Caseware Africa’s new application will revolutionise how SMEs create financial statements

Kenya, 30 August 2022: Caseware Africa, a division of Adapt IT, has introduced a new cloud-based app in Kenya: SME Financial Statements. The new solution, which will be rolled out to various African regions, has been completely redesigned to leverage the benefits of the cloud, as well as everything Caseware has learned from its clients over the past decades, says Nienke Krüger, Product Manager: Financial Reporting at Caseware Africa.

“This new cloud-based application has been designed from the ground up to revolutionise the way that preparers create financial statements. We have leveraged our extensive experience over many years with our clients to design a process that is user-friendly and streamlined,” she says. “The new approach takes into account regulators’ growing insistence that only material information is presented in the financials – something that can prove quite tricky for inexperienced or infrequent users.”

SME Financial Statements uses checklists, questionnaires and integrated queries that expand and collapse, only displaying content relevant to the current engagement. This will enable users to work much more efficiently by empowering them to focus their time only on relevant items and will greatly assist them in streamlining the process to produce the financial statements as the final output document.

Another big advantage of SME Financial Statements is that it enables users to integrate the trial balance information directly from the company’s accounting package. This eliminates the tiresome, error-prone, and manual process of exporting and importing data via spreadsheets. Currently, direct integrations from Xero, QuickBooks and Sage Business Cloud Accounting are supported, with more packages to be added in line with market demands.

These features provide users with significant timesaving and greatly reduces room for error, Ms Krüger says. A built-in workflow ensures that information is entered only once, reducing the risk of inconsistencies, duplication, and errors. The solution also allows users to insert logos and graphs into the financial statements and save external documents in the same file.

“SME Financial Statements is powered by Caseware Cloud and can be accessed from any device at any location, completely secure, at any time. It enables multiple users to work on the same document at the same time, thus supporting greater collaboration between team members across both the client and accounting firms. That makes for huge productivity gains,” Ms Krüger says. “It’s also much easier to update the application as new functionality is added.

“This app has been carefully designed based on Caseware Africa’s vast experience and intellectual property to assist preparers to create accurate SME compliant statements as quickly and painlessly as possible” says Ms Krüger.

Ms. Krüger confirms that this is a significant development for Africa’s SMEs. “In due course, post the introduction of SME Financial Statements in the Kenyan market, the app will be rolled out to other regions across the continent, which presents an exciting opportunity for practices and SMEs to enhance their business efficiencies as they continue to strive for growth.”

February 15, 2022August 31, 2023

Integrating monthly, interim, and annual financial statements for efficiency gains

By Nienke Krüger, Product Manager: Financial Reporting, Caseware Africa

Annual financial statement reporting is a process with which finance professionals are very familiar. As this is a statutory requirement, a lot of the yearly planning is built around it, and rightly so. However, the process can be an onerous one, particularly since queries and corrections might relate to transactions from up to a year ago.

Additional reporting is also required throughout the year, and management may need reports at shorter intervals in order to stay abreast of the organisation’s financial status.

In many organisations, the annual, interim, and monthly reports are approached as independent reporting processes, resulting in a disjointed approach that duplicates effort and consumes a great deal of time.

This begs the question of whether we are missing an opportunity to streamline all reporting processes by integrating them.

What is defined as the interim financials?

Different industries use different terminology for financial reporting that is not prepared on an annual basis.

Interim financial statements are defined by IAS 34 and although this standard does not prescribe who must prepare interim financials, it does provide the requirements of how they must be prepared. They are mostly performed by listed entities, but also by some specific industries that are regarded as more volatile.

Management accounts or monthly board packs

These are not legislatively regulated and are normally produced for management and other stakeholders who might not be intimately involved in the detail of the business on a daily basis. Management accounts originated from the manufacturing sector where there was a need to prepare a profit and loss statement on the basis of cost accounting rather than IFRS/SME standard.

Other industries adopted this procedure also but more from a monthly balance sheet and income statement perspective with the same grouping as that of annual financial statements.

Integration benefits

By integrating and aligning the reporting requirements, organisations are essentially preparing their annual and interim statements throughout the year, as they prepare monthly reports.

This is perhaps where the biggest efficiency gain will be for an organisation, not only on a monthly basis, but also enabling management during the audit period to get back to running their businesses a lot quicker as there are no surprises at year end.

As you are preparing management accounts on a monthly basis, you will stay close to the numbers, and therefore, any adjustment or analysis of the transactions can be done with the details at the forefront.
The grouping of the accounts is also performed monthly, and as such, the audit can commence with no changes required to the line items on the financials. This also helps to avoid duplication of work due to rework on audit packs as groupings are amended.
Adjustments can be made throughout the year for depreciation; expected credit loss calculations etc., and this increases the predictability of more accurate final numbers.
Provisional tax calculations are more accurate and therefore, the risk of incurring interest and penalties is less likely.
Then for the issue that is perhaps the most relevant to businesses – cash! This will enable you to have more accurate cash flow projections and make more informed operational decisions.

At Caseware Africa, we encourage the principle of one data source as this empowers our clients to have one version of the truth. This in turn enables you to have greater confidence in the information presented and make operational decisions that are right for your business. We believe if you use the annual solution, on a monthly basis, you can achieve the monthly board packs you require and if you need a more robust solution, you can also use the Interim template. But all emanating from the same data source and building on the work performed on a monthly basis for the efficient preparation of your annual financial statements.

July 12, 2021February 10, 2023

The Future of Financial Reporting in the Public Sector

Proposed amendments to Kenya’s Public Finance Management (PFM) Act, giving Chief Financial Officers only one month to submit their Annual Financial Statements to the Auditor General after the end of the financial year, are sending shockwaves through the public sector accounting community in Kenya, reports international auditing and financial reporting software company, Caseware Africa.

CPA Rexon Wachira, a public sector consultant at Caseware Africa’s Nairobi office, says the process of compiling and reviewing these entities’ Annual Financial Statements typically takes public sector financial professionals three months or longer, challenged by the fact that in the fourth quarter in a year, reports must be submitted in the same period as well. “There is grave concern that it may not be possible to produce Annual Financial Statements so quickly,” he says.

Stephan van der Merwe (CA) SA, Specialist in Public Sector Solutions at Caseware Africa, notes that audit opinion is typically used to measure the entity’s performance. “The better your audit opinion is, the better the assessment of your entity’s performance, which is another reason why these Annual Financial Statements can take a long time to prepare; every entity wants to be very thorough to ensure they get a good audit opinion. Now with the proposed tighter deadlines, this could pose a huge risk for entities, and therefore, introducing efficiency into the process is now more important than ever before,” he says.

While the amendment is still in the pipeline, Caseware Africa says now is the time for public sector entities to review their processes and do away with time-consuming and error-prone manual systems to ensure that their reporting is more efficient, accurate and compliant.

Caseware’s IPSAS and IFRS Financial Statement solutions enable public sector finance professionals to automate the preparation of compliant financial statements on either International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) or International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), whichever is required. This includes flexible lead sheets and a centralised document manager to organise all working paper collateral. Both these solutions simplify collaboration, consolidation and assure preparers of compliance with international standards.

Mr. van der Merwe notes: “In the East African public sector, several entities have successfully implemented either Caseware Africa’s IPSAS or IFRS Financial Statements solutions for process efficiency, data integrity and compliance. In the past, the focus among Kenya’s public sector customers was mainly on harnessing Caseware Africa to reduce manual processing, but we now see a sharp surge in interest in using our solutions to achieve compliance in terms of both international standards and reporting deadlines.”

January 14, 2021February 10, 2023

iXBRL Reporting – What Is XBRL?

Caseware’s iXBRL reporting eases the process of manual reporting and collection of data. As a business, you probably find yourself having to send out a lot of reports every year and often have to manually collect all the data. When it comes to analysing and comparing the data, you find yourself reading a lot of paper-based reports, which increases your chance of making mistakes.

The logical step to overcome this would be to use digital reporting tools. Problem is, everyone uses different software tools. This means nothing is consistent and makes it just as difficult to compare and analyse various reports.

This is why CIPC has made XBRL reporting mandatory and why Caseware Africa has made sure that our solutions give you everything you need to be compliant.

What Is XBRL?

Essentially, XBRL is a structured way of digital reporting. It’s an open, international way of structuring information, managed by a global consortium. It enables software such as Caseware Africa to tag all financial items in business reports with relevant taxonomy.

First, you tag the data you want to report on, for example: financial statements and the various line items they’re in.
The data is then automatically extracted from your Caseware Working Papers file.
All you then have to do is send it.

Because of the fact that everyone is using the same tags and format, as set up by your reporting frameworks taxonomy, it’s easy to use and compare the data.

At Caseware Africa, we help our clients to meet their mandatory deadlines quickly and easily.

December 14, 2020February 10, 2023

Interim Financial Statements – Automated Financial Reporting

Automate your interim’s with Caseware Africa‘s interim financial statement template. Automation is one of the key strategies driving financial reporting, because it reduces manual intervention and makes the process both more streamlined and accurate.

Until now, the market has lacked an automated solution to easily prepare interim financial statements. Our new interim financial reporting template will help you to ensure that you are compliant.

Benefits Of Interim Financial Statements

Simplify the importing of data from multiple periods.
Unify the reporting process across an entity with seamless integration into our IFRS template.
Consolidate multiple entities quickly and easily.
Increase consistency and efficiency across the financial reporting process.
Prepare IAS 34 compliant interim, condensed, financial statements.
Create explanatory notes as required by the IAS 34 standard as well as easily including specific requirements for exchanges like the JSE, NSE, and other listing requirements and market trends.

When you use both Caseware’s interim and IFRS financial reporting templates together, the same data sets prepare both the interim and annual financial statements, which significantly reduces the risk of errors and the time needed to create the engagements. The template can be adjusted to produce semi-annual, quarterly, 5 monthly, and monthly financial statements.

Chat to us today about interim financial statements and how you can use them for your business.

November 14, 2020February 10, 2023

Does XBRL Affect Me?

If you had read our recent post about XBRL, you will know that it stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language and is a global standard that was developed to improve how financial data is communicated and that it also enables digital financial reporting.

Wondering If Your Company Is Affected By XBRL?

XBRL Reporting has many different uses and is used by a variety of people across different roles. All companies required to submit Annual Financial Statements (AFSs) as part of the Companies Act should be taking note of XBRL.

Similarly, any company that needs to provide information to financial regulators, securities regulators, stock exchanges, business registrars, tax authorities, and statistical and monetary policy authorities is affected by XBRL. Enterprises that regularly move information around in a complex grouping or supply chains that exchange information to manage risk and measure activity will be impacted by XBRL.

Where Is XBRL Applicable?

According to the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC), XBRL can be applied to a wide range of business and financial data. Below are a few examples of the data XBRL can handle:

- Internal and external financial and business reporting;
- Reporting and exchange of information in all types of regulators such as tax and financial authorities, central banks, and even government;
- Filing of loan reports and applications;
- Credit risk assessments; and
- Authoritative accounting literature, providing a standard way of describing accounting documents provided by authoritative bodies.

Who Will Benefit Most From XBRL?

- Regulators, analysts, and investors: XBRL allows for enhanced distribution and usability of existing financial statement information. It enables automated analysis and less rekeying of information from one form to another.
- Data aggregators and financial publishers: More efficient data collection lowers operating costs, boosts traction capacity, and adds value to data to minimise errors.
- Independent financial software developers: Any software that handles financial information can use XBRL for importing and exporting data. This increases the potential for full interoperability for other applications.
- Companies that prepare financial statements: The value of XBRL is that companies can create financial statements more efficiently because they only need to do so once.

