About Disclosures

Disclosures share non-financial information to provide context for the financials. This information helps investors, lenders and others make the best possible decisions. Sometimes disclosures in a financial statement include additional data, but in many cases, financial statement disclosures are narrative.

Our team has conducted plenty of research to build a tool that speeds up what is typically an arduous and time-consuming process. The Disclosures tool is found within "Financials" > "Fin. Statements" on Syft.

Disclosures on Syft are broken up into different categories that match the accounting equation (assets, liabilities, equity, income and expenses) as well as ‘other’ (such as text-based or Cash Flow disclosures).

In addition, there are also 3 disclosure types:

Time-Based Disclosures: These are used when you want to disclose a current year value as well as a prior year value. These are the most common types of disclosures and therefore are the default. Examples include liability balances, receivables balances, incomes or expenses.
Account-Based Disclosures: These are used when you need to disclose movements in account balances, reconciling from the opening to closing balance. Examples include, Property, Plant & Equipment, Intangible Assets or movements in Provisions.
Text-Based Disclosures: These are intended for disclosures that only have text, such as Going Concern, Financial Risk Management or Related Party transactions.

How to create a disclosure

Setup

Under the "Disclosures" tab you will find the following sub-tabs:

Assets
Liabilities
Equity
Income
Expense
Other

Within these sub-tabs you will find top-tabs at the top of the page denoted as "folders". These folders house different disclosure templates. For example, under "Assets" you will find the following folders (disclosure templates):

💡 Pro Tip

You can use folders to organise your disclosures. We recommend using a new folder for each disclosure eg. a folder for PPE disclosures, a folder for Trade Payables etc.

To create a new assets disclosure, navigate to the "Assets" sub-tab within "Financials" > "Fin. Statements" > "Disclosures". Click the "Add disclosure" button once you've selected the relevant folder or choose to add a new folder first.

From the pop-up page, select a disclosure template and click "Use template", as seen in the image below.

You will then be prompted to specify settings for your disclosure. Select the relevant Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet layouts and click "Next". Choosing the correct layout is important as this informs Syft which categories and totals to make available in the disclosures.

You will then be asked to select the financial period that is applicable to the disclosure. Usually, this will be a financial year, but other options are monthly or quarterly. Now click "Create".

💡 Pro tip

To maintain an audit log, you can’t change the financial period of a disclosure once set. But you can duplicate a disclosure and pick new settings.

You also have the option to start a disclosure from scratch instead of using a template. If you choose to do so, you will have to select one of the 3 disclosure types (either a time, account or text based disclosure).

The process detailed above to create an assets disclosure can be repeated within the other sub-tabs to create a liabilities, equity, income or expense disclosure.

📓 Note

Pre-built templates already have one of the 3 disclosure types chosen (time, account or text based) which cannot be changed.

Edit

To edit disclosures, toggle on Build mode ( 🔨 ). Once Build mode is activated, you can add sources and formats and rearrange categories and rows.

Build mode is very similar to how you would build a ledger in Syft. By selecting "Add Source", you can select accounts, totals or transaction tags to input into your note. You can also add an empty/editable row which is useful if you want to add your own external data into the layout.

Once you have added all of the totals and accounts you would like to see in your disclosure, it is time to begin formatting the data. To do so, begin by clicking "Add Format". This will provide a series of options you can choose to smarten up the disclosure.

The most important format to add are categories, since these will total the data within the category and format the total as such within the disclosures. Other formatting options include groups, equations, headers and spacers. Equations are useful if you need to sum certain items, subtotal groups or calculate a ratio.

📓 Note

Any groups that are expanded will automatically be collapsed in the disclosures. This is to ensure the disclosures are not overly detailed.

To indent rows, edit or delete any account or formatting, you are able to select using the checkboxes on the left-hand side. This functionality is the same as what you would be familiar with on layouts.

💡 Pro tip

You can visit your entity’s transaction list to tag certain transactions so that you can easily determine exactly which transactions are driving movements in your Financial Statements. Once you’ve tagged transactions, Syft will draw on those numbers and automatically create the disclosure for you.

Switching back to View mode ( 🔨 ) will allow you to:

See what the disclosure looks like with figures
Drill down into the underlying transactions by clicking on the number (unless the number has been overridden)
Add additional columns
Add a heading
Add text above or below the table
Hide rows
- If you need to include an extra row for an equation, but do not want to have that row visible in the disclosure, you can click the eye icon that will appear when you hover over the row
Hide columns
- Click on the ellipsis next to the column in question and select "Hide Column on Export"
Override a number for disclosure purposes
- Simply click on the pencil next to the number and type in the new number
- If you would like to return a number to its original value after overriding it, you can click on the icon next to the pencil icon to relink the original value.

Link

Once you've created a disclosure, you will see that it is not linked to any financial statements. Return to the "Fin. Statements" > "Compile" sub-tab to link it.

Open one of your financial statements and click on the "Financials" top tab. You will see a + icon next to each line item where you can link a disclosure.

📓 Note

If you don't have any disclosures to link, you will see a message that says: ‘You don't have any disclosures in the asset section for the period FY 2023. Go to "Disclosures" to start building.’ Once you have built a disclosure for the same period, it will appear here.

After clicking the + icon to add a disclosure, within the pop-up page, you will see your disclosures and their locations. Click on the disclosure you would like to add as a note to one of your statements and click "Confirm".

You can also add a disclosure as an unlinked note so that the disclosure will show up within your financial statement but it will not show up within the notes column of a specific statement.

💡 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.

One of the greatest advantages of using Syft Analytics is the ability to work with transaction-level detail. Syft brings through every single transaction from your underlying accounting provider. So, when you are creating your disclosures at the end of the year, you no longer need to search through your transactions to figure out what is powering a particular movement in your PPE account, for example. Syft does this for you!

We also believe that combining the automation and the transaction level tagging that Syft brings will save an immense amount of time and be of great value for any organisation.