SEQUEL Connections

Financial Reporting that Knocks It Out of the Park

By Mike Stegeman, Sr. Data Access Consultant

When your general ledger and transaction files are on your IBM i system and your budget data is in Excel, comparing the two can be a real challenge. Does your team have the right equipment to stay in championship form so you can streamline your budgeting and financial analysis?

Every organization needs to round the bases just to report on operations at many different levels. And, at some level, all companies needs to track and report on their financial activities. You can hit a single by creating a simple view of your general ledger financial reporting, or you can knock one out of the park with a little work and creativity.

Often, companies spend considerable time and money implementing systems to manage the data that represents their enterprise activity. Many times they find that the output options for the data from these systems strike out. For example, when your IT department, accounting department, or power users look at your accounts, they often find a fairly flexible number structure. But, many financial packages don’t have a simple way to categorize account numbers the way you need to view and use them.

The answer is to use a Business Intelligence (BI) tool with flexible data access capabilities that won’t overextend the IT department or your checkbook. A tool like SEQUEL lets you group your accounts to the level you need. Its dashboards summarize important business measurements on a PC or web browser and allows users to see the data they need when they need it.

Batter Up!

So, let’s start at the beginning of the game. Companies often use Microsoft Excel to create budgets and other documents for financial analysis. Meanwhile, their general ledger and transaction files are stored on a server, such as an IBM i sysytem. The trick is to combine these two sources to create useful output.

SEQUEL has an easy answer. First, you create a table of data in Microsoft Excel (we call this your grouping-level file—it acts as a way to summarize or group your general ledger data) and upload it to the IBM i server using a software package, such as IBM i Access for Windows. When you transfer data this way, you move your Excel table data to the IBM i server and save it there. This allows you to maintain your grouping-level information on the IBM i server. (If the data in the table changes in the future, you just rerun the transfer to update the data on the IBM i server.)

Assume that you have a Consolidated Income Statement view (a sample is shown below) in SEQUEL. Think of this SEQUEL view as your designated hitter.

A few notes about this view: The first two columns—the sequence number (seq) and the Income Statement Account—are created from the data in the Excel file. In essence, this view groups numerous general ledger account numbers under a single category—such as Sales, or Cost of Goods Sold. If you viewed the general ledger data without this grouping information, you’d see numerous account numbers. Here, they are consolidated into a single category and totaled.

Because this is a grouping view (in baseball parlance, a single), you can use SEQUEL to drill into any row to see the “data behind the data.” For example, imagine that you want to see more detail about the Cost of Goods Sold. You just right-click on the record and drill into the underlying department data (you just hit a double).

Need more detail? From there, SEQUEL lets you drill into a department to see the actual general ledger account numbers and amounts that make up that department total (now, a triple).

Here is a sample Balance sheet view (with some formatting added to make the data stand out).

That’s it—you’re now grouping your transactional data in a format that you can easily use and share. The best part is that all of this happens dynamically, without having to build data cubes, warehouses, or data paths. Now, that’s a Home Run!

For more information about how you can use SEQUEL to hit some home runs with your financial data, contact Stacy Jensen, SEQUEL Software Sales Manager, at 952-933-0609 or Stacy.Jensen@Helpsystems.com.

Sharpen Your Skills at the 2012 Solutions Summit

Learn from the best industry, product, and technical experts in automated operations, data access, and security for IBM i and distributed systems at the 2012 Solutions Summit, hosted by Help/Systems, September 17 – 20.

In addition to a full schedule of external speakers, this 4-day event in Minneapolis, MN includes sessions on your favorite SEQUEL products and topics:

• Optimize SEQUEL Performance – Improve query performance by accessing the new SQL Query Engine (SQE) on IBM i.
• Summarize and Pivot Data with SEQUEL – Deliver relevant, summarized data to end users with SEQUEL’s powerful table options.
• Abstract: A Programmer’s Best Friend – A must-see for IBM RDP users

Attendees also have access to advanced training with technical specialists, live product demos, and valuable networking opportunities. You’ll leave the conference working smarter, faster, and getting better results than ever before.

For more information or to see all the sessions, visit www.2012SolutionsSummit.com. Don’t miss your opportunity to save $100 with early bird registration (ends June 30).

More Free Training for SEQUEL Users

Announcing the next session in our “Did You Know…” series of free training. Each month we’ll be offering a different online class for new and existing SEQUEL Software customers (and anyone else that wants to attend).

The second class, Did You Know About Lightning Fast SEQUEL?, explores the world of SEQUEL version 10 and its faster SQL Query Engine (SQE). If you’re using SEQUEL version 10 and not taking advantage of the faster query engine, you’re missing out on the benefits of faster data access, which can shorten your query times tremendously.

In this session, you’ll learn how to take advantage of this powerful capability with just a few tweaks to your SEQUEL settings:

• Discover when and how to use SEQUEL’s SERVER and SYNTAX parameters
• Learn how you can easily change your existing views to use the SQE

This free one-hour training session, a combination of presentation and demonstration, is offered at 9:00 a.m. and at 3:00 p.m., Central Time, on Thursday, May 31.

Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to discover what the graphical world of SEQUEL has to offer. Click here to learn more and register.

Q & A

Q1: How can I easily add drill-down options to a SEQUEL view?

A1: When you convert your view to a grouping (summary) view, drill-down options become available automatically.

Q2: What other SEQUEL object helps with the drill-down process?

A2: A SEQUEL application (type SQLAPP).

Note: To create a SEQUEL application, start the Application Wizard from the New tab.

IBM i Solution Edition for Help/Systems

Purchase SEQUEL (or other software solutions from Help/Systems—Robot Automated Operations Solution; PowerTech IBM i security solutions; and Bytware antivirus and monitoring solutions for IBM i) and enjoy big discounts on training, services, and IBM POWER7 systems.

For details, contact your local IBM Business Partner, or visit our IBM i Solution Edition web page.