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How to: Create your Commercial Manager entity, configure accounts and build a plan
How to: Create your Commercial Manager entity, configure accounts and build a plan

Quick steps for setup, account configuration and planning

Matt McLaughlin avatar
Written by Matt McLaughlin
Updated over a week ago

The steps below detail how to create your commercial entity on Figured, complete the configuration, and start building a plan.

Step 1: Create your Commercial Manager entity

Head to my.figured.com and select + Create a Farm

Fill out the required fields for the name of the entity and click next to view the billing page.

On the billing page for the field 'Bill Payer' you will need to select 'An organisation' to then select Commercial Manager in the Product Plan drop down box. Enter any Promo Code and company information before Connecting with your Accounting Software.

Make sure you're logged into the correct Accounting Software account before Connecting. Once Connecting, it will start syncing your data and you can move to step 2.

Step 2: Setup your bank feeds

Figured will pull through your bank accounts from your accounting software. You now need to select the correct type of account and nominate the primary bank account.

It's important to note that any liabilities, or a credit card, should never be set as a bank account. This will affect your bank account balance in your reports and will give an inaccurate view of your current cash position.

NOTE: We recommend you have these accounts set as liabilities within your accounting software too so that the financial reports in each app reflect one another.

If you wish to pull through tracking categories from your accounting software with Multi-Enterprise you can do so in Settings > Multi-Enteprise. Likewise, you can consolidate multiple Commercial Manager files for group reporting. More details in this article here.

Step 3: Configure accounts with custom categories

Your data will now be syncing into Figured from your accounting software. The time for the first sync is dependent on the amount of data in that file, but you can check progress through the connecting window in the bottom left of your screen.

Now you should customise your categories in the account configuration section. Follow these instructions here to do so. If you have done this already on another file you can use the Copy from another Entity function. You can come back to this later if need be.

Step 4: Set payment periods/detail in planning

Payment periods are what you use to determine between cash / profit (accrual) dates in your forecast. It is important that you set these before adding any forecasts, as any changes only update new forecast transactions, not existing ones.

By default, the accounts are set to 20th of the next month for cash. This means when you enter a cash forecast, the cash date will be the 20th of that month and Figured will auto-create the profit date that falls in the month prior.

For accounts like bank fees, wages, drawings etc. where you don't want a different between the cash/profit dates, you'll want to change these to Same Day terms.

You can search for the account payment periods you wish to adjust and do so by selecting them on the left check box column, and then select the payment terms you wish - as shown below. You'll want to change any terms

If you do change payment terms after a forecast is added, you'll need to hard delete those transactions from the account schedules which you should message the green chat bubble about.

For further customisation, you may wish to change how you can interact with an account in the planning tab. Select the account you wish to update to change the detail in planning setting in the bottom right of the page.

  • Summary: this is the default setting and it means you can enter forecasts as normal in the planning tab (one cell per month)

  • Detailed: this enforces the forecast schedule for an account which means you must enter detailed transactions (qty x rate)

  • Hidden: this will remove the account from your planning tab, unless actuals are entered against it in your accounting software, in which case it will show the accounts in all financial reports

Step 5: Account settings check

Figured pulls through the same account settings from your accounting software. In some instances, you may wish to update these.

For example, you likely don't want depreciation accounts creating cash transactions. Searching for these accounts in your Settings > Chart of Accounts > search, you can click into the account settings.

The example below shows changing the depreciation account type settings to the correct 'Depreciation account' settings, ensuring that it won't create cash forecast transactions.

Step 6: Configure loans and interest on overdraft payments

Figured holds useful planning automation that it pays to set up in the beginning to save yourself the manual effort.

In the Assets and Liabilities section, you'll see those pulling through from your accounting software. The article Assets & Liabilities - How to Create a Liability shows you how to create a liability and configure it to calculate the interest for you. This then flows into the planning grid.

You may wish to also automatically calculate your interest on overdraft. Link this up to maintain visibility on whether your budget comes close to or breaches the limit at any point as you track to plan throughout the year.

Step 7: Essential setup checklist

The checklist below covers what you should have covered in the setup at a minimum.

  1. Were your bank accounts mapped correctly in the setup? Check your default bank if you're unsure through Settings > Chart of Accounts > Update Default Bank.


    Ensure no liabilities are mapped here unless you want them to contribute to the opening/closing cash balance.
    ​

  2. Have you created/copied your custom categories and categorised accounts to them?
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  3. Have you updated your default payment terms from 20th of the next month for cash to Same Day for the accounts you wish? E.g. Bank fees, wages, drawings etc.
    ​
    If you updated these after you had already forecasted against those accounts, ensure the old transactions are hard deleted in the Account Schedules before re-entering so they receive the updated terms.
    ​

  4. Have you checked any depreciation accounts etc. to sure they are not creating cash transactions?

Step 8: Planning in Commercial Manager

Now that you have setup your entity it's time to get planning. The video below explains how you can start planning in Commercial Manager.

There are also some key supporting articles that can help you get started.

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