TABLE OF CONTENTS
November 2024 Release
New Features and Improvements
Preview workpapers in Review mode
While in Review Mode, you can now click on the Excel workpaper in the index to open a preview directly in your browser, allowing you to perform the preview without needing to open Excel. This enhancement will save precious time during the review process and will streamline your workflow. Try it out today and let us know your feedback!
Click on 'Start Review' to enter Review mode:
Click on an Excel workpaper to preview:
The workpaper preview will be displayed in a PDF viewer along with critical information and actions on the top left section.
Additional Firm defaults
Firm administrators take note, we have introduced additional customisation options for firms to standardise your workflows. These include:
Binder export default settings: In Workpapers Admin → Firm Preferences you will find a new button called 'Edit your default binder export options. When you click on this, you can customise the default options for binder exports across your firm.
Move 'Import All Columns' option to Settings & Tools: Also in Workpapers Admin → Firm Preferences, you will find a new tickbox called 'Move 'Reimport All Columns' option to the 'Settings and Tools' menu'. When this option is ticked, the Reimport button in the index of a binder will only reimport the balances for the primary column. This is to prevent inadvertently reimporting the balances for previous periods in a binder. You can still reimport all columns via the 'Settings and Tools' menu:
Hide calculated values for Balance Sheet accounts: You can now choose to hide calculated values for Balance Sheet accounts where these are not relevant (eg Percentage of Sales). You can do this via the 'Edit Columns' option for calculated columns:
When ticked, the calculated values will be hidden for Balance Sheet accounts in the index whilst still being visible for Profit & Loss accounts:
Improvement to Active - fyi Integration: Copy Documents from fyi
We are thrilled to announce a significant enhancement to the Active-fyi integration! With this highly requested feature, users can now copy documents directly from fyi to Active, moving beyond the traditional hyperlink method. This new functionality allows users to preview documents directly within Active, and these documents will also be included in the binder export pack. Firms can choose to continue using the existing hyperlink method or take advantage of the new document copying option.
To select the option, please go to Admin Centre → Integrations → fyi → Document Linking Options in the configuration settings.
Coming Soon: Insert link to worksheets in other Excel binders
You have asked, and we listened! You can now quick-add a link in one Excel binder to a worksheet in another Excel binder. Once linked, you can then view a preview of that external binder's worksheet in the current binder's Active add-in.
Right-click on a cell in the current binder and click on Active Workpapers → Add Worksheet Link
In the add-in panel, select the binder and its worksheet you want to link to.
Once the link has been inserted, clicking on that link will open a preview of the linked worksheet in the add-in panel for an easy, quick reference. You can click on the options on the top left of the preview to navigate to that external binder in Excel or Excel Online.
NOTE We are looking into linking external worksheets as a record directly in the index, stay tuned for updates.
New Features and Improvements
Restore Deleted Files
Good news! You now have the ability to restore Active Ledger files that were accidentally deleted. Simply access the Recycle Bin and use the 'Restore' button to recover your data within 365 days.
Monthly Depreciation Report in Assets Module
Users can now generate a monthly depreciation report directly from the Assets module, providing an easy and detailed view of asset depreciation on a month-by-month basis. This report streamlines tracking and enhances visibility into asset value changes over time.
Account and Report Label Mapping Report
Users can now generate a report displaying all accounts and their associated report labels. To access, go to the Reports tab, select Mapping Report, choose the desired report from the dropdown, and run it to view all accounts linked to relevant report labels. This feature provides a clear overview of account-label associations for easier review and management.
Bug Fixes
When working on Distributions with % splits, fixed a bug that was causing rounding errors
When exporting financial reports to Excel, fixed a bug where the ‘Format Report’ option in the add-in was misaligning columns where there were no note references
Fixed an issue where the Profit and Loss Layout option ‘Subtotal in P&L Only’ in the Financial Statements was not correctly displaying income values in their respective columns
October 2024 Release
Review Workpapers from Financial Statements
We’ve introduced a powerful new feature that allows financial statements to be cross-referenced with relevant workpapers and supporting documents. This enhancement enables reviewers to quickly scan and verify key balances directly from the financial statements, streamlining the approval process. Partners and reviewers can now focus on areas of concern or interest with greater efficiency. Additionally, this feature supports a quick review process, allowing users to preview, review, and verify work completed directly from the Financial Reports. The result is a faster, more transparent, and accurate review workflow.
Simply use the dropdown to link your financials to the binder where your work has been performed and generate a report to see this feature in action.
Move Ledger Files from One Client to Another
We’re thrilled to introduce a feature that will make managing your datasets even easier. You can now move datasets from one client to another directly within the platform.
Simply select File Settings > Edit File
and select the client you would like to move your data to. This update puts more control in your hands, saving you both time and effort, so you can focus on your core tasks without interruption.
Conditional Display of Cashflow Line
Based on customer feedback, users can now hide the cashflow line "Cash Generated from Operations" when there are no interest or income tax account balances. This enhancement provides cleaner, more relevant reports by automatically removing unnecessary lines, improving readability and reducing clutter in your financial statements.
Set Brand Colour at Global Level
Users can now set the branding colour at a global level, streamlining the process of applying consistent branding across all reports and documents. Find this setting in your Admin centre, under Global Report Settings. This enhancement ensures that your organization’s visual identity is automatically reflected, saving time and ensuring brand consistency without the need for manual updates.
Bug Fixes
We’ve fixed an issue where, in files with multiple Trading Accounts or Divisions, the options were being cut off in the drop-down menu when working in the Accounts screen. This fix ensures that all available options are now fully visible and accessible.
We’ve resolved an issue where users encountered errors when posting balancing journals back to MYOB for newly created accounts classified under the ‘Other’ category. Accounts starting with the number 9 and classified as 'Other' will now successfully post back to the source without errors.
September 2024 Release
New Features and Improvements
Restore Deleted Binders
Good news! You now have the ability to restore binders that were accidentally deleted after October 1, 2024. Simply access the Recycle Bin and use the 'Restore' button to recover the binder within 365 days.
Improvements to processing and reviewing journals
With this update, you can now create and preview journals against an account in the trial balance without navigating away from the trial balance page.
Simply right-click on the account balance you want to create a journal for, and in the appropriate period column, and click 'Add Journal.
A new slideout will be displayed on the page for you to add a new journal against that account.
To review journals that have been added against a specific account, if you have the Adjustments column displayed, simply click on any of the adjustment amounts (in blue font) to view the journals slideout. This will then display all journals that have been added for that account.
Profit Reconciliation Report
Another item that has been highly requested by our users: Profit Reconciliation Report. This report can be used to explain how the accountant has arrived at the final profit or loss amount from the client's amount. Our report includes all journals that relate to a profit or loss account (excluding income tax expense adjustments).
Note: The Profit or Loss amounts in this report are before tax, so these amounts may not match the profit or loss amounts in the Trial Balance.
This report can be accessed from Journals -> Reports -> Profit Reconciliation. If you have the Adjustments column visible, you can click on the adjustment amount for total Profit (in the Profit and Loss view), or the adjustment amount for the Current Earnings system account to view the Profit Reconciliation report.
Note: The new Journals slideout and Profit Reconciliation report are not available for binders connected to Active Ledger & Reporting. We are looking to include this functionality in the future.
Export Trial Balance directly into binder
While working in the Excel binder, you can now directly export any Trial Balance section directly as a worksheet into the binder. Simply right-click anywhere within the Trial Balance and click on 'Export to worksheet':
The worksheet will be inserted towards the start of the binder with a date stamp so that you know when this worksheet was inserted. This export function will take note of the selected filter in the Trial Balance (All/Assets/Liabilities/Equity/Balance Sheet/Profit and Loss) and export accordingly.
You can then add this worksheet as a record into the index via the 'Link to Existing Sheet' option in the 'Add Record' window.
Note: This trial balance worksheet does not update automatically.
Added ability to bulk send invites to users in the Admin Centre
As part of our continuous improvements, we have added improvements to streamline the user management process by adding a ‘bulk send invite’ feature.
Now from the User’s page in the Admin Centre, you can select multiple users at once by ticking the checkboxes for each user and send an invite to all of them with a single click of the ‘Bulk Send Invite’ button.
Other updates
Here are the other updates we have released this month:
Firm administrators can now set firm preferences for account swinging defaults - this will impact new binders only. Navigate to Workpapers Admin -> Preferences to select the preferred behaviour.
As Xero has a ten-character limit on account numbers, we have now disabled posting journals that include new accounts with account numbers of more than ten characters.
MYOB accounts are now imported into a binder in numerical order based on the account numbers.
August 2024 Release
New Features and Improvements
Analytical Review
As part of the normal process of preparing the financials for clients, accountants often need to perform a deeper analysis of certain accounts. To assist with this process, we have released a number of improvements:
1. Default Index Columns
Firm administrators can now create default sets of columns for different binder types. For example, the Accounts and Tax binder can be set to include the variance and percentage of sales calculation columns by default so that the preparers do not need to add these columns each time a binder is created manually. These calculations are useful for identifying accounts that have a substantial variance compared to the previous period.
Navigate to Workpapers Admin -> Binder Settings -> Binder Defaults to create different default column sets for different binder types for the firm.
Note: Any new default column sets will only be displayed in new binders created subsequently.
