A number of people have raised the following through support, so I thought it was worth documenting in the forum.
When using the Weekly Historical-Forecast content and importing directly from accounting packages, there is a disconnect between the historical income statement data and historical balance sheet data, due to the way accounting packages provide the balance sheet data.
Using a simple example of $100 income for four weeks, when running the import assumptions tool at the end of the month, the following pattern of data is brought in:
The income statement recognises the day-specific timing of the revenue into each week correctly. However, the balance sheet ignores this specific timing and presents the month-end data in each period. This relates to how accounting packages provide API access to balance sheet data. Related, I haven’t been able to export a day-specific balance sheet from Xero, only a month-end version.
The knock-on effect of the above is the creation of an implied historical dividend paid profile in the cash flow statement:
The historical balance sheet has 8-Jan cash moving to $400, despite there only being $100 of revenue. This is balanced in Modano’s content through a historical dividend paid as a negative payment of $300, with the subsequent periods assuming that the $100 of revenue (in the absence of a movement in cash) is paid out as a dividend.
The way to resolve the above impact is to import historical data on a weekly basis, such that the closing balance sheet each week is accessing the month-end balance sheet as if this was the end of the week, assuming no-one has posted any future dated journals, income, expenditure beyond the end of the week in question.
Using the above example, if the import assumptions tool is run on a weekly basis, even though the accounting package is providing the end of the month / 29-Jan balance sheet, this should reflect the end of each week (assuming no future dated transactions) as shown below:
