This update to BreezeGL adds features to make creating and maintaining Spire financial statements in Excel easier than ever.
If you are unfamiliar with BreezeGL it is a tool built in Excel that automatically generates financial statements from your Spire general ledger data. BreezeGL comes with some standard templates which you can modify or create your own. If you have ever wanted complete control over exactly how your financial reports are calculated and displayed, then BreezeGL is the tool for you.
This 6 minute video will bring you up to speed with the latest and greatest.
Templates
Templates now do more of the work for you when creating new reports:
Formulas
You can now specify formulas in templates. Previously you could only include financial data pulled from Spire. Now you can include calculations like the difference between two columns (eg: “This Year minus Last Year”) or a percentage change calculation.
This formula calculates a percentage change and uses the columns 1 and 3 highlighted in yellow. You can use any valid Excel formula here.
Formatting
Each column in a template can have a custom number format. Simply select the sample number and apply the formatting in the normal Excel way. This format gets used for that column when the report is generated. This is also helpful for percentages.
Formulas
GIFI Code Support
The BreezeGL formula GetValue can now retrieve GL values by GIFI code. A GIFI code is a CRA-defined line ID for financial statement items. These are mainly used to file corporate tax returns in a consistent, machine-readable way, independent of your internal account structure.
BreezeGL knows about all the valid CRA GIFI codes, their names and their types. New formulas GetGIFIName and GetGIFIType let you display the name and type of the GIFI code in your reports:
Rolling Months
It is now easy to create reports with columns representing “rolling months” that may straddle a fiscal year end. For example you may want to show the last 6 months. If the report is run for period 2, then the report needs to show some months from “last year”.
Here is such an example. The report is being run for “This Year” and period 2. The brown rows are automated and will always represent the prior six months.
Simply changing the period the report is run for, re-calculates the column headings so the data in the report below is shifted accordingly.
Generated Reports
Row Type
When generating reports, BreezeGL now adds a column to show the type of row.
This enables you to toggle between a detailed report that includes each account row, or a summary report where individual account rows are suppressed. It’s also useful when editing a report, such as if you want to make formatting changes to just a certain type of row.
Show\Hide Hidden Rows\Columns
It is common for users to hide certain rows and columns in the final version of the sheet, or when printing\exporting to share. But if that report needs to be later modified or it’s content reviewed, you usually need to show those hidden elements.
BreezeGL now tracks all the rows and columns you hide yourself. You can use Ctrl-Shift-H to bring your hidden columns back and then Ctrl-Shift-H to hide them again. These columns\rows chosen for hiding are remembered between sessions.
Setup
BreezeGL is now easier to setup. A list of your Spire servers is presented and a list of companies to choose from.
