The Consolidation home screen provides a high-level view of your current Consolidation status. Whether you're just getting started or actively managing multiple periods, this page offers a streamlined experience to help you monitor, manage, and take action on your consolidation processes.
If you’re new to FloQast Consolidation, the Home screen will guide you through setting up your environment. You'll see a welcome message and a step-by-step setup guide to help you establish your consolidation environment quickly and effectively. This guide will keep track of what’s completed, what’s in progress, and what remains, ensuring a smooth and clear onboarding experience.
What You'll Find on the Consolidation Home Screen
Once your environment is set up, the home screen evolves to show you the real-time status of your Consolidation process, including:
- Current and Closed Periods: View both your current open periods and any previously closed ones. For open periods, you’ll see a summary of actionable items, like:
- New Entities: Alerts about new entities that need attention.
- Account Changes: Notifications on new or updated accounts.
- Validation Alerts: Such as out-of-balance financials or missing data, ensuring you can resolve any issues promptly.
Key Features of the Home Screen
- Period Selector: Located in the upper-right corner***(Upper Left in new UI) of the Home screen, the Period Selector lets you quickly choose which period you want to view and work with. The selected period impacts all other parts of the FloQast Consolidation product, including adjustments, financials, and reports.
- Adjusting the Period: You can change the selected period directly from Home or from other parts of the application as needed. This flexibility ensures you're always working within the correct period.
- Manual Trial Balance Refresh: While FloQast is designed to automatically refresh your Trial Balance data on a set schedule, you can also manually trigger a refresh if needed. Simply click the "Refresh Trial Balance" button to pull the latest data.
- Manual FX Rate Refresh: If your consolidation involves multiple currencies, you can manually refresh the FX rates by clicking the "Refresh FX Rates" button to ensure your numbers reflect the latest currency exchange data.
- Lock Period:
Want to prevent further changes to your data while the period is under review? Use the "Lock Period" feature. Locking a period freezes the data so you can confidently share financials with internal and external stakeholders. A notification will appear on the Home screen and across the platform, showing that the period is locked, who locked it, and when. This way, everyone stays informed.
- Create New Period: When you're ready to close the current period, you can do so by selecting "Create New Period." This action finalizes the financials for the current period and opens the next. You'll be prompted to confirm this action, as it prevents further changes to the closed period.
Managing Periods on the Home Screen
The Home screen plays a central role in managing your consolidation periods. Here’s what you can do:
- Refresh Data:
- Trial Balance Data: The system automatically refreshes your Trial Balance data on a set schedule, but you can manually refresh it whenever needed.
- FX Rates: For multi-currency consolidations, manually refresh FX rates to ensure your financials are using the most up-to-date exchange rates.
- Lock a Period:
- Use the Lock Period feature to prevent any changes while the financials are under review by internal or external stakeholders.
- A clear lock notification will appear across the platform, showing that the period is locked, who initiated the lock, and when.
- This ensures data integrity while the financials are being reviewed, so nothing changes unexpectedly.
- Close and Create a New Period:
- When all tasks for the current period are complete, use the Create New Period option. This closes the current period and opens the next one. Closing a period finalizes all data, meaning no further changes can be made to it.
- Reopening Periods: If you need to make adjustments to a closed period, you can reopen it, but note that periods must be reopened and closed sequentially. If you need to adjust a period that is several periods back, you’ll need to reopen and then re-close each period in sequence.
- Why Sequential Reopening?
- Reopening periods in sequence ensures that any adjustments you make reflect accurately across all periods. For example, reopening Period 1 before adjusting Period 3 ensures the changes flow correctly through each period, maintaining financial accuracy.
We’re just getting started! In the future, Consolidation Home will include dashboards and high-level summaries to give you a more detailed, at-a-glance view of your Consolidation environment, making it even easier to manage your financial close.