Excel templates with macros needed for KRA returns by corporate entities in Kenya

Kenya has been going digital in various government departments and Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has been at the fore-front in digitizing it's information management. Over the last 5 years KRA has implemented an on-line system for making various tax returns with the aim of eliminating paper based records for tax returns. The system that was introduced 5 years ago is ITMS that is now being replaced by iTax. The greatest value add in iTax system is that, the tax payer is able to view his/her ledger that shows ALL transactions done with KRA. This will make it easy for tax payers to discuss their tax matters with KRA without having conflicting details regarding the tax payers records at KRA.

The purpose of this blog is not to give you all the details regarding the iTax system, but is to highlight to Kenyan tax payers the need to enhance their Excel skills if they are to be able to use the system well. The iTax system does not allow users to work on-line when inputting details in their tax returns forms. iTax has been designed to only accept data that has been inputted off-line in a standard Excel template that has macros to generate the zipped upload file. To fill in some of the data into the Excel template, the user can import csv files into the Excel template so as to reduce time taken typing data into the template. The template does not allow users to copy or paste data within it, and therefore it has given options for users to import data from csv files.

This therefore means that corporate tax payers will have to design their own templates that link to their operational systems and extracts data for tax returns and then creates csv files to be used when importing data into the iTax template. This will mean that initially corporate organizations need to develop various templates with macros that ensure the process of loading data into the iTax templates is as efficient and error free as possible. Excel experts are going to be of great assistance in this process. Sunesis consulting is already working on templates with macros that can be used for this purpose and is ready to work with organizations to implement their templates.

Annual Report and Financial Statements

One headache that every finance team member has the period when they need to create the financial statements for the year. This is when any misposted or wrongly allocated funds come to haunt them. This is the period when the Auditors become the arch-enemies of the finance team. This is the period when the statement "not balancing" is synonymous with "you are dead". This is the period when having a sleeping bag in the office is a necessity for the finance team.

Some of the causes of the stress involved in the production of finance statements can be reduced or eliminated by ensuring data from the financial system to Excel (where the financial statements are prepared) is transfered with as little manipulation by staff as possible. One solution we have offered a number of organizations for this purpose is creating an Excel template that uses an import of the TB from the financial system to give the P&L, Balance sheet and Cash flow by using formulas linking these reports to the TB.

The value add for this template to the process is that any changes made during the audit process can quickly be included into the final accounts without having to lose "balance" in the balance sheet.

Have a great new year and an easy reporting process.

Advanced LOOKUP in Excel

INDEX and MATCH are two very powerful functions for performing advanced lookups in Excel. Using VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP or LOOKUP, you are restricted to performing lookups on either a column range or row range and NOT BOTH in the same formula. This can be quite restrictive especially when the value to be looked up is dependant on using both column range and row range simultaneously.

INDEX and MATCH can perform lookups where the other lookup functions either cannot work or can work by creating a very complex formula. For example if your data layout is in the form of a matrix (x cols by y rows) and you need to extract certain selected values based on their col position and row position, then the above two functions will perform this process in one straight forward formula.

Dashboard Tools

Any organization that has an MIS would most probably want to make it easy for the top management to get reports structured so as to show performance trends based on their KPIs. There are many tools that help produce such reports using various illustrations, the oldest and most broadly used being MS Excel. For organizations with large information systems producing 100,000+ transactions, using Excel as their core dashboard would be pushing it too far. "Dundas Dashboards" is a tool that makes it quite a breeze to meet the dashboard needs for such an organization.

Dundas is a server based dashboard tool that integrates well with most large databases (Oracle, SQL, MY SQL) and also allows for integration with smaller datasources like MS Access, Excel, Text files ect. This implies that with this tool you will not only have a dashboard system that links to your monstrous databases, but you will have the flexibility of integrating your transactional data from the large systems with other metrics that you have collected using the good old Excel spreadsheet.

For example to create a dashboard that shows trends in your sales and expenses and relating this to trends in macro economic parameters like GDP and inflation is not only possible but will always be upto date through connections to your data sources. Dundas also gives you lots of different illustration objects that make the dashboard not only look appealing but also easy to inteprete for top management team that is always short of time.

Check this tool out in their website - http://www.dundas.com/dashboard/

The dashboard tool for Excel lovers

Xcelsius is a very powerful tool for developing dashboards using an embeded Excel spreadsheet. You can also link it directly to other external data sources from databases or other spreadsheets.
This tool enables the user to export their dashboard to pdf, flash, powerpoint etc.

The feature that I believe makes this dashboard tool a great one is that the final product in flash uses the power of flash files quite well. That is the dashboard graphics are very high quality and also incorporates the movie style available in flash files. You can actually create a movie showing the trend movements that loops continually over a period you have specified.

This tool is a must have for dashboard ethusiasts that love Excel.

Two axis graph in Excel 2003 and 2007

Graphs are a very useful means of enabling interpretation of data. Sometimes you may need a graph that shows trends of Volumes and Market Share. The disparity of values in Volumes and Market Share makes it very difficult to have both trends based on one y-axis in a graph. This is usually solved by introducing another y-axis in the graph such that volume has its own axis with larger values while market share has another y-axis with smaller values. In Excel 2003 creating a two axis graph was restrictive in terms of the series to be placed on which axis, this was dependant on the arrangement of the data. In Excel 2007 their is great flexibility in how you decide what data series to put in which axis. This means that you do not have to worry about how you arrange the data series in order to place it in a particular axis.

Creating Performance Dashboards in Excel

I have met many managers having various Excel reports that they need to analyse periodically so as to make decisions on the way forward to improve performance. This can be quite a laborious process depending on how it is performed. Excel is a very powerful tool and is able to make this process more efficient. With the use of micro-graphs and conditional formatting, it is possible to develope a one pager that gives the manager a comprehensive view of the key performance indicators. This can easily be placed into powerpoint for a presentation.