PlanGuru Analytics Full Demo

Hello, and thank you for joining me today. My name is Daniel Wiese, and I am a senior account executive here at PlanGuru. And I am very excited to be taking you through how PlanGuru connects to PlanGuru Analytics. We will be walking through some examples how to extract some valuable insights from your PlanGuru model through creating dashboards and reports. And the beautiful thing about PlanGuru Analytics, powered by Reach reporting, is that it is the perfect mix of automation and customization. There are a ton of out of the box, ready to go templates to choose from, but they can also be tailored to your specific needs with ease. But before we dive into that, we are gonna start in PlanGuru. PlanGuru modeling tool, specifically, to get you familiar with the dataset we will be eventually, pushing over to PlanGuru Analytics. And what we're looking at here is a sample company, that represents a fast food franchisee with multiple locations. Here's the company name. You know, if you're doing this internally for your own company, you just see one company name there. Business advisors, this would be your list of clients you're seeing here. This is the name of the projects, and this is the list of my business units. I am doing this for three locations, and I'm also consolidating them. Right? So we've built out financial models for all three locations, consolidated them together automatically, and we'll be pushing all of that data to PlanGuru Analytics. And currently, we are in location one. And all of these locations, we have already imported actuals, you know, from QuickBooks. We've built out a budget that we locked down and saved. We've also created a rolling forecast. And we've already gone through and selected projection methods for, you know, all our accounts here, including creating some, you know, custom calculations, underlying assumptions that drive things like, you know, revenue or expenses like payroll. And we have also created assumptions tabs, like this one here called franchise KPIs that include industry specific metrics we eventually wanna report on. So keep an eye on these. We will be referencing them later. Things like sales per labor hour, odds percentage, food waste percentage, accurate orders percentage, etcetera. And last but not least, it is vitally important to talk about how data is moving from the PlanGuru modeling tool to PlanGuru Analytics. Any changes that are made to the model, whether that's importing a new month's worth of actuals, you know, adjusting the forecast, and you want those changes to reflect in analytics, you must click click this sync data button here. Right? For those who are who are familiar with this PlanGuru, you know, with this button before when creating multiple budgets that consolidate, because this is how consolidations grab the underlying data. Right? You're clicking that button for the consolidation to go grab the underlying business unit's data. So now this button serves two purposes. Not only does it help you consolidate data, but it also pushes data to PlanGuru Analytics. And it actually shows a time stamp for the last time data has been synced. Okay. So now that we have covered the foundation, let's hop over to PlanGuru Analytics and connect this company. When you have added PlanGuru Analytics to your account already, you're gonna access it by going to report and clicking this button right here. If you haven't added it to your PlanGuru account yet, you will see a a big button here that allows you to, you know, click it and add it. It'll give you some pricing and ask you to, you know, confirm before adding it to your account. We've already added it here, so we're gonna click that. A second tab will appear, and it'll ask me to sign in. It's the same exact email and password you use for your PlanGuru accounts. So we're gonna go ahead and log in, And this will take me to my PlanGuru Analytics workspace. Here is where you can add your company, again, if you're doing this internally, or add client companies if you are a business adviser. And to add a company, we are going to click this add company button here up at the top right. We're gonna connect to PlanGuru. We're gonna log in one more time. And then this is the company list. Now, again, if you're using this internally, you're just gonna see your one company. If you're using this as a business adviser, you're gonna see your list of clients. We're gonna select one of those companies here, in this case, Franchise Fast Food. Next. And then the last thing it's gonna ask you to do is choose a file business unit for fault actuals. Right? So I'm actually gonna go with, you know, location one here. And the reason why it does that is because when you're gonna go go create a report in here, right, it always has some data to reference to populate the report, whether that's a financial statement or a chart. You know, instead of just creating that chart just showing a blank result with no numbers, it'll default to whatever business unit that you're selecting here. But you can always change the data it's looking at at any time. Alright. So now that company is added to the workspace here, specifically this tutorial group. Now the next really important step, just as important as clicking the sync data button back in the modeling tool, is opening