Who can use this feature
Role: Owner, Admin, Staff, Client
Plan: Available on the Standard, Plus and Advanced plans
Spreadsheet Link is a powerful tool designed to enhance your Syft experience while seamlessly integrating with your favorite spreadsheet tools, Google Sheets and Excel.
Excel
Spreadsheet Link is an Excel Add-in created by Syft, for Syft users. All selection options are the same as Syft when it comes to date ranges and the number of periods you would like to show. Once in Excel, you will find four broad categories:
Financials: Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Trial Balance, Cash Flow statement direct, Cash Flow statement indirect, Changes in Equity
Contacts: Receivables and Payables (useful for expected credit loss for IFRS compliance)
Analyze: sales by customer, sales by product, transaction list
4-Way Forecasts: create integrated forecasts across your Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow direct, Cash Flow indirect, KPIs, and drivers.
Under Financials, you can also choose your custom Build P&L or Build Balance Sheet layouts and you can choose between single and multi-period views.
💡Pro tip
You can copy formulae across your spreadsheet so that the date and other settings are carried over from one report to another. You can also refresh entities on Excel.
Install
To add Syft to Excel on your computer, follow these steps:
Open a new Excel document
Click on the "Home" top tab
Click on "Add-ins"
Click on "More Add-ins"
Search for "Syft Analytics"
Click on "Add"
Click "Continue"
You will now have the Syft Add-in installed on Excel. It will appear as a top tab in your Excel menu bar as "Syft".
📓 Note
Please ensure that your Microsoft Excel is updated in order to use the Syft Add-in
Deploy Spreadsheet Link for large organizations
For large organizations that use Microsoft, as an admin, you can deploy Microsoft Office Add-ins for the users in your organization by using the Centralized Deployment feature in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
This allows for you make the Syft Spreadsheet Link Add-in available within Excel for all users within your Microsoft organization. Click here to learn more on how to do this.
📓 Note
You need to first ensure that centralized deployments of Add-ins works for your organization
The steps that Microsoft recommends is detailed below:
In the admin center, go to the "Settings" > "Integrated apps" > "Add-ins" page
Select "Deploy Add-in" at the top of the page, and then select "Next"
Select an option and follow the instructions
If you selected the option to add an Add-in from the Office Store, make your Add-in selection
On the next page, select "Everyone", "Specific users/groups", or "Just me" to specify who the Add-in is deployed to. Use the search box to find specific users or groups
Select "Deploy"
A green tick appears when the Add-in is deployed. Follow the on-page instructions to test the Add-in
When finished, select "Next". If you've deployed to just yourself, you can select Change who has access to Add-in to deploy to more users
Why is it useful
Downloading Syft reports to Excel for complex calculations can become tedious when needing to rebuild them monthly. However, Syft's Spreadsheet Link streamlines report creation in Excel, ensuring automatic data updates, saving time, and reducing errors.
10 ways you could use Spreadsheet Link
If you want to move figures out of a certain account, you can do so without going to Journals in Syft.
You can also create a summarized report. For example, maybe you just want to look at total revenue and your bank account. This works similarly to Syft's Ledgers function, but in Excel.
If your underlying data isn't divided into divisions, you can build divisional reports on Excel.
If you want to calculate specific tax complexities, you can do so with Syft on Excel.
If you want to share the Receivable table from Syft's Contacts with the person who is responsible for collecting debts, you can input this into Syft. As old debts are unlikely to be collected, you can use Spreadsheet Link to figure out how much you expect to receive (or the expected credit loss) in Excel.
You can use Syft's Transaction List to review your transactions, filter and sort, and essentially audit your data.
You can build your Syft cash flow reports in Excel to calculate complexities in your cash flow, and then adjust for them with Spreadsheet Link.
If you use a specific payroll system and pull amounts from there and want to reconcile it to Syft and what's in your financial statements, you could paste this information in every month and then calculate the difference between that and the data you have in your Syft reports.
If you want to build very complex forecasts, you can do so and these will update automatically with your Syft data and use Excel's formula power to enhance your projections.
If you want to visualize lots of different companies on one page and calculate them, you can do this with Spreadsheet Link too.
Keeping your data current and handling complex equations is simple with Spreadsheet Link on Excel. Plus, you can seamlessly upload this information as a document to your Syft reports.
Troubleshooting
If you are experiencing any issues with Spreadsheet Link, please refer to these troubleshooting best practices. The methods detailed below will ensure that the latest version of the tool is fetched from the server, and will fix the majority of problems you may experience.
Windows
To uninstall the old version of Spreadsheet Link, follow these steps:
Navigate to “Trusted Add-in Catalogs” by clicking on the following options:
File->Options->Trust Center->Trust Center Settings…->Trusted Add-in Catalogs.
Select the checkbox that says “Next time Office starts, clear all previously-started web Add-ins cache" and tick the box in the table. Then click "Remove".
You will also need to delete the shared folder "SyftExcel" that you previously created along with the Manifest file contained within it.
Restart Excel.
Click on "Insert" in the top menu bar.
