Best Practices
Reach Reporting corporate roll-out
Section One:
Welcome to the family.
We are so excited that you have joined Reach Reporting. We are dedicated to helping you provide the most insightful reports to your clients. Reports that are easy to build and a team that is willing to support you along your way.
Hidden
TABLE OF CONTENTS
There are going to be hurdles
Here to help you succeed
Roll-out for maximum adoption
Increase your report value
Structure your chart of accounts
Discover the reports your clients need
Tips for creating visual reports
Start with a report wire-frame
Connect your first company
Using company settings
Creating your first report
Starting with report templates
Building a report from scratch
The spreadsheet playground
Access to more data
Turn custom reports into dynamic templates
Creating client dashboards
Give access to your clients
Train your team to increase adoption
Internal Marketing
Market to the client
Download Implementation Check List.
Download Best Practices PDF
Download Report Discovery Worksheet
Section One:
There are going to be hurdles.
Reach Reporting is excited that you have selected us to support you in your firm’s decision to provide insightful, visual reports.
When making changes to your reporting process or introducing new software, challenges are bound to arise.
To help reduce some of the pain points you might encounter, we have provided you with this resource.
Section Two:
Here to help you succeed.
Reach Reporting is here to help you meet those challenges head-on and overcome them.
This booklet will uncover practical ways to roll out Reach Reporting and effectively help your staff use it.
Our goal is to help your company embrace Reach Reporting, use it, become more effective and enhance value to your clients as a result.
Section Three:
Roll-out plan for maximum adoption.
We are here to reduce unnecessary pain in the deployment of Reach Reporting by providing an appropriate roll-out strategy.
Here’s a guide to help minimize the pain:
12 Steps for Reach Reporting Roll-out
1. Internal Marketing
It’s essential to let your entire team know what you will be implementing and how it will affect them and their clients with positive vocabulary.
WATCH: WELCOME VIDEO
2. Champion Selection
Select people who are natural influencers within your organization that can help support the roll-out.
3. Training: Champions
We provide training for your champions to help them see what they can do and best practices on how to do it.
WATCH: CHAMPION TRAINING
4. Define Reports & Metrics
Gather your champions and leadership team to define the reports your clients need and what metrics are needed to create those reports.
5. Meet with Reach Rep.
Meet with your Reach representative to discuss the reports and metrics you want to build.
SCHEDULE: REPORTING DISCOVERY
6. Standardize Chart of Acct.
Create a firm standard for the structure of the clients’ chart of accounts.
7. Training: Reporting Building
Select one of the reports you want Reach Reporting to help you build, and we will provide the training.
SCHEDULE: REPORT BUILD TRAINING
8. Revenue Discovery
Meet with your champion and leadership team to determine if you will charge clients for these reports or provide them as a value add.
9. Company Roll-out
A positive roll-out meeting can be one of the most significant impacts of company buy-in and adoption.
10. Demo: Company-Wide
We provide group demos to help get your team excited about using Reach Reporting.
SCHEDULE: COMPANY DEMO
11. Customer Marketing
We want to help you inform your clients about your new offering, so we have provided marketing materials in the Reach Reporting app.
WATCH: MARKETING VIDEO
12. Ensure Team Utilization
Check on your team frequently for any concerns.
Section Four:
Increase your report value.
CEOs want insights on specific business areas—and they are willing to pay for it.
Most of your clients are familiar with the basic financial reports you provide, but many are less familiar with the kinds of management reports you can now offer with Reach Reporting. Reports that can help them discover ways to increase profits, improve cash flow, and reduce risk.
With Reach Reporting, your firm can enhance your report offering, increase client value, and create a new revenue stream.
Understanding the Difference between
Financial Reports & Management Reports
Financial Report
External
Banks, Regulators, Investors
Management Report
Internal
CEOs, Owners, Management
Financial Report
Mandatory
Must adhere to all set standards and guidelines required by IRS, banks, etc.
Management Report
Optional
Not needed but it will help your client’s business identify areas to improve.
Financial Report
Overall
Show client’s overall performance for a given period.
Management Report
Granular
Get granular with the data to quickly uncover valuable insight.
Financial Report
GAAP
Must follow guidelines and rules.
Management Report
Not GAAP
Produce reports in any way to enhance data insight.
Financial Report
Past
Reports review past financial performance.
Management Report
Future
Reports help develop strategies to improve future finances.
Section Five:
Structure your chart of accounts.
A well-structured chart of accounts is often the single best and most effective way to raise an organization’s financial reporting to the next level and ensure a seamless, automated connection to Reach Reporting.
Most of your client’s chart of accounts are not structured in a way that can efficiently and effectively produce financial information management wants to see.