2. L06 General Ledger Analysis
After identifying accounts where additional work is required to analyse the transactions, try out our new L06 General Ledger Analysis to easily identify the reasons for variances. While similar to our existing L05 General Ledger workpaper, the L06 workpaper also includes the general ledger transaction for the previous period, as well as an easy-to-understand summary table with which you can group transactions to easily compare.
You can choose to insert the new L06 workpaper in the same 'quick-insert' way you would insert the existing L05 workpaper. Firm administrators will need to opt-in for the 'quick-insert' method by navigating to Workpapers Admin -> Firm -> Preferences and ticking the Enable General Ledger Analysis quick insert checkbox.
Quick-insert:
3. Date selector for data imports
Once you have inserted the L06 General Ledger Analysis workpaper, you will notice that it also includes an 'Import Date Range' field in the settings area. With this release, we have introduced the ability to easily customise the date range for which you want to run the data import. Besides the L06 workpaper, we will roll this new feature out to the H50 Integrated Client Account and C50 Income Tax Account workpapers in our next release. Stay tuned!
Firm-level audit logs
Practice administrators now have access to firm-level audit logs, which track when the following have been created or deleted:
Client groups
Clients
Binders
To access these logs, navigate to Admin Centre -> Firm -> Audit Log.
Note: these events will only be tracked from this release (29 August 2024) onwards.
Workpapers Preferences
Firm administrators, take note: we now have a dedicated page for Workpapers preferences (settings). Navigate to Workpapers Admin -> Manage Firm -> Preferences. As we continue to build out more customisation options for practices, this page will house these preferences.
Index Improvements
When no records are added to the account, the "Add Record" button appears more prominently. If there are recommendations, they will also be displayed here (represented by the 'star' icon).
Manage Reconciliation Fields
You can now manage your reconciliation fields easily by using the 'Manage Reconciliation Fields' button.
Notes & Queries Improvements
We've added a new feature that displays the account name and record name for notes & queries, making it easy for you to see which account/record the note is for. Plus, the edit button is now visible all the time.
Draft Watermark
You can now add Draft watermarks to your financial statements. With this update, you can now clearly label and distinguish draft versions of your reports, ensuring clear communication and avoiding any confusion. Enjoy professional and polished presentations as you confidently share your work, knowing that draft status is clearly indicated with customizable watermarks.
July 2024 Release
New Features and Improvements
New way to add and preview Attachments
We have now consolidated all attachments that relate to an account or record into a new Attachments section. You can quickly add attachment(s) by clicking on the 'add supporting document' button, and preview attachment(s) by clicking on 'View supporting document'.
When there are multiple attachments, you can simply navigate through this list in the new attachments window to preview each one. If you are using our integration with HowNowX or FYI Docs, you will be navigated to the document's location in either software.
Changes to creating binder at client group level
To prevent any accidental creation of binders for client groups (instead of the actual client), there are now only two ways to create one:
1. If a binder has not been created for the client group, click on the grey Workpapers icon in the Home screen for that group to create a group binder.
2. If binders already exist for the client group, then navigate to the Workpapers tab, and ensure the correct client group is selected in the client filter at the top of the screen. Then click on "+ New Binder" to create a binder for that client group.
Introducing sticky filters!
We've implemented user-requested improvements so that the filters you set on the client, binder, and ledger screens will be remembered until you clear or update them, saving you time and clicks.
New Features and Improvements
We have released the following updates:
New IR6B Trust Disclosure - Beneficiaries Current Account Template: now available for use in Reports.
Accounting for private use of Fixed Assets: Users can now view and enter the private use percentage for accounting purposes in the depreciation section of fixed assets. The private use amounts can be viewed in the Accounting Fixed Assets report.
June 2024 Release
New Features and Improvements
Binder Export Improvements
We've enhanced the binder export process to deliver a more user-friendly experience! Binders can now be exported directly as a single PDF file, eliminating the need for ZIP folders in most cases.
This simplifies sharing and storing your binders, making them readily accessible for reference.
ZIP exports will still be used in the following instances:
Large Binder Size: For binders exceeding 50MB in total size, a ZIP file will be used for efficient handling.
Additional Options Selected: If you choose to include supplementary files during export, such as the binder workbook in Excel format or individual supporting documents, a ZIP file will be generated to accommodate these additional resources.
Bulk Status Update Feature
This new feature allows you to effortlessly update the status of multiple accounts at once. Say goodbye to repetitive individual updates and hello to a much faster workflow.
Here's how it works:
Select the accounts you want to update by checking the boxes next to them.
Click the "Bulk Edit" button.
Choose the desired status from the available options.
That's it! The statuses of your selected accounts will be updated in a single action, saving you valuable time and effort.
Swinging Accounts
In response to popular demand, we are very pleased to announce that you can now set accounts to swing between different classifications depending on whether the account balance is in negative.