up this company for the first time and clicking the sync button here on the bottom left. This initial sync brings all of the data over for the first time and could take as much as ten minutes to load or longer. We've seen, depending on the size of your model. We've seen some pretty complex models in PlanGuru. So don't be worried if it's taking that long. That's normal. It's a great chance for you to go fill refill your coffee cup and take a nice walk around the office or go grab the mail if you're working from home. You know, it's important to stretch those legs when working a desk job. Sitting sitting is the silent killer, as they say. But we're not gonna do that because we already have another company uploaded that we can go take a look at while this one is loading. So we're gonna go back to the home page here in the tutorial group and open the demo company. And when you first open up a company, there's really two main areas we're gonna focus on here today, dashboards and reports. Now, there's some other very useful buttons in here, at the top right, the knowledge center. If you know, wanna ask some questions about some functionality, video tutorials, if wanna see some step by step examples of certain features, we even have a, a button here to change the theme from light mode to dark, whatever your reference is there. But we're gonna be focusing on dashboards and reports, specifically dashboards to start. Right? So why are dashboards important? Dashboards are real time performance snapshots. Right? Instead of digging through Excel reports, you'd see your key numbers in one place. They make financial conversations easier. They turn rows of numbers into visualizations that decision makers can absorb in seconds. Now, when you first open your company, there will be some default dashboards, as you could see already added, that range from focusing on, you know, historical data so far in the year, to budgeted and forecasted amounts, you know, cash flow projections, detailed financial statements. However, there is also a sizable library library of dashboard templates to choose from, which is fantastic for getting a head start on building the perfect dashboard for you. And each one has, you know, a short description of its purpose and the KPIs that are included if you hover your mouse over the tool tip here. But let's open up one of these dashboards and take a look. We'll open up the three way budget toolkit here. And this one specifically looks at some actual results compared to budgeted targets. And once opened, you see a bunch of these rectangles of varying sizes and shapes. Right? These rectangles are called metrics. These metrics can be things like live text that automatically updates when your data is updated from PlanGuru. Great for things like budget versus actual comparisons. They can be charts that help visualize data. Right here. They keep tables where you can include specific accounts or assumptions lines, you know, into a custom format. Great for things like executive summaries. And you also have these dividers up at the top that basically act as headers for each section. So this one's called profitability. If I scroll down, liquidity and efficiency, those are called dividers. And these metrics are completely customizable and can be reordered, resized, or reworked. So for example, if I click on this live text edits and I wanna change, you know, this gross profits to total income. Alright? I can change it to total income and click save. And it just updated that live text. I could also adjust one of these visualizations. If I click edit on this chart, a second tab appears. It presents me with the dataset up above, which I can, you know, adjust. I can apply filters, settings. I can add rows, columns with custom calculations. And then below that, we have our chart types. How do you wanna see this information portrayed? Column charts, line charts, bar chart, pie charts, etcetera. These can be further adjusted with the additional settings on the right. So if you wanna change the headers, you know, the colors of the bars, etcetera, completely customizable. And, you know, if you made some changes to these metrics that you really like and you want to apply, you know, these metrics to other dashboards and reports, maybe for other clients if you're a business adviser, you can click this button on a, on a metric, and you can save it as a templates. There we go. Save it as a template and have your own library of templates. Now, you know, when you wanted to add a metric to the dashboard and you go to templates, you can choose from, again, the vast library of rebuilt templates that Reach and PlanGuru Analytics provides or your own sets of saved templates. So now that we've established that dashboards are for monitoring everyday financials and KPIs, which is great, but what about those monthly reviews, quarterly reports, board meetings, stuff like that? Right? That brings us to reports. Reports create structure around the numbers. Right? They make sure everyone's looking at the same story with the same definitions at the same time. They show what we planned, what actually happened, and what we're gonna do about it. Right? So just like dashboards, when adding a report, you can choose from a template library, each one with its own style and focus. Again, if you