If your chart of accounts is structured properly, it will be easy to create actionable insights. Remember, the goal is financial reports that provide the metrics needed to help your clients make better decisions.
Steps to building the perfect chart of accounts
A chart of accounts can group transactions of a particular type so you can produce detailed reports for specific areas of the business.
Four primary standard chart of accounts groups are:
Make sure that your line items have titles that make sense to you and your client. Use clear titles like “marketing costs” or “Cost of Good Sold.” Then use sub-accounts to increase your ability to develop more detailed reports.
Section Six:
Discover the reports your clients need.
It’s challenging to set up a reporting process if you do not have standard reports sent on a schedule.
But don’t worry. Now is a great time to meet with your firm and discuss what reports you want to provide and their impact on your clients.
Here are some things to consider:
• Identify what reports your clients need
• Know the purpose of each report
• Select standard metrics and KPIs
• Determine the frequency of the reports
• Ensure reports will enhance your brand value
NOTE: When selecting which reports are essential for your clients, make sure you develop something unique to your firm. This report will help differentiate your firm and increase client loyalty.
Section Seven:
Tips for creating visual reports.
When creating a visual report, you must tell a story that can carry the right message to your client regarding their financial data.
If you are not using one of the report templates provided in Reach Reporting and are building your own, please consider the following:
Consider the following when building a report from scratch.
Layout
A clean and straightforward layout will consistently deliver a more impactful report than a report with too much information. Clear headings should be used that help explain the metric or statement.
Positioning
If there is an important message you would like to highlight, position it in the upper left-hand area to gain optimum impact.
Colors
First, only use colors to help the narrative. Second, use colors with universal meaning to depict ‘positive’ and ‘negative’. Third, always be consistent with colors across metrics. And finally, less is more with colors.
Scaling
Keep in mind when using live text boxes that numbers will change with clients. Make sure the text box is big enough to accommodate this change.
Section Eight:
Start with a report wire-frame.
Once reports have been selected, defined, and have a purpose, consider the metrics and the main data required to create the report and metric.
Decide what style of visual metric will deliver a clear understanding of your client’s data and where that data is accessed.
Now connect the Reach Reporting app with your client’s accounting software.
NOTE: Reach Reporting provides several report and metric templates to get you started quicker. Each template is populated with your client’s data and to be instantly shared or wholly customized.
What Visual Metric should you use?
There are a few common guiding principles to use when choosing the relevant report visualization technique:
Waterfall Chart
Best for variance analysis. The eye naturally focuses on the significant movements in the graph.
Line Chart
Visualize trend analysis or time-based results.
Bar & Pie Chart
Visually display comparison data or show the comparison of parts of a whole.
Tables
Perfect for producing reference material, especially when combined with conditional formatting.
Section Nine:
Connect your first company.
Go to the Reach Reporting app and add a company by clicking the ‘Add Company’ button in the top right corner of the app.
Once you have connected your client’s accounting software, click the ‘Company Settings’ link.
Additional Help
Video Tutorials
We have made minute videos you can access by logging in to Reach Reporting and clicking the video tutorial link in the upper right corner of the app.
Knowlege Center
Need additional help search our Knowledge Center library.
Section Ten:
Company settings are your friend.
Company settings allow you to stay consistent throughout all the reports built for this client—select client logo, brand colors, and more.
Now that you have updated the company setting, any report template you select populates with the client’s data.
Section Eleven:
Create your first report.
Now that your reports are defined, metrics selected, and client connected, it is time to create a visually insightful report that incorporates a combination of graphs, icons, tables, and summary commentary.
Options to create a report:
• Select from a library of templates
• Create a new report from scratch
• Customize any template
NOTE: Any customization you do to a template or any report you build from scratch can be saved as a template and shared throughout your organization.
Template, Customize, or Scratch.
Report Templates
For a quick start, select a report template from our robust library. Use these reports just how they are or fully customize any report template to meet your reporting needs.
Build from Scratch
It’s simple and easy to create a report from scratch. With an internal spreadsheet, you can build any report or metric you need that will set your firm above the competition.
Section Twelve:
Starting with report templates.
All report templates are simple to edit and easy to customize. Theme colors and live text make it simple to tailor any report to any connected client instantly.
You can customize any metric to meet your client’s visual needs, and every report element can be moved or removed.
Need a metric added? Select one from the library or build your own.
If you have customized a metric or built one from scratch, add it to the library so everyone in your organization can use it on any report.
NOTE: Any customization you do to a template or any report you build from scratch can be saved as a template and shared throughout your organization.
Move, delete, add or do anything you want.
A. Move, Delete, or Add
Any element or page within a template can be moved or deleted.
