|
|
Ratios Plus Overview
Ratios
Plus, or R+ for short, is a tool to help create and maintain financial ratios
and accounting data for clients and companies that you
will setup in the program. Ratios Plus will create Activity, Liquidity,
Profitability, and Debt and Capital Structure ratios from accounting data that
you provide. In addition, you can select as many (or as few) ratios for which to
enter and print data based on the needs of your company. Once you enter the
accounting data for your company, you can then print reports to compare specific
ratios or accounting data over time. You can even create your own customized
ratios using the User-defined Ratio Wizard. Finally, you can chart ratio and
accounting data with an easy-to-use, multifunctional Chart Wizard. Compare
Ratios Plus to any other financial ratio software and you will see that Ratios
Plus is far more flexible, inexpensive, and easy-to-use.
Features
The
following are some of the most significant features you will find in
Ratios Plus:
-
Create and maintain accounting
data and ratios for an unlimited
number of companies
-
For each company or client
enter data for as many as 10 prior years for comparison and charting
-
Compare and print ratio and
accounting data on an annual basis for up to 10 years
-
Compare and print monthly
ratio and accounting data on a monthly basis for up to 10 years
-
Print detailed, comparative,
or summary information for any ratios
-
Graph ratios and accounting
data using a Chart Wizard
Ratios
Plus will become indispensable as you begin to utilize the many customizable
features for your clients. You can quickly enter accounting information to chart
a specific ratio over time or print a detailed information report to compare
ratios for up to 10 years. Monthly information can also be easily compared and
charted to discover trends in sales, accounts receivable, current liabilities,
etc. within a given year. Data can be entered on a monthly or annual basis for
up to 10 prior years. Printing and charting the results is also easy and
flexible. Once
you see how easy and intuitive Ratios Plus is to use, you will never use
another financial ratio program.
Support
A+
includes phone and email support. Updates are provided via download until
the next major release. Major releases are scheduled annually to add new
features and options. A tutorial is provided to get you up and running
quickly.
If you have
specific questions about a feature or need additional information, we encourage
you to call us at 402.861.8800 or email us at
info@proware-cpa.com.
Top
Creating a New Client File
High Res. (1024 x 768) 
Low Res. (800 x 600)
To create a new company data file in Ratios Plus
(or RP for short), click the “Client Maintenance” button on the
toolbar at the Main Menu or simply select the “Clients” option
from the File Menu. The “Clients” screen displays a list of the
companies that currently exist for RP with a series of buttons
along the bottom of the screen that allow many options for
client maintenance. Click the “Add” button to add a new company.
When you click the “Add” button, RP opens the
“Details” page where you can enter the details for your client.
Most of this information can be filled-in or changed at a later
date. For our example, we will simply set up a sample company.
The client number for our company is 0101 and the name of the
company is XYZ Company, Inc. If necessary, you can always delete
this company when you are through running this tutorial. In
addition to basic details about the company that you can fill
in, there is another tabbed page that consists of “Notes” which
you can attach for the company you are creating. Notes can be
added for any company and appended at any time. For this
tutorial we will not be adding any notes at this time. After
entering the information for our company, we click “Save” to
save the new company.
Once we click “Save” to save the new company, we
can either click “Select” to select the new company or we can
click on the “List View” tab to see a complete listing of the
companies we have available for selection in Ratios Plus. To
select a client from the “List View” screen, highlight the one
you want to work on by clicking the “Select” button at the
bottom of the screen or simply double-click on the company to
select it. At this point, we are now ready to enter account
information in order to create ratio reports for our client.
An alternative to creating a new client by
filling out the information in the “Details” page, you will note
that there is also an “Import” button which will automatically
import client information from other Pro-Ware programs such as
“Accountant’s Helper”, “Client Communique’” or “Amortization
Plus”. Once the Import wizard starts, we simply select the data
folder which contains data files from any of the 3 programs
previously mentioned to import client data files.