hover your mouse over the tooltip, see a brief description of the template and relevant data that's included. A lot of options here. However, these are also completely customizable. So let's open up an existing report that we have here called monthly review. And here we are with the report builder here. So, you know, right off the bat, you've got your cover letter. Scroll down. You see some of these metrics that we've already applied here. And, you know, you could number one, add your company logo here. Right? You can upload an image right here. You can adjust the text in any one of these headers. Right? You can change the color, you know, of these assets to match your branding. Completely customizable here. You have the full scope of your metric library here, whether that's your own or the, you know, full library, reach templates here. And what's pretty cool is something called the scratch pad. So if you've created, you know, a page here where whether that's a section of a page, an entire page, you know, and you wanna add that to the scratch pad by clicking this button right here, that means, you know, when you're creating other reports and you want to include that page in that report without without having to rebuild it, it's as simple as clicking and dragging it over, and it will populate. So a lot of customization ability here as well. So now that we have a better understanding of how dashboards and reports work, let's apply what we've learned so far to the fast food franchise that we just connected. Hopefully, it's done loading. Let me take a look here. So fast food franchise, open, and it looks like it is done. Perfect. So the first thing we actually wanna do here is go company settings and select the default budgets. We'll go at location one here and default forecasts for the same reasons we chose default actuals. Right? So again, if you run a report, it has some default data to choose from. You could always change it. Account numbers, we wanna enable because we're using account numbers. Reporting basis, we'll stick with accrual. So those are really the only settings we need to adjust here and click save. Alright. So now let's go ahead and open up, you know, one of these default dashboards. Let's choose one of the pre built ones here. How about year to date advisory with EBITDA? This one looks at actual results up until the current month. And we have some some nice stuff in here, like profitability charts up at the top here in dollar amounts and percentages. We have net cash flow. Right? For the last twelve months, we could see, you know, which months we spent a lot of money. Cash balance for the last twelve months with an average here showing as well. But let's add some additional metrics here. Right? Remember those franchise specific KPIs I referred to earlier? You know, that stuff right here? We're gonna add a couple of these because they're good, you know, indicators of performance. So let's add sales per labor hour and something like accurate orders percentage. So we're gonna go to add metric. We're gonna do a live text. We'll do an actual verse comparison. We'll do nonfinancial franchise KPIs. We'll start with sales per labor hour. We'll stick with the date range of last month comparing to the previous period, so the month before that. We can change some of these additional settings because we got some decimals here we wanna use. Perfect. Click add. Once we like the preview, which is shown at the bottom here, we'll click add. That adds that live text. So again, it's a live text. So if I make changes to PlanGuru model, it would update here as well. And we'll add one more for good measure. Actual comparison, nonfinancial. We'll do accurate orders percentage, stick with the same date ranges, and this one's actually gonna be a percentage. Go with some it looks like we don't need decimals there. Click add. Right? And I can continue to add these. Right? I probably fill out the rest of this row here. And again, if you have just crafted dashboard of your dreams, right, and you wanna share it with the world, you can save it as a template. Right? And have your own library of dashboard templates. This is massive for our business advisers in the room because it allows you to create your own template library and really go after clients in a specific industry vertical. So scale quickly, you know, repurpose those templates, you know, while giving your clients meaningful insights in minutes. So now that we've adjusted a dashboard, let's quick hop over to report and make some tweaks there. So we'll go to reports, add templates. We'll go with key numbers, add reports. Go ahead and open this up. Alright. So right off the bat, we got our cover letter. Again, you can update this with your colors and logo. We have some nice metrics right at the top, total income, bank accounts, etcetera, all populating automatically. Some nice visualizations. But maybe I wanna add something, you know, at the bottom of that's a little bit more detailed compared to what you'd see here in a dashboard, like the full income statements, line by line that shows, you know, last month's actuals compared to the prior month compared to the same month last year, right, with variances. So what I could do is go to statements. I can add a statement. I have a template here. I can click on it, click