For example, if the entity has a Directors Loan Account with a credit balance (liability) in 2023, but in the 2024 financial year it has a debit balance (asset), the Directors Loan Account will swing from being a liability in the 2023 financial year to being an asset in the 2024 financial year (see example in the screenshot below). This ensures the account is represented as a positive figure on the page.
This is also particularly useful in ensuring that the Financial Information section of the company tax return workpaper captures the accurate financial position of the company.
You can now choose to swing accounts:
Swing entire row based on primary column behaviour OR
Swing each column's balance independently
To learn more about how this works and how to set it up, please refer to our article: How to set up and use account swinging.
NB: If you are connecting a binder to a dataset in Active Ledger & Reporting, the binder will import the account swinging configuration from Active Ledger. Any further changes to the swinging properties will need to be configured in Active Ledger.
New Features and Improvements
Fixed Assets Improvements
Our team has been busy incorporating your feedback into our Fixed Assets module to cater to various scenarios you may encounter.
Here's what we have delivered in June 2024:
Ability to record cost on acquisition date: You can now choose to recognise the cost of an asset from the acquisition date instead of from commencement date. Simply tick the 'Recognise from Acquisition' checkbox in the Purchase section of an asset after entering a commencement date.
Accounting for private use (Gain/loss on sale and depreciation): When an asset involves an element of private use, the automated journals will journal the private use percentage to separate depreciation and gain/loss on sale accounts. This will save you the time in needing to take up a manual adjustment.
Ability to import un-deducted decline in value: You can now import the un-deducted decline in value for any asset when running the bulk import function.
Deactivate depreciation in the year of disposal: In line with the Income Tax Act 2007 EE 11(1), you can now choose if depreciation should not be calculated in the year when an asset is disposed.
Recording Capital Gains or Losses: When an asset is disposed, you can now choose to recognise the gains or losses as capital. Simply select the Capital Gain/Loss checkbox in the Disposal section of an asset, and the system will recognise this gain or loss in the separate Capital Gain column in the reports as well as post to the nominated
May 2024 Release
New Features and Improvements
Binder Export Improvements
We've heard your feedback and made significant improvements to the Binder Export process!
Here's what's new:
Simplified Exports: By default, all your supporting documents and linked worksheets are now conveniently bundled into a single, easy-to-manage PDF. We've also reorganized the export structure for a more intuitive user experience.
Granular Control: Need more customization? No problem! You can now choose to exclude specific items from the export, like audit logs, notes, or journals.
Individual Exports: Want more flexibility? You now have the option to export your Excel Workbook and supporting documents as separate files.
These enhancements give you greater control and efficiency when exporting your Binder information.
Quick-Add New Row in Excel
You can now easily add a new row to a table while retaining existing formulas. Simply right-click on the last row, go to the ‘Active Workpapers’ option, and click on ‘Insert Row Below’. Or, you can use the keyboard shortcut ‘Ctrl+Alt+i’ to quickly insert a row below the active cell.
Compare and Reinstate Previous Data Imports
We're excited to announce a powerful new feature that allows you to effortlessly review and reinstate prior import runs. With this update, you can now compare and reinstate past imports whenever necessary, giving you greater control and flexibility over your data management.
To find this feature, navigate to the 'Journals' page in the binder, and navigate to the 'Import Runs' tab. Here you can find all past import runs, and you can choose either to Reinstate or Compare the data.
Binder Top Banner Makeover: More Room for What Matters!Have you noticed a change in the binder page? We listened to your feedback and made some improvements to the top banner to enhance your experience.
What's New?
We've streamlined the banner by consolidating information that was previously spread across multiple rows. This creates a cleaner look and, more importantly, frees up valuable space within the Trial Balance section. Now you can view more accounts at a glance, making it easier to navigate and analyse your financial data. We hope this update makes working with your binders a smoother experience!
Worksheet Improvements and Bug Fixes:
H35 Provisions Tax
We fixed a bug in which the Income Tax Expense from the C20 Tax Reconciliation worksheet was coming in as a negative.
Copy & Paste from Excel into Report Builder
If you have content from Excel that you wish to add to the financial reports in Active Ledger & Reporting, you can now simply copy and paste it in! For example, you can customise the content in the tax reconciliation section of the report, and copy & paste in the tax rec data from Excel.
Automated Tax Calculation in Reports
We have now added a new ‘Applicable Tax Rate’ field in Datasets, which drives the tax calculations in the Reports.
Ability to Customise Column Widths in Report Templates
Due to popular requests, we have released a feature where you can now, at the firm level, customise the width of the columns in your financial reports. Firm administrators can do this by going to Ledger Admin -> Styles and either select an existing style or create a new style. You can now see a new section called 'Standard Column Widths' in which you can choose what the column widths should be in your reports.
