Who can use this feature
Roles: Owner, Admin, Staff and optional on custom roles
Plans: Available with the Financial Statements add-on or included on Scale
What are Financial Statements
A set of financial statements are a written record that conveys the business activities and financial performance of a company. A set of financial statements are used by:
Shareholders: to analyze company performance and valuations
Tax authorities: as a basis for tax calculations
Banks: to determine debt eligibility and size
Regulatory bodies: as may be required by local laws
As such, these statements are often independently reviewed or audited (depending on local legislative requirements). A complete set of Financial Statements includes 4 statements:
Statement of Financial Position (Balance Sheet):
Includes all the Asset, Equity and Liability accounts.
This statement provides a snapshot of the company’s financial position at a point in time.
The layout is also set up to ensure that A = E + L (the famous accounting equation).
Statement of Profit or Loss and Other Comprehensive Income (Income Statement):
Summarizes a company’s revenue, costs and expenses over a period.
This statement tells the story of what happened during the period.
Statement of Changes in Equity:
Provides more detail into the movement in your capital and reserve/equity accounts for the period.
Statement of Cash Flows:
Provides a breakdown of the actual cash movement over a period.
These movements are categorized as operating, investing, or financing activities.
Financial Statements on Syft
Syft has a Financial Statements tool that allows you to build a full set of high-quality Financial Statements with ease and efficiency. Better yet, once the initial set up is complete, the statements can be easily rolled-forward to the following financial year.
Syft’s Financial Statements add-on is designed to create high-quality, compliant financial statements that are highly customisable and striking in their appearance. Our tool allows for preparers and reviewers to interact with Syft in a seamless flow.
📓 Note
This feature is in beta until July 2024 and is free to use until then. After this point, it will become a paid add-on.
How to create financial statements
Once you have purchased the financial statements add-on you will see the sub-tab added under the "Financials" tab on your Syft dashboard called "Fin. Statements." Within this sub-tab, you will find:
"Compile"
"Disclosures"
These two components are what make up the financial statements tool on Syft. To create a new financial statement, click on the “Add financial statement” button within the "Compile" sub-tab.
💡 Pro tip
All existing financial statements that you have created or are currently working on are found within the "Compile" sub-tab. From this page, click "Open" to view or edit one of your financial statements.
The "Setup" page will prompt you to name your financial statement and assign a period, which will most likely be a full financial year but can also be monthly, quarterly or the last 12 months. The period end date is important as it designates what information will be populated in your statements and disclosures. Click "Next" once you are happy with your selections.
📓 Note
The annual financial year option will pull through the financial year that your underlying accounting provider is picking up.
The "Entity details" page is where you can fill in your company details. The "Stakeholders" page is where you can select the relevant stakeholders for the entity. The "Report" page allows you to select the statements that will populate your set of financial statements. Typically you will choose all 4 statements. You will have to decide whether you want the Statement of Cash Flows to use the direct or indirect method.
💡 Pro tip
Syft will retain the information that you fill in these setup pages for any future financial statements that you create. However, the information can be changed at any time.
You can then give your Financial Statements a theme, drawing from Syft’s library of beautiful and professional themes. Adding a theme adds an element of customization to your Financial Statements that shows the care taken to put the statements together.
Now that you have your financial statement, a summarized version of it will appear alongside any other financial statements you've created within the "Compile" sub-tab. In this view, you will be able to:
Designate the preparer and reviewer
Set the status with workflow tags (When the status is set to "Final" you are able to lock the financial statement to ensure that no further changes can be made)
Filter or group statements based on status, period, preparer, reviewer or who created it
Download or delete your statement using the provided buttons
Inside a financial statement
Once you have created your set of financial statements, click "Open". When you open the Financial Statement, you'll see that there are a five top tabs:
Dashboard: This top tab will take you back to the "Compile" page where you can view all the financial statements that you have created
Ordering: Here you can order the contents of your financial statements. You will also see a preview of your Financial Statement layout on the right-hand side.
Commentary: This section is designed for you to formulate non-financial information and other text-based components that you are required to disclose in a set of Annual Financial Statements.
Financials: This is where all four Financial Statements are housed. You can select the statement that you would like to view. You can also change the names of the statements should you wish to do so.
Upload documents: This provides the option to upload PDFs to your Financial Statements.
Ordering
The "Ordering" top tab is used to order your financial statements, starting with the assurances and specific statements right through to the notes. You are able to simply drag and drop a section to re-order them. Uploaded documents will also appear here so that you can place the documents in the desired place within your financial statements.
📓 Note
Head to our Disclosures article to learn about how to create and link disclosures to your financial statements
Refresh your preview to view any recent changes that you have made by clicking "Refresh preview". Click on the arrow icon to navigate to a specific report. Additionally, you can view your disclosures within the preview. All notes and disclosures will appear within the "Notes to the financial statement" section upon download.
Commentary
Within the "Commentary" top tab you can view and edit the text templates that have been added to your financial statement. Add a new commentary text section by clicking the + icon.
You are able to select from pre-built text options or you can add a custom commentary report, with formatted text, tables and headings. This section uses our AI commentary feature. Examples include the audit or review report, company information or shareholder information, as you see fit.
Your accounting policies can also be added in this section. You can choose a default template or transcribe your current accounting policies into this section. As you draft your assurances and policies, you will see a preview on the right-hand side of the page. You can edit the names of the policies by clicking on the pencil icon alongside the title of the assurance or policy (in the image above, the title is "General Information").
💡 Pro tip
Type the @ sign in any text block to activate Syft's AI commentary. This means that Syft will remember any KPI, account and various other kinds of information typed using our AI commentary and it will update that information for you in future versions of this document.
Financials
Navigate to the "Financials" top tab and click on the statement that you would like to view or edit (either the Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet or Cash Flow Indirect statement).
Click on the Build ( 🔨 ) icon to switch to the statement layout where you can configure the rows to include what you need. You can also change the statement layout by clicking "Assign layout".
Add a note and assign a disclosure to reference in your note by clicking the + icon within the "Notes" column. You can also choose to add a note that will not appear in the notes column by toggling on "Add as unlinked note". Additionally, edit any column by clicking the ellipses icon and reorder the columns by clicking "Reorder".
💡 Pro tip
You can link commentary reports as notes to a statement. This means that accounting policies, for example, can be linked as a note within your financial statement.
Note that any groups that are expanded in the layout will automatically be collapsed in the financial statements. This is to ensure that the financial statements contains only a summarised view.
Your balance sheet and income statement will be pre-populated based on the layout you have selected. The layout can be modified within the Build view or within "Layouts" on Syft. Your cash flow statement and statement of changes in equity cannot be modified and are based on the categories you have set up within the layout used to draft the financial statements.
💡 Pro tip
We recommend creating a new layout in Syft specifically for your financial statements
You can change the names of the statements by navigating to the statement in question and clicking the pencil icon, typing a new name and pressing Enter.
Upload documents
You may want to upload certain PDFs to include in your annual financial statements, such as a governance report, director’s report or remuneration report. This is where you are able to do so.
Navigate to the "Upload documents" top tab and click the "Upload document" button to retrieve files from your PC. If you would like to share the PDFs across all financial statements, toggle on the option to share within the pop up. Once you are happy, click on "Upload." You can toggle on "Include" next to the uploaded document which will include this document in the financial statement export.