Monarch and Excel Make Your Data Work for You

Monarch Benefits Popular Accounting Package Users

Posted in January 13th, 2008

Video: Monarch’s Multi-Column Region

Every business uses some form of accounting software. Of course, just as there are different sizes of firms, there are large scale and small scale accounting software solutions. Similarly, not every firm uses a complex ERP solution; more often than not they’re using software purchased at a local office supply or electronics shop.

According to Alan Salmon & Associates, who write on the topic of accounting technology, in Canada alone there are literally hundreds of thousands of users of just two popular and inexpensive accounting packages: Sage’s Simply Accounting and Intuit’s Quickbooks.

As I see it, that’s hundreds of thousands of users that all share…

The Single Problem with Accounting Software

Both of these packages offer a wealth of features, not the least of which is the number of reports included to help with not only the pure accounting, but also with the general management of the business.

Over time, these packages can develop into pretty comprehensive databases. They usually track information on customers and vendors, employees, sales, expenses, inventory and more.

Users often become well acquainted with the available reports, and know what content is hiding where. The adventurous may attempt export data from the package to another format, such as Excel, with decidedly mixed results.

Frequently the growing business will find that its information needs are expanding beyond the abilities of the software in use. There’s nothing wrong with what’s being captured; the business just needs better access to the data for stronger and more flexible intelligence on the business.

That’s where accounting software packages usually develop the same problem: they don’t always give the business the management tools it needs, so you give up and try again with a replacement. More often than not, the replacement doesn’t get you any further ahead.

Thousands of Problems Need Only One Solution

Wouldn’t it be great if you could leverage your existing accounting solution to give you the full-blown information system you really need?

The answer is simple. Just add Monarch to the accounting system.

Just about every major current accounting software package lets you print its reports to electronic text files. Monarch can easily convert your static data in those files into a flexible, efficient, business management machine.

Free your business of your accounting package’s limitations. Let Monarch help you find key data, develop custom metrics, and summarize what you want how you want it. You can even link data from other sources outside of your accounting software to build your own management tools and add even more value to what you already own.

I’ve prepared a simple example of how you can convert an interesting, if difficult to use, report into actionable data. This video spotlights Monarch’s ability to easily extract data from data in multiple columns. Watch the video now.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Regardless of the size, or for that matter the cost, of your accounting program, you can make good use of Monarch to make the most of your existing software solution. No system is perfect; nothing will deliver everything that you’d really like it to do. But you can get what you want, and more importantly, what you need, when you choose to excel with Monarch.

3 users commented in " Monarch Benefits Popular Accounting Package Users "

Grant said,

in January 14th, 2008 at 7:31 pm

That is an excellent observation Sandy.

My own personal business accounting package has several years of data which I don’t feel like trying to convert but was discontinued a couple of years ago. I can do what I need to do with what I have - except that one of two reports related to periodic reporting (quarterly in my case) for a Government Tax collection scheme just don’t work as I need them to. Not even as well as the previous version in this case! No wonder they abandoned the product.

So, each time I had to produce the numbers I needed to go through the detail to move some figures around (it does not help that some of the transactions required don’t seem to be allowed for in the way the application expects to be set up) and that, being only a quarterly ‘necessary evil’, I often forget the precise detail of how I get the right numbers in the right boxes on the form.

One day I decided it was just really dumb not to use Monarch. Not only could I make the number come up in the right places, I could present the information in a way that had built in anomaly checking and a much easier method of checking back if it looked necessary to re-allocate something across categories (something mis-coded perhaps, or where tax rules had changed.)

Better still the Monarch process acts as documentation to support the activity (and remind what it is all meant to be doing. Hey, it’s a Tax I am collecting for the Government for free - why would I want to become an expert at it? )

So now the task takes much less time than it did - or rather I have more time to ensure that, being a cautious person where taxes are concerned, the input and output numbers do not favour the Government more than they should according to their rules!

I save and print both the original reports and the new Monarch Table with its additional calculations. The the cell based structure of the Excel is a great place to store the table as ‘active’ data for the detail of the transactions being reported and the summary that is the basis of the simplified reporting form to send of with any payment or request for refund.

A little project that was time very well spent, in my opinion, and worked around two or three limitations of the application which, now that it is discontinued, will never be fixed.

Grant

Grasshopper said,

in January 15th, 2008 at 11:44 am

This article has a great deal of truth to it. the company I work for utilizes SAP as its accounting application. Many of the reports that you export from SAP are in a format that does not present the data in a clear and concise manner. I had totally forgot about the multi column region tool in monarch until I saw this video. Great way to think outside of the box Sandy.

Grasshopper

Sandy said,

in January 15th, 2008 at 10:42 pm

Thanks!

While I was rather fixated on the smaller accounting solutions, the mention of SAP does point out that even the much larger and more expensive software (often customized) still doesn’t solve the challenges many businesses have, so they use Monarch.

Do you use Monarch, or any other relatively inexpensive software, to fill in the gaps in your accounting and management software? How’s that working out for your company?

What’s not doing the job for you that we should know about? What’s forcing you to look for alternatives?