Who can use this feature
Roles: Owner, Admin, Staff and optional on custom roles
Plans: Available on Standard, Plus and Advanced
Live View has been labeled "the future of reporting". It is a powerful feature that empowers you to collaborate on reports with other members of your team, investors, stakeholders, or anyone with access to the Live View link. It's fully interactive and easy to understand with the ability to visualize crucial information using Magnify. With a simple page refresh, you also have access to real-time data.
What is a live view
It's a method of reporting like no other. Here's why:
It's fully interactive, with the ability to add comments, upload documents and share videos or other images
Share these reports as a link, without downloading them
Anyone with a link to your Live View can view this report, irrespective of whether they are Syft users
Password protect your Live View link to ensure your data is secure
Our Magnify function enables you to drill down into transaction-level detail in beautiful graphic form, making it easy to explain financial information to even the least financially savvy clients, stakeholders or staff.
Style your Live View reports from a range of various aesthetics
Rolling functionality for Live Views ensures the data in all your Live View reports is automatically kept up to date.
💡 Pro tip
While rolling functionality is available, you can also make use of static report views if you would prefer. The static view can also be immensely beneficial when it comes to referring to a specific date range.
How to create a live view
There are two ways to create a Live View:
Generate a Live View from the "Templates" top tab within "Reports" for an existing report template by clicking on the three dots next to a template or an entity specific report. From the pop-up menu, click "Create live view".
Add a Live View from the "Live View" top tab within "Reports" by clicking on "Add live view".
The Live View set up page will then prompt you to fill in certain information about your Live View:
Fill out the dialogue box with your template, entity, report name, style options, watermark, and your choice of layout
Style your Live View to give it a professional look and feel. Click "Go to styles" to select a style of your choice and save it as a theme name such as "Test Theme" below.
Set a password and choose whether the data should roll forward periodically. Take a look at the message, highlighted in the image below, that explains what is meant by "Day to roll on" and "Rolling Period".
Click "Create"
💡 Pro tip
Our Table of Contents is hyperlinked! If you have a long report, you can click on the name of a specific section in the Table of Contents and it will automatically take you to that section of the report.
Manage live views
Once you've created Live Views, you can manage them in the "Live View" top tab within "Reports". You can easily see who has created a Live View under the "Created by" column. If your team members have chosen avatars as their profile pictures, these will be visible here as well as in Live View comments.
You can choose to group your live views according to:
Entity
Template
Month
Creator
Edit, share, export comments, copy the Live View link and manage user access all from this page by clicking on the three dots next to the Live View.
Magnify
On Live View reports, you have the ability to generate a pop-up view by hovering over a figure. Simply hover over any graph value or row in your report (except formula rows such as gross profit or any other custom formula rows) to show historical, graphical data of that account as well as the top transactions for that account. You will also see a list of the top five contacts that impacted these accounts.
Want to compare data from a prior period? Simply pin pop-ups in place using the pin icon on the top right. You are also free to drag the pop-up wherever you want and resize it to your liking. Remember that you can only pin 4 pop-ups at a time.
📓 Note
Magnify on a divisional report won't filter for transactions; we recommend using segments for that.
You can use Magnify across the following reports:
Profit & Loss
EBITDA
Balance Sheet
Working capital reports (both standard and multi-period)
Cash Flow statements
Cash In vs Out
Top Customer by Sales graph
Income vs Expenses
Top Expenses
KPI Scorecards
Comment
Once you have opened a Live View, you will see that you have a lot of flexibility when commenting on your Live Views:
You can type in your comment and add the @ sign to mention other viewers of the report
Drag and drop media into a comment or click on the icons in the text box to add pictures, videos or documents
Once you've magnified a graph in your Live View, click "Copy graph" and you can then paste this into the comment box to draw attention to important information in the graph.
Edit or delete comments by clicking on the elipsis at the top right-hand-side of the comment.
Export your comments as a track-record
Respond with an emoji. You will see that underneath each comment that has been made, there is a smiley face button. From there, you can choose the appropriate reaction to the comment.
The little bell icon at the top right of the screen, above the comments box, is the notification centre. If you click here, you will see a list of all the latest comments and who made them.
If you hover over any of the little circles with initials in them, you will be able to see where in the document this person is.
💡 Pro tip
Only comments made on the page you are looking at will be displayed, so you need to scroll through the whole document to see comments on each page, unless you are on the cover page.
Creating the reports you want that look the way you want them to shouldn't take you hours – and neither should sharing these reports with clients, investors, and stakeholders.
If the Live View does not load, this means that the template cannot be downloaded, the best way to troubleshoot this is to try generate an export of the Live View The error messages are usually more detailed when trying to download the report.