The Calxa Roadmap for 2025 started where we left off in 2024 with more Dynamic Column reports. Aged Payables and Receivables reports will quickly follow along with collaboration tools, a flexible report builder and much more. Read on for the details!
Calxa Releases for 2024 in Review
Before we start with the Calxa roadmap for 2025, we should review a successful 2024. The headliner was Budget Scenarios but there was much more.
Budget Scenarios
Scenarios give you the ability to add layers to your budgets and forecasts. You can:
- Create scenarios showing your planned changes
- In Preview Mode, combine one or more scenarios with a budget to see the effect on your bottom line
- In reports, select a budget and then one or more scenarios
- Use the Cashflow Scenarios report to compare the cash effect of different combinations of budgets and scenarios
Transaction Sync and Transaction Reports
Sync times for MYOB and Xero users have been dramatically improved since we started syncing individual transactions. We still have further improvements to make this year but 2024 showed a big reduction in sync times.
The Account Transactions report gives you the ability to list transactions by account, by business unit and by organisation.
Feedback suggests this has been really helpful in troubleshooting anomalies and helping to explain to report users the source of the data.
Unlinked Accounts and Business Units plus Sub-Accounts
You are no longer limited to the accounts or business units in your accounting system.
Add new accounts purely for budgeting or as part of a feasibility study and sync them to your accounts later.
Adding Xero Organisations in Bulk
For those of you with multiple entities, this has been a huge timesaver, giving you the ability to add many Xero companies all in one process.
Improved Workflow Schedules
We added extra flexibility to our workflow scheduling so that you can send reports at almost any frequency you could imagine.
Send your reports monthly, quarterly or every second month. You have control!
Reporting Improvements
Some other enhancements you may have missed include more options on managing budgets in consolidated group reports and the ability to export and import Business Unit Trees.
Dynamic Column Reports
To improve on our fixed-template multi-period reports, we’ve added the option to have a dynamic number of columns, to better suit some needs. We started with the P&L with Projected Total reports, followed by the P&L Comparison.
The Balance Sheet Forecast and Cashflow Forecast mean you can now produce a 3-way forecast for any future date range.
The Balance Sheet Comparison, like the other comparison reports, now automatically resizes to suit the number of organisations or business units you have selected.
The final few of these multi-period reports will be delivered in early 2025.
What Does the Calxa Roadmap for 2025 Look Like?
We’ve been collecting your feedback for many years and that forms the basis for our planning each year. Our goal is to give you the tools you need so you can produce your budgets and monthly reports as efficiently as possible.
Here’s what we are planning for the Calxa Roadmap for 2025. Work is already well underway on some of these features, others are still at the early planning stage.
Of course, with the caveat that we do review this roadmap quarterly so the details can change! To keep up-to-date, come along to our quarterly webinars or check out our change logs on the latest releases.
Aged Payables and Receivables
List your outstanding debtors and creditors for one company or a whole group. Choose the summary option or the detail one that lists open invoices. Select the ageing periods that suit your needs. These reports are being progressively rolled out in the first quarter of 2025.
Options for our Enterprise customers
Over the years, we’ve had more and more people using Calxa with ERP systems such as MYOB Acumatica, Microsoft Business Central and NetSuite. 2024 was the year we worked on developing and testing direct integrations and we’re making them available to you in early 2025. We’re still finalising some of the administration details around this but we have a growing band of happy customers. Get in touch if this would make your life easier!
Collaboration
Do you need to communicate with your team while editing budgets? Coming very soon, you’ll be able to @mention people and have a chat to collaborate on your budgets. Ask questions, get and give feedback and really make the budget process one where you all work together.
Once we’ve done this for budgets, we’ll work on similar collaboration on published reports so you can easily discuss the results.
Flexible Report Builder
We know this is the one that everyone has been waiting for and we are taking the process slowly so we can do it well. As an alternative to our fixed templates, we are going to give you the ability to easily add and remove columns without needing a degree in Computer Science. Some of you have been very successful customising templates with our Report Designer over the years. But we have always known that that is a tool best suited to the technically-minded user. And if you don’t use it often, it’s easy to forget what you can and can’t do.
At this stage, we are still in the design phase of the project but we have enough work done that we are testing those designs and getting valuable feedback from Calxa users. We appreciate the help of all those involved in the process and we are confident that it will ‘wow’ all of our customers before too long.
This is how it is going to work. In the report builder, we’ll add a panel with simple options to turn columns off and to re-order them. You will be able to add columns and define the date ranges or business units they contain. To simplify some of the repetitive tasks, you will be able to add column groups such as Actuals, Budget, Variance and then repeat them.
For us, this is one of those complex tasks to deliver you something simple. We will be gathering feedback as we go to ensure we hide all the complexity but still give you the power you need. Expect to see something in the second half of the year but we’ll keep you updated on progress in the meantime.
Here’s a very rough sketch of what we are working on:
Performance Improvements
There is always more we can do to remove bottlenecks from Calxa and help you get your budgets and reports done quicker. We have a project to make budget formulas more efficient, including the recalculations we do after a sync or import.
That will make a small difference to many of you but a big difference to a few customers with many formulas over many business units and organisations.
We have other projects lined up to improve the display and responsiveness of the app and our UX (User Experience) Designer is working on reviewing the consistency of experience delivered across the app.
The Boring, but Necessary, Bits
You may not notice the improved security of your data as we finalise our ISO 27001 certification but you can be assured that we’re working to keep it safe. The certification process has been a long and fruitful one and we’re currently preparing for audits. Security is always an ongoing process and integral to what we do.
We hope that you will notice the snappier performance. Essentially, we are working on removing some roadblocks we have identified over the past few months. In addition, we will keep doing some of the smaller changes to improve the bits you find frustrating. Ultimately, to help you to work more productively.
Feedback on the Calxa Roadmap
We couldn’t do this without your support, engagement and feedback. We blush when you tell us you like things, we learn when you tell us what isn’t so good. Please don’t be shy and tell us what would make a difference to you.