 3 alternative versions of this import, so you would tyically choose only one of these 3 (not all 3):
  • single-company - if you only have one company
  • multi-company - enables you to select the company when you run the import (important when you connect multiple Xero companies to XLReporting)
  • tracking categories - if you want to import period-end balances per GL account and tracking categories (either 1 of the 2 tracking categories, or both)

All our predefined imports are configured so that you can re-run them without any risk of duplicating data: if any previous data already exists in XLReporting (e.g. for the selected company and period), this will be replaced by the new data. You are free to inspect (and change) our predefined imports. You can change which data they pick up, add any data conversions or filters, or change the data sets that they write to. If you need any help, please contact us.

5All done !

You should now see your own data in our sample reports. You can now start to change the reports and models to your needs, create your own reports, and create extra data sets if needed.