Click on "Get Add-ins" and search for Syft. You can then add the new version of Spreadsheet Link.
What to do if you have a blank taskpane that doesn't want to load
Right click inside the side pane and click “refresh”.
Click on the white box with an arrow in it at the top right of the side pane and click “reload”.
Click the white box with an arrow in it at the top right of the side pane and click “security info” and make sure that under "Runtime" it says “Microsoft Edge”. If it says “Internet explorer”, then install this link and restart Excel.
MacBook
Search for terminal on your computer and open it. Then insert the following:
open ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Library/Caches/
Press Enter.
Now, delete the folders contained in the caches folder.
Next, insert the following:
open ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/Office/16.0/Wef/
Press Enter.
Delete the files in the "Wef" folder.
💡Pro tip
Mac users can manually navigate to this directory, but some of the folders are hidden. To view hidden folders in finder click “cmd” + “shift” + “.”
Google Sheets
Analyze your Syft data directly in Google Sheets and import Google Sheet data into Syft as a trial balance.
Install
To install Spreadsheet Link:
Open Google Sheets
Click on the "Extensions" top tab
And then click on "Add-ons"
Once you're in "Add-ons", you'll see the option "Get add-ons".
Search for Syft from here and then click "Install"
Otherwise, visit the Google Workspace Marketplace and search for Syft Analytics. Or, alternatively, you can click this link here and click the "Install" button.
You can also find this option under the burger icon on Syft, underneath "Your add-ons."
📓 Note
Access to this tool requires a paid subscription for the "Spreadsheet Link Add-on".
Navigate
Once you've added Spreadsheet Link to Google Sheets, you will find Syft under the "Extensions" tab. To log in, click on "Syft Analytics" and then "My Account". You will then be prompted to log in with your Syft account.
Once you have logged in, Google Sheets will load your entities. You then have the following options if you navigate to "Syft Analytics" > "My Account":
Refresh data in Syft
Upload TB data to Syft
There is also an "Options" tab, which you must click if you would like to start building out reports. From here, you can select your Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet Layouts to apply to reports.
Why is it useful
Spreadsheet Link allows you to:
Connect live data to Google Sheets
Import Syft reports directly to Google Sheets
Build custom formulae on top of Syft reports
Upload both financial and non-financial data to Syft from Google Sheets, including bulk uploads of customer tags
Build a report in Google Sheets
To build a report:
Click on "Extensions"
Click on "Syft Analytics"
Choose between Financials, Contacts, Analyze, 4-Way Forecasts, and Utilities
Choose the specific report you want from within the category you have selected
Start editing and manipulating your data
Bulk upload customer tags to Syft
When using Spreadsheet Link in Excel or Google Sheets, you can select from a list of Customer tags you've created in Syft (which will appear on the right-hand side of your Excel or Google Sheets screen) or create your own tags in Excel or Google Sheets, apply them to your entire customer base, and upload this tagged list into Syft.
The template has room for name, email address, and tags. If you want to add tags, add them to the tag column. To add multiple tags to the column, separate each tag with a comma and a space.
Validate your spreadsheet when you are happy with all the tags, then upload these to Syft.
Using this tool, you can categorize all your customers very quickly and see this reflected across the Customer tables in Analyze.
📓 Note
Any existing tags will be removed if you upload a spreadsheet to Syft without tags. Your uploaded Excel tags will take precedence, so ensure they're correct before bulk uploading.
If your spreadsheet encounters an error, changes to your tags will not be saved. Syft will revert to the previous tag version.
Import a transaction list entity into Syft
Once in Excel or Google Sheets, you can upload data to Syft. You'll see that there's an option for a Transaction List Entity and that you can upload accounts from your Chart of Accounts using a template. After you've mapped your accounts, you can validate your sheet and upload the data to Syft.
Start by logging into Syft. Once in Syft, do the following:
Click "Add Entity"
Select Transaction List Import
Set up your entity.
Navigate to Spreadsheet Link in either Excel or Google Sheets and follow these steps:
Select "Upload data to Syft"
Select "Transaction List Entity"
Select an entity whose transaction list you would like to upload
Upload accounts > your Chart of Accounts
Choose the sheet to populate to within Excel or Google Sheets
Generate the template
Do your Chart of Accounts mapping (to tell Syft how it should treat each of these accounts in terms of classification and sub-classification)
Transaction Builder
With the Transaction Builder, you can add a single line to your transaction list by selecting all the details of the transaction, as well as an optional contra account, and clicking "Insert". Otherwise, you can add a transaction in the sheet manually using the drop-down selectors.
📓 Note
You will not have the same search functionality when adding transactions manually as you do when uploading the full list of transactions.
Find and reuse previous upload templates
Your Upload History shows uploads you've made previously in case you would like to reuse templates for future uploads. You also have the option to change the name of the upload or download previous transaction lists.
By using the Transaction List Import option, you will enrich the data coming into Syft, even if you’re using desktop software, which is otherwise limited to account-level data when pulled through to Syft. This means that when you view financial reports or graphs on Syft, you can drill down into the underlying transactions to see what's really going on in the business.