At Caseware Africa, we provide a full range of professional services and “best of breed” software solutions to thousands of customers. Our solutions automate financial statements and assurance engagements, streamline tax management processes, enable simplified times and billing, and also takes care of secretarial duties. To find out more about how we can help you on your XBRL reporting journey, get in touch.

September 15, 2020February 10, 2023

Caseware Working Papers – Financial Reporting Solution

Whether it’s financial reporting, auditing, or tax, the core platform and beating heart of any Caseware solution is Caseware Working Papers. Our premium financial reporting solution allows you to easily import your financial data from Excel, CSV, or hundreds of general ledger systems such as Sage and Quick Books, or you can type a TB straight in. Follow a simple once-only mapping routine and our Caseware financial reporting solution will automatically produce an array of automated lead schedules using your nominal code structure.

What Can This Financial Reporting Solution Do For You?

Get total visibility and control with drill-down functionality from the face of your financial statements, right down to individual transactions and summarised lead schedules, which can be annotated with notes or cross-referenced to supporting evidence.
Caseware Working Papers allows you to store and manage all your supporting evidence in one secure, archivable place. Adding documents to the document manager couldn’t be easier with simple drag and drop.
Use electronic sign-off to control workflow and add milestones to track changes, giving you total confidence in the accuracy of the numbers on your report.
Review points are created and cleared in the customisable issues pane, making the whole process simple to manage and ensuring nothing is missed, even in teams working in different offices or time zones.
Save anything in Working Papers to PDF or Excel, or use complementary tools such as Caseware Connector to automate Excel and Word documents.

Caseware Working Papers gives you the whole story behind your engagement. The incredible reporting power and accuracy of CaseWare Working Papers eradicates misreporting risks and significantly reduces both production and review times. For a financial reporting solution that removes administration and the possibility of errors, look no further.

CaseWare Africa, a division of Adapt IT, the leader in financial reporting solutions

September 2, 2020February 10, 2023

mSCOA Specimen Financial Statements

National Treasury Illustrative Automated using Caseware

mSCOA Specimen Financial Statements enable municipal finance professionals to automate the preparation of financial statements in accordance with the National Treasury issued specimen.

Caseware Africa has all your accounting and financial reporting needs covered, with over 20+ years of experience in the industry, and over 200 municipalities that trust Caseware with their reporting.

Why trust Caseware for your mSCOA Specimen Financial Statements needs?

Many of our clients have successfully produced a full set of GRAP-compliant financial statements
We are here to help you every step of the way with additional support services
We can help you update your version of Caseware to the latest update
Assist with importing a set up of your Financial Statements
Help upskill your staff to be self-sufficient when using Caseware

If you need to create a new file based on the new mSCOA template, you’ll enjoy the following benefits:

Import datasets to Caseware
Speed improvements
No mapping required

September 2, 2020February 10, 2023

What Are Modified Cash Financial Statements?

Current Trials In Completing Financial Statements

Whether you are a national or provincial department, we have all your financial reporting needs covered. Ensuring that you can accurately, and effortlessly, complete your annual and quarterly Financial Statements.

The pain of getting to a set of Financial Statements can be a big one. You will start by downloading various reports from BAS and Vulindlela, after which, you will import some of them and use the rest as a working paper to complete your Financial Statements. After this, your Excel Financial Statement will be somewhat done but you still need to manually complete the majority of the reports, not even mentioning your Word version that is completely manual, which is the report you use.

To only report what is relevant, sections need to be deleted and some added (based on changes in the MCS standard) This is a standard challenge in working with this report. If at any stage during this process, something changes on your trial balance from BAS and Vulindlela, the painstaking task of finding, tracking, and replacing information happens before you can finally deliver a set of Financial Statements.