In addition to creating, editing, and importing
client files, the Client Maintenance screen is also useful for
deleting client files no longer needed or to print a report
listing all clients we currently have listed in Ratios Plus.
Backing Up and Restoring Files
High Res. (1024 x 768)
Low Res. (800 x 600)
To Backup a company data file in Ratios Plus (or
RP for short), click the File Menu to drop the File Menu down
and then click “Options” and then “Backup/Restore” to enter the
Backup/Restore wizard. Note, you can also click the toolbar
button for the Backup/Restore to start the Backup/Restore
wizard.
On the first screen of the wizard, we will make
the choice of whether to Backup or Restore data files. Initially
we want to make a backup of our files, so we select the “Backup
Data Files” option and click “Next”. Now we select the
appropriate backup option. In RP there are 2 types of backups we
can make. The first is a traditional backup which will compress
our data files and archive them in case we need to restore these
client files at a later date due to a hard drive crash,
accidental file deletion, etc.
The other option in backing up files is to copy
data files to a different location. This option (similar to the
“Save As…” option in Excel or Word) is useful if you want to
copy a client file to your laptop’s local drive, an external
hard drive, thumb drive, or Zip drive to work on at home or at
the client’s location. For our first backup, we choose the “Zip
Files” option to create a compressed backup and click “Next” to
continue.
On the next screen we are asked to provide a
location for the backup file. To do this, click on the ellipses
(or 3 dots) to the right of the backup location. From here we
can navigate to the folder where we want to create our backup or
create a new folder in which to store our backup file. For this
tutorial, we are going to create an “RP_Backup” folder on our
local C drive to store our backed up RP files. Once we have the
correct location (in this case we choose our C drive) we then
click the button “Create New Folder” to create a folder called “RP_Backup”.
After selecting the folder, click “OK” and we will see our
folder displayed as the location where our backup files will be
stored. Note the 2 additional options you have if you choose a
removable drive in which to store your backups. You can either
erase the contents or format your removable drive through this
wizard. However, if you are selecting these options, proceed
with caution because either of these options will completely
erase the contents of your drive prior to making the backup
file. Once we have the correct location, we click “Next” to
proceed. On this screen we either accept the default name which
Ratios Plus has given us or change it to something more
meaningful. In this case, we accept the default name that RP has
given us and click “Next” to proceed. On the final screen of the
Backup wizard, we are shown a summary of the backup options
which identifies the location and name of our backup file. If
this is correct, we click “Finish” to complete the backup or
click “Back” to change the name or location. Once we click
“Finish”, the backup file is created and a message is shown
telling us that the backup file was created. Click “OK” to
return to RP’s main menu.
To demonstrate copying a file, we choose the
Backup/Restore wizard button once again, make sure the “Backup”
option is selected and click “Next” to proceed. This time we
select the “Copy files to another location” option and click
“Next” to proceed. We will use the previous folder which we have
just created to copy our data files. So we first click the
ellipses button to the right of the location shown and then
click the local C drive and the “RP_Backup” folder we just
created. Once we have the correct location, we click “Next” to
proceed. If the location shown where our files will be copied is
correct, we click “Finish” to complete the copy process. Upon
completion, we can then click “OK” to return to our main menu
once again.
To restore a data file using the Backup/Restore
wizard in RP, we click the button for the “Backup/Restore”
wizard, click the “Restore” option and then click “Next” to
proceed. On the next screen, we are given 2 options. We can
either restore a previously backed up, zipped file or we can
choose to copy a previously copied file to our current default
data folder. In this example, we are going to restore the backup
file we created in the first part of this tutorial. So we make
sure the “ZIPPED File” option is selected and click “Next” to
proceed. Now we click the ellipses to find our backup file and
navigate to the location. Once the correct location is
identified, we can then select the zipped file. We select the
file created earlier, click “OK” and then click “Next” to
proceed. If the location and zipped file are correct, we then
click “Finish” and “OK” after the restore is complete to return
to the main menu.
