Appreciate not entirely a Modano question, but maybe something that others here have faced: how to import from Xero with Tracking Categories.
I know that pulling data through (into Modano) by individual Tracking Category is possible - and works perfectly where the financials are tracked by Region for example (where number of regions may be relatively simple). But I have a couple of projects that have their PRODUCTS booked as Tracking Categories and wish to model in Modano by Product. And I am talking about dozens (creeping to 100+) of Products.
Right now I use the import function from Xero then manually run a Revenue report from Xero by Tracking Category for each time period: this is really painful and time consuming, and would be clearly fixed if Xero could export via a flat file format.
Just wondering if this is a problem anyone else has faced, and conquered?
thanks
Hi Kevin,
Firstly, it seems strange that Xero tracking categories have been used to track products. Does this mean that they've tracked products across all P&L and balance sheet items? Or have they just allocated revenue to products using tracking categories?
Since we enhanced the Import Assumptions tool live linking capabilities, you can live link as many historical income statement and balance sheet components as you like, and you can even trick Modano into thinking that any component is an historical income statement or balance sheet. So theoretically you could create a module as category which collects the revenue (or even all P&L and/or balance sheet items) for a specific product (i.e. tracking category) and then duplicate or mirror this as many times as required to live link all products (i.e. tracking categories).
This approach would mean that you'd have, for example, 100+ historical income statement components live linked to your 100+ tracking categories, but you could position this in the appendix of your model (or even hide the sheet containing them) once they're linked and they'll update automatically when you roll your model forward. If you're only collecting revenue for each product these components would be small anyway, so wouldn't cause model size or performance issues. You would need to initially set up a live link to each category, and new live links each time you add a new product.
This all does seem quite strange. Why wouldn't the Xero bookkeepers simply create chart of accounts categories for products and then you could simply map these into your model?
In short, you can do some pretty crazy stuff with the new live linking capabilities, but I'd always think about whether your ability to find a way of doing something means that you've found the right solution. This all seems quite messy to me.
Our Services team are always available to think tank challenges like this if you'd like to tap them in...
Cheers,
Michael
Michael,
Thanks - that is certainly an option for me. I've just set that up for a handful of connections to Products and it works perfectly. I think though that my challenge is not this problem, but the challenge of the Model and Bookkeeping (Revenue and Inventory by Tracking Cat/Product) and maybe resetting the Client's expectations. As you might imagine my model with Revenue and Inventory tracking on 100+ products is challenging already.
Coincidentally I have just been told about one of the export functions in Xero that dumps a txt file of account entries in a flat format (which is not signposted or promoted within Xero) that probably serves a quicker solution for me and I will move to the Excel assumptions route to pull it in.
Both ways lead me to the same point which is solving a problem that probably does not serve the client so well in the long run.
Will see where this goes, but I have your team on speed dial ☎️ and always happy to hear their thoughts.
all the best
Kevin
Thank you for helping me out as well, you saved my job.