This process is riddled with cumbersome, high-risk steps all along the way. Accidentally making an error can cost you hours of work. You constantly have to read and keep up to date with the latest compliance regulations. You are never confident that you have one version of the truth. Manually keep the MS Excel version online. Ultimately struggle to produce a high-quality, professional report.

The Solution In Modified Cash Financial Statements

Caseware Africa is the answer to all your Modified Cash Financial Statements reporting needs. Caseware now offers a three-step process to generate your full Financial Statements:

Create reporting file
Import and map (this happens in one easy process)
Link secondary information sources to your Financial Statements.

After these three steps, your Financial Statements (annual or quarterly) are done. The National Treasury Excel Financial Statement will also be completed automatically, this includes annexures. Not only that, but you also have all your Lead Schedules automatically generated.

Caseware ensures a fast and accurate automated process providing compliance every step of the way. All this automation enables you to speed up the delivery of results, eliminate human error, improve the quality of the reports and provide additional benefits like consistency, credibility, and accuracy.

Ensure you have one version of the truth. Caseware Africa, the financial software solution trusted by financial professionals around the world.

June 22, 2020February 10, 2023

Caseware Africa launches Interim Financial Statements

Johannesburg…………2020: Caseeare Africa, a division of AdaptIT, has announced the launch of its latest product innovation, Interim Financial Statements, a new template designed to help enterprises easily draft interim financial statements in line with the IAS 34 standard.

The Interim Financial Statements template allows for the seamless import of data for multiple periods, and fully integrates with Caseware’s existing IFRS template for annual financial statements. In addition, it provides listed entities with new functionality to allow for JSE disclosure requirements and interim financial statement market trends, all in a single file, says Nienke Krüger, Product Manager: Financial Reporting at Caseware Africa.

“Until now, the market has lacked a solution to automate the preparation of interim financial statements. At present, companies are typically using spreadsheets to produce these statements, following a highly manual process that can be both severely error-prone and hugely time-consuming. In addition, existing manual processes take place independently of the annual financial statement processes, thus duplicating effort. The challenge is exacerbated for companies with multiple subsidiaries which need to report on consolidated figures as well,” she says.

“All of these challenges, including consolidation, are efficiently solved in Caseware Africa’s new solution. Automation is one of the key strategies driving financial reporting because it reduces manual intervention and makes the process both more streamlined and accurate.”

Ms Krüger notes that the template can be customised to ensure it aligns with the particular organisation’s requirements as well as applicable regulations. It can be customised to show only the material items required by IAS 34, and can be adjusted to produce financial statements monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly or semi-annually.

Companies listed on the JSE are compelled to produce semi-annual interim financial reports, while companies listed on other exchanges, such as the Nigerian Stock Exchange, need to do this on a quarterly basis. There are also various other stakeholders that will require interim financial statements to be prepared by a corporate entity, such as venture-capital and private-equity shareholders.

“Caseware Africa’s new Interim Financial Statement solution provides a unique opportunity to automate and unify both interim and annual financial statement processes in a single solution,” Ms Krüger adds. “Above all, the new template will allow the finance professionals preparing these statements to reduce production time and save costs while at the same time improving quality and taking advantage of Caseware’s industry-leading compliance.”About Caseware Africa

Caseware Africa, a division of Adapt IT, is the global leader in auditing and financial reporting software and is used in over 130 countries worldwide. Our 20 000 users across Africa, consist of audit and accounting firms, government entities, municipalities as well as large blue chip companies.

Caseware is the undisputed leader when it comes to compliance. Our leading content providers ensure you are always compliant with the latest disclosure requirements on ISAs, IFRS, IFRS-SME, GRAP and IPSAS. Our world-class products are not only designed to deliver on our compliance promise, but ensure quality results, increased effectiveness and improved profitability.

Category: News/FinancialStatements