add, and there it is. Profit and loss, line by line, actuals, prior month variance, same month last year variance. So, again, PlanGuru Analytics provides you with the automation to get you started quickly with the templates and the customization ability to tweak your deliverables to yours or your clients' specific needs. The time to value here is insanely good. Now, if we wanna take this a notch further, right, kick it up a notch. Yes. There are more notches. Let's talk AI. Right? It's all the rage. AI is the greatest thing since sliced bread or discovering fire, whatever analogy you wanna use. Pretty great and has some great application here as well. But the first thing you're gonna need to do, turn it on. So if we go back to the home screen here, when I click this button, you can enable it for specific companies or all your companies. It is off by defaults. So it is completely up to you if you want to use it or not. And rest assured that if you do, your data is safe. It's a question we get all the time. Data security is a top priority, so your data will not be used to train models. It is encrypted at rest and in transit, we can provide you with all these security details if requested. So once turned on, I can open up a company again. I can open up one of my dashboards. We'll open up this one. And with these metrics I have built out here, we now have this AI button up top here. So if I click that, I can select specific metrics to analyze or I can select all. And when I click analyze, it produces commentary for me. Now, I can choose to just review this commentary in real time, whether, you know, from the full access user or a client user, or I can choose to copy and paste this commentary, right, and make edits where I see necessary and put those, you know, edits into a report or a dashboard. I've even heard, you know, some folks taking the commentary here and, you know, entering it into their own LLM of choice, ChatGPT, whatever it is, and, you know, adding an additional industry specific context and benchmarking. Right? And for advisors, you can actually include some of this commentary, copy and paste into something called a client portal date summary to keep clients informed with automated analysis on the specific dashboards and reports that you give them access to, which is a perfect segue to my last topic, which is user permissions. We'll go back home here for that. So, know, obviously, financial planning and analysis should not live in one person's inbox. Collaboration, no turns reporting from a single file that gets emailed around into know, shared into a shared system everyone trusts. And user permissions protect focus. Right? Managers see operational KPIs. Executives only see the strategic roll ups. Board members see summary level reporting. And for accounting firms, each client has their own secure environment, and, internally, your team would have tiered access. Right? You can give them access to specific things. So that reduces risk and increases efficiencies. And the users can basically be broken down into three levels, group access, additional users, and client portal users. A group access user would be like an admin or a workspace owner or an advisor user that has full access to all the clients. Right? So that's group access users here, and you can plug in their first name, last name, email, send them an invite. There's also additional users. Additional users would be like an internal user that has you know, again, if you're doing this for your own company, that has full access to the company or an adviser user or a client user that you want full access to the company, so helping you put together the reports and dashboards. And then last and certainly not least is client portal users. So these client portal users would be, you know, an internal user or a client user that has access to specific dashboards and reports that you organize in folders. They would only they would be read only, so they, you know, only can view those reports and and dashboards. They would not be able to change any of the settings, create their own, etcetera. So the very common use case there, when you open a company, you go down to the client portal, you can have these folders up top here. So I created a folder for manager one and added one of the dashboards in there. And you can give certain individuals access to that specific folder. And you can create folders for, you know, different department managers or executives or board members and pick and choose which dashboards and reports you apply to those folders. What's also very, very, very important here is each user that you add in PlanGuru Analytics must first be added to your PlanGuru accounts. Right? So back here, home screen. And this is again something the admin account holder would have to do. You'd be able to add the user here and then add the user in Analytics. If you do not add the user here first, you try to add the Analytics user here. The Analytics user would not be able to log in. It would block them. Right? So you need to add them in the PlanGuru modeling tool, the the account first. So with that said, I hope you enjoyed what you saw here. Again, super excited about this, integration. Really takes reports and dashboards to the next level. And if you have any questions, please please let us know.