Microsoft FRx
Microsoft FRx works with a variety of general ledgers - including Microsoft Dynamics products - to help you get specific reports to decision-makers who need them, when they need them. Its financial analysis capabilities can help boost businses intelligence across your company.
A successful business needs to stay on top of trends and respond to new challenges and opportunities. No matter the size of your organization—small, midsize, large, or a division of a global enterprise—you need to have the tools in place to help your staff make the decisions that help your business thrive and grow.
Microsoft FRx is a comprehensive financial reporting and analysis application that helps you manage all financial aspects of your business, with little or no information technology (IT) involvement. Microsoft FRx can help you increase the productivity and effectiveness of everyone involved in the reporting process, giving your people the information they need to support their decisions.
Accounting intelligence
Get your people and your business working more effectively. Microsoft FRx helps users understand fiscal periods, chart of accounts structures, transaction details, and various types of balances. A built-in link to the general ledger helps your staff run reports based on predefined accounting information. In addition, accounting features and intelligence simplify processes by recognizing concepts such as current and year-to-date amounts, debit versus credit balances, and posted or unposted transactions. This helps ensure that every report is complete and accurate.
Flexibility trio: Provide better information management. Microsoft FRx offers a powerful and flexible system of three building blocks: Row Format, Column Layout, and Reporting Trees. Once created, these building blocks can be saved and mixed and matched in other reports.
• Row Format: Specify the data source and what you want to do within each row of a report. By using a link to the general ledger, your staff can select individual or a range of accounts or a list of discontinuous accounts to be included in a report.
• Column Layout: Specify the data source and select the column type. Combined with Row Format, Column Layout makes it easy for users to include period actuals, budget data, statistical amounts, and other types of data in a report — either from the general ledger or from other data sources such as a spreadsheet. Users also can apply calculations across columns, making it easy to include variances, projections, and percentages in reports.
• Reporting Trees: Create a hierarchical picture of your organization. A powerful auto-build function constructs Reporting Trees in seconds — directly from your chart of accounts. Easy drag-and-drop functionality enables users to create alternative structures and multiple rollups of various accounts without having to make modifications to the general ledger or chart of accounts.
Customizable reports: Use out-of-the-box customizable report templates or start from scratch using the building-block approach and auto-build functionality. Customized fonts, formatting, and formulas stay with the report when it is exported from Microsoft FRx to other formats (such as Excel), so the report doesn't lose its presentation quality and functionality.
FRx Report Designer: Create, generate, view, distribute, and manage financial reports from your desktop without additional help from your information technology (IT) department. FRx Report Designer gives your staff simple point-and-click capabilities that improve report analysis and access. Export your reports into popular formats, such as Excel, a Microsoft OLAP (online analytical processing) cube, HTML, or an ASCII text file. You can also publish reports created in Microsoft FRx as an Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) instance document without having to understand XBRL or Extensible Markup Language (XML) technology.
FRx Report Launcher: Give your people access to the right information at the right time. Select pre-designed reports, specify the output option, and generate needed reports on demand. FRx Report Launcher helps financial professionals and executives generate, view, and drill down to transaction details while maintaining the integrity of the original report design.
FRx DrillDown Viewer: Receive attractive, easy-to-understand reports that make it simple to analyze performance by company, individual departments, or divisions, or against goals and budgets. With FRx DrillDown Viewer, your staff can immediately answer their own questions by "drilling down" to underlying detail.
Importing and exporting data: Combine spreadsheet contents with general ledger data in a single report. With Microsoft FRx, you can automatically export financial data from a finished FRx DrillDown Viewer report into a spreadsheet for additional what-if analysis while keeping formulas and underlying detail intact.
XBRL: Microsoft FRx remains at the forefront of XBRL technology advances with support of the version 2.0 specification. Users can transfer complex, highly confidential corporate financial information to regulators, banks, investors, and boards of directors, using a trusted standard of financial communication.
Add-on features:
FRx Report Manager: Easily pull together, in one comprehensive report book, Microsoft FRx reports with the other information your people need to evaluate financial performance. FRx Report Manager, a powerful optional module, automates the time-consuming process of manually compiling, organizing, printing, and distributing report books containing many different document and file types. Now your staff can present information in a logical and organized manner that is relevant to their audience.
FRx Currency Translation: Get enhanced currency translation as an add-on component. You can create multiple exchange rate tables using Microsoft FRx, or you can access the exchange rate table information maintained in your general ledger. The Monthly Rates Table supports month-end and monthly average rates for automatic or manual currency translation calculations in your reports, so you do not have to accumulate and average your daily rates. Additionally, you can calculate annual average rates, streamlining the maintenance in the Column Layout when you create new reports. Currency Translation allows you to create financial statements based upon the "home" currency set up in your general ledger, and translate it into other currencies for reporting and further analysis, while the data in your general ledger remains untouched.
FRx WebPort: FRx WebPort lets you publish, store, and manage Microsoft FRx and non-Microsoft FRx reports, such as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint documents, providing easy access on security-enhanced intranet sites.
FRx Report Server: Schedule reports for automatic generation and distribution using a separate server. This frees workstations for other tasks and eliminates the time and expense associated with hard-copy reports.
Editions
Microsoft FRx 6.7 Desktop Edition: Create, launch, view, manage, and distribute Microsoft FRx financial reports as well as export report output to OLAP cubes or XBRL instance documents from your desktop. Generation occurs on a local workstation with the ability to distribute reports through the organization’s network or e-mail system.
Microsoft FRx 6.7 Professional Edition: Get all the functionality in the desktop edition plus FRx Currency Translation, FRx WebPort, and FRx Report Server (one engine).
Microsoft FRx 6.7 Enterprise Edition: Efficiently handle a large volume of reports with greater flexibility. The Enterprise Edition includes all the functionality in the Professional Edition plus FRx Report Manager and additional FRx Report Server engines (four engines).
Microsoft FRx Report Wizard
In today's age of abundant information, financial managers are leveraging financial data into more meaningful and timely reporting to management. This gives them the tools to make more informed decisions that can lead to a more profitable company. This white paper outlines our latest analysis of hundreds of responses from corporate financial professionals. Note that 72.2% of respondents in both manufacturing and non-manufacturing organisations rated expanding and enhancing reporting to management as the primary approach to boosting corporate value.