Top
Configuration Wizard
High Res. (1024 x 768)
Low Res. (800 x 600)
This video will take you through the various
settings that can be changed using the Configuration Wizard in
Ratios Plus (or RP for short). To access the Configuration
Wizard, select it from the File Menu.
On the first screen of the wizard, we are shown
some system settings that can be changed. We could change the
size of screens which is defaulted to 100%. If you would like to
make the screen sizes larger for easier reading or smaller to
take up less space, you can change the default to something less
than or greater than 100%. If you are running a comfortable
resolution however, 100% will probably serve as the best choice.
Additionally, you can change the default data location. If the
location shown is not where you want your data files, you can
change the location by clicking the ellipses and navigating to
another location. Once you are finished, your settings are
automatically saved. In addition, you can change the behavior of
RP when printing reports. RP will automatically return to either
the report specification screen or the main menu after printing
reports and will allow you to change your printer every time you
print a report or print to your default printer without
prompting you first. Change these options only if you do not
want the default behavior of RP.
To select other configuration options, click on
the appropriate item on the left of the screen. The first are
system settings which we have already looked at and the next
option will change the program’s behavior regarding the default
ratios we will be using. On the ratios default screen we can
select specific ratios to enter information for and display. By
default, all of the ratios are enabled. To disable certain
ratios in RP, simply uncheck the appropriate box.
The “Backup Options” page allows you to enter a
different source location which RP will use to find previous
backups and a destination location which RP uses when making
its backups. This information can be changed at any time and you
can always select various source and destination locations while
performing backups and restoring files.
Finally, the “Email Configuration” option allows
you to input up to 3 different email addresses from which to
send correspondence from AP. Enter a description of the location
and then click the ellipses to the right of the SMTP address and
enter the appropriate information here. It is not necessary to
enter your SMTP address and you can have your network
administrator enter it a later time if you do not know the
specifics of your email address at this time.
Finally when you are finished changing your
configuration settings, click “Finish” to automatically save
these settings and return you to RP’s main menu.
Top
Adding and Editing Financial Data
High Res. (1024 x 768)
Low Res. (800 x 600)
This video will take you through the steps
necessary to add or edit client financial information in Ratios
Plus, or RP, for short.
To simplify our example, we will first change the
active ratios that we will be calculating. By doing this, we can
alter the amount of information that Ratios Plus needs to
calculate the corresponding ratios. To change the active ratios,
go to the Ratios menu and choose “Select Active Ratios” from the
dropdown menu. Uncheck the boxes for “Activity Analysis Ratios”,
“Debt and Capital Structure Ratios”, “Profitability Ratios”, and
“User-Defined Ratios”. This will leave only the “Liquidity
Ratios” selected which, in turn, requires us to only input the
financial data needed to calculate these ratios. Once we have
made these selections we click “OK” to return to the main
screen.
To add or edit financial information, click the
Financial Data menu option and then select Add/Edit Data or
click the Add/Edit Financial Data button on the toolbar. Upon
clicking this option we see an add/edit screen that will allow
us to input up to 10 years of financial data for our client.
First, we choose the year to enter our data for and then choose
whether to enter annual or monthly information by clicking the
dropdown. For this example, we will be entering annual
information so we select the “Annual” information dropdown.
Next, we click “Edit” to allow us to enter the various amounts
from our balance sheet and income statement.
Since we selected only the liquidity ratios, we
only need to enter information for fields which have a red
asterisk. These fields are required to calculate the ratios we
have selected. We can enter more information, if desired,
however we need only the following: Cash $142,426.34, Inventory
$111,175.86, Current Assets $386,861.08, Current Liabilities
$17,330.61, and Total Liabilities $146,787.39. Once we have
entered these amounts we click “Save” to save this financial
information. Note that there are several bolded fields which are
actually calculated fields. Anytime you add or edit information,
Ratios Plus calculates the numbers that it can from the
available data. You can always override the calculations if you
like and in this instance, they are not required for the ratios
we have selected, so we can ignore them. After clicking “Save”
you will also be able to print the financial statement items so
you can see at a glance if there is any missing or incomplete
information.