B. Sync Data
Element’s and metrics sync with the connected to client’s data.
C. Utilize Color
Input a client’s brand color, and theme color throughout. The report will automatically update.
D. Edit or Add Metrics
Select a metric from a robust library or create your own using Reach Reporting’s internal spreadsheet that places all your client’s data at your fingertips.
E. Text & Live Text
Create any text block to provide helpful commentary to enhance understanding. Insert live text to pull specific client data to tailor every text block.
Section Thirteen:
Build a report from scratch.
Reach Reporting gives you the power to truly differentiate your firm by creating a report that is as unique as your offering.
There is no other report solution on the market that gives you this much freedom. Build the exact report you want, templatize it, and use it across your firm. Auto-populate it with any client data.
Never manually input data again.
Metric Library / Builder
With a robust library of metrics, you won’t be visually lacking. If we don’t have the metric you want, quickly customize or build any metric you can imagine with the internal spreadsheet playground.
Statements
Data from the connected clients’ accounting software automatically generates balance sheets, cash flow, and profit & loss statements. If you need something else, the builder can meet almost any report needs.
Image
Create an image library for each client with brand-approved images to use throughout the report. Your clients will find significant value from this gesture.
Text
Add simple commentary to any page to help explain your clients’ financial story.
Live Text
It’s simple to customize any report to any client by adding dynamic content fields to text blocks. Live text pulls in client-specific data without the need to reformat.
Shapes
Enhance visual aesthetics with basic shapes that auto-fill with your clients’ brand colors.
Section Fourteen:
The spreadsheet playground.
Building in a spreadsheet environment gives you the freedom to create any metric imaginable.
The internal spreadsheet metric builder allows you to access all your client’s data with a touch of the button, for any period, making manual input obsolete.
Build anything. Then save as a template.
A. Data Import
Import your client’s data into the rows with just a click. Then select the period you want displaying in the columns.
B. Formula Bar
Insert a formula that will instantly apply formulas similar to those found in Excel™ or Google Sheets™.
C. Metric Viewer
See what data will look like with each visual metric type selected from the metric toggle.
D. Metric Toggle
Select what visual metric will help your client understand their financial story.
E. Spreadsheet Tools
Format cells and rows to make your information easier to view and understand.
F. Metric Customizer
Customize any metric’s look and feel to match your client’s brand style guide.
Section Fifteen:
Get access to more data.
Now you can create additional metrics by accessing more data. Use Reach sheets to input data not found in your client’s accounting software or quickly upload CSV files to Google Sheets™. Make changes to the data in your sheets, and everywhere you use that data will be updated.
Section Sixteen:
Turn custom reports into dynamic templates.
Reach Reporting makes it easy to turn your work into custom templates that automatically populate with correct logos, disclaimers, and financial data for individual clients. Save countless hours each month on reformatting and data input—helping you deliver connected financial reports faster and easier than ever before.
We know that providing boilerplate reports to your clients does not set you apart. That is why we encourage our clients to create unique reports that they will find valuable and then turn them into a template.
Section Seventeen:
Create client dashboards.
Provide your clients powerful visualization and interactive financial dashboards.
Build a dashboard in minutes from our library of metrics or create them from scratch to provide a unique outlook only your firm offers.
As always, your custom metrics can be quickly built using the internal spreadsheet environment and turned into a template.
Section Eighteen:
Connect your clients to their reports.
It is easy to include reports and dashboards in a client portal and even easier to manage all your clients and their access from your workspace.
Education Improves Adoption
Section Nineteen:
Train your team to increase adoption.
We are here to help you and your team become competitive with Reach Reporting. We provide training sessions that will significantly impact your team’s engagement, keep them excited, and help them build excellent reports that will increase your firm’s value.
Encourage your team to utilize the following for continued support.
Team Zoom Training
One of the most effective ways to onboard your team and get them up to speed on Reach Reporting so they can start using it quickly.
Knowledge Center
We have published documentation that provides answers to frequently asked questions, how-to guides, and troubleshooting instructions—making it easy for your team to find solutions quickly and get back to building their report.
Customer Support
It is critical that we provide stellar customer support and foster a relationship of trust. Reach out to us either with the chat feature within the app or call us directly.
Section Twenty:
Let your clients know about visual reporting.
Your success is our success. We want to help you educate your clients on the value of visual reporting and be with you every step of the way.
Inside the Reach Reporting template section, we provide marketing materials that will help promote your new visual reporting offerings to your clients.
Section Twentyone:
Market visual reporting internally.
We are ready to help you introduce Reach Reporting to your team.
That is why we have created marketing materials that we encourage you to use to get your team excited about the upcoming enhancements to your reporting process.