Throughout the Autumn we’ve been running a weekly Top Tips series on our social media platforms, sharing time saving insights and handy tips on features that you might not have known about. The feedback from this series has been so positive that we have collated it all into the blog below, to help you with everything from Creating Granular Reports to simplifying Partial Eliminations.

1 Creating Expense Reports

Using Joiin’s Custom Report feature, you can strip back your P&L reports to create fully customisable expense reports. To do this, go to the custom report page and click new P&L, you will then be taken to the custom report editor.

Now click the three dot menu next to every report group, except the expenses group, and click edit. Here you will be given the option to ‘hide group’. Once this process is complete you will be left with just your expenses items on your report. Why not try adding a bar chart to this report to see how your expenses vary month on month?

Go one step further: If you are likely to run this report regularly, select the pin icon next to the report in the custom report list to pin to your taskbar for easy access

2 Check Your Exchange Rates

To quickly and easily check which exchange rates were used on your Joiin reports, click the ‘Exchange Rates’ box just above your report. This will then provide you with a list of all currency conversions completed on the report and can be used as a check and balance for your currency translations.

Go one step further: Set your own exchange rates in the settings menu. You can use this to mirror alternative exchange rates opposed to the Joiin default or see differences exchange rates variations have had on your financials.

3 Creating Granular Reports

Next to all custom reports on Joiin, there is a ‘Copy’ button that will create a duplicate of any report. This can be handy if you would like to have two similar variations of the same report.

Why not create a ‘Granular P&L report’ with all account line items showing, to give you an informed and detailed view of your finances?

Or, create a ‘High level P&L’ where only group totals are shown to show general trends of the business in board meetings?

4 Create budgets for your Sage Business Cloud companies

Sage Business Cloud users will know that you are unable to create budgets for your companies in Sage, but did you know you can create Single entity or Group Budgets for these companies in Joiin?

To do this, go to the budget section within Joiin and select ‘Add Budget’ – Joiin will then provide you with an easy to fill in CSV template, with your whole chart of accounts already populated, ready for you to add your budget figures.

Once this is uploaded you are ready to run a single Entity or consolidated reports against budgets, for your Sage Business Cloud companies.

5 Run a report with a month by month breakdown and a YTD column

To get a monthly breakdown of your Joiin reports, simply select the ‘To Previous Period’ option from the Compare menu and use the ‘Start date’ and ‘End date’ dropdowns to select the last month you would like displayed on your report. Before running your report be sure to select how many months you would like displayed, using the ‘Periods to compare’ drop down that appears to do this.

To add a YTD column to your report – if you have a month by month breakdown stretching back to the beginning of this financial year, you can enable the ‘Total’ toggle, which will give you a YTD figure for your report. It’s as simple as that.

6 Show eliminations on screen

You can use Joiin’s elimination configuration feature as a checking mechanism to ensure all your intercompany transactions and eliminations are correct.

For those creating consolidated reports, managing eliminations and intercompany transactions often rank as the number one pain point. Eliminations can throw up all kinds of problems, whether that be issues with currency exchange or the values of the intercompany loans not quite matching on both companies account’s.  That;s where Joiin’s configurable reporting has you covered –  when running any report in Joiin, you can choose for ‘all but eliminated’ accounts to be removed.

This will leave you with just your eliminated accounts on screen, meaning you can check that all their values are correct, to stop any user error.

7 Send reports to your colleagues using the URL bar

Did you know that all of your report parameters are contained within your URL bar when you have run a report?  This means that you can quickly and easily send reports to your colleagues if they have access to your Joiin account – simply copy and paste your URL into an email or work chat for instant collaboration.

8 Partial Eliminations

Creating an elimination company to facilitate partial eliminations or view your eliminations using a CSV company upload in a separate column on your reports is simple and easy:

To create your partial eliminations, navigate to the Joiin Companies page, select ‘Add Company’. Then choose the ‘CSV File’ option from the drop down. Set the months you would like to produce eliminations for using the start and end dates and click download.

Open the CSV file that is downloaded and fill in the empty fields ensuring you match the account mappings of the accounts you would like to eliminate (You can use the Chart of Accounts section of Joiin to assist you in this). Add the amount you would like to eliminate in the data columns, using negative values and re-upload the file, via the add company screen.

Now when you run your reports you will be able to choose your elimination file using the company selector drop down. This will present your elimination values as an additional column on your reports.

9 Access Joiin’s Multi Client feature

Did you know that there is a Multi Client feature within Joiin aimed at accountants and advisors for their clients?

Multi-client is a feature tailored for accountants and advisers who need to manage multiple, distinct clients under one Joiin subscription.

To switch on multi-client, select the Enable Multi-Client option from the Account menu at the top right. You will be taken through the process of enabling multi-client.

Once this is complete you can add new clients and companies through the ‘Manage client option’ in the person icon menu.

10 Run reports for more than 2 years ago

If you need to run reports looking back further than the Joiin default of two years, all you need to do is navigate to the Joiin companies page and select the three dot menu next to one of your companies. From this drop down select configure, this will then present you with a screen where you can choose what dates your data will start from.

Once you have confirmed your settings you will be given the option to apply this to all your companies.