Using the Trends Data Table

Follow this video to gain understanding on how to use the main data table area in the Trends pages:

The heart of the trends function in CFO Scoreboard is the trends data table. It presents a powerful way to view your financial statements because instead of viewing one month at a time, like most business owners do, the trends data table allows you to perform Trends Analysis by viewing multiple time periods side by side. Comparing multiple time periods is the only way to know if your business is getting better or if it is getting worse.

The first thing you will notice about the data table is the little plusses and minuses in some of the rows and columns. A minus lets you collapse a row or column to hide some of the detail. For example, here’s an income statement account with some sub-accounts. If you press the minus next to the account name, it will collapse to hide all the sub accounts while totaling them up so that you can see the total amount without having to get lost in all the details. Clicking the plus sign will expand the account so that you can see the sub-accounts again.

Expanding and collapsing date columns works in a similar manner. Each year’s column can be collapsed to hide the month columns, making it easier to compare one year to another. Clicking the plus sign will expand the year to show the months again. Note that the years are fiscal years, not calendar years.

For some people, trends are easy to spot in the trends data table, but for many people, it can look just like a giant grid of numbers. It would be much easier to spot trends if the data was graphed visually. Well, you are in luck. If you click on a row in the data table, a graph will appear showing you how this specific revenue or expense category has changed over time. This can make it much easier to spot the general trend or to find spikes or valleys that indicate an anomaly in a certain month that should be investigated further. The graph has buttons that allow you to view all the financial data, the last year’s worth of data, or only the data for the current year to date.