At this point, we are ready to print a report of
our liquidity ratios for 2006. To do this we go to the Reports
Menu and select the “Ratios Detail” report. Make sure that the
year is set correctly for 2006 and then select “Preview” to see
the contents of the report. You can print the report by clicking
on the printer icon in the Preview screen or the exit button to
close the report preview.
Top
Printing Reports and Graphing Data
High Res. (1024 x 768)
Low Res. (800 x 600)
This video will take you through the steps
necessary to print a client listing, various ratio reports, and
chart ratio information through RP’s Chart Wizard.
All of the reports in Ratios Plus, or RP, can be
found under the Reports Menu. The first report on the menu is a
Client Listing report. This report will print a list of all
clients that are currently setup in RP. To print this report, we
click the Client Listing option under the Reports Menu. You can
also print this listing for just selected clients by clicking
the “Selected Clients” option. When we select this option, we
are shown a grid that contains all clients currently entered in
RP. From here, we can select just those clients we want to
print. In this case, we click the “Mark All” button to mark all
of the clients to be printed. In addition, we want to see the
entire detail of each company set up in RP, so we set the Detail
to “Yes” to show us detail. We will be printing in portrait
format, so we do not check the “Landscape” option and finally,
we have the option of printing this report to file in a
multitude of formats. We just want to preview and print this
report, so we click “Preview” to see what the report looks like.
Then, if the report looks correct, we click the printer icon to
print this report to the printer.
To print ratio information, we can select any of
the ratio reports listed in the Reports Menu. The first report
is the ratio information report which lists all of the ratios we
currently have selected and shows the financial statement
components that make up the ratio. The next report is the Ratio
Details report which shows the actual ratio value for any
specific period or multiple periods if financial data has been
entered for multiple periods. The next report, the Ratio
Comparison report will compare a ratio among multiple periods.
It can be run for either annual or monthly and will compare
multiple periods if the financial information has been entered
for the client. The Ratio Data report will display information
currently entered for the client. The report also shows items
that may be incomplete or missing and will assist you in
determining what financial data is required to determine the
ratio values for the ratios you have selected for a particular
client. It is also useful in comparing raw financial data from
one period to the next in order to determine trends or
inconsistencies. As with any report in Ratios Plus, you can
print this report in portrait or landscape, to your printer, to
a file or display it on the screen.
In addition to the reports found under the
Reports Menu, you can also print the results of reports to a
graph using RP’s Chart Wizard found under the Reports Menu.
First, you can select either ratio data or financial data to
graph. For our example, we will select financial data and select
current assets and current liabilities to compare. If we had
multiple years' worth of data to display, we could compare the
results by period for up to 10 years. Once we make the
selections for the data to display, we can choose the type of
graph, the graph’s theme, and even the legend display of the
graph. If we need to change any aspect of the data displayed on
the graph, we need only click the “Back” button to return to the
previous screens where we selected our data.
Top
Summary
Ratios
Plus makes printing and comparing financial data for multiple
periods very easy. In addition, the number of ratios supported
is nearly limitless with the ability to add ratios of your own
via the User-Defined Ratio Wizard which allows you to enter up
to 10 customizable ratios formulas. Ratios Plus will even tell
you what financial information you need to print any ratios you
choose. With RP's graphing capability you can compare financial
data, compare multiple periods, and compare ratio results. The
ease of use and flexibility built into RP will make ratio
analysis and financial data analysis a real time-saver for your
company.
We encourage you to
provide us with your feedback. There is an option in the Help menu that will
allow you to fax or email your comments to our support staff. Many of the new
features we add are a direct result of feedback from our users.
Finally, since support is
included with the cost of your software (and upgrades), help is never more than
an email or phone call away. We look forward to meeting your continuing needs.
Top
If you wish to ask specific questions or request additional
information, e-mail us at info@proware-cpa.com. |
|
