The Console brings financial activity into view alongside the work that creates it. Production uses people, machines and materials. Journeys and deliveries have costs. Inventory has a value. Customer work may create expected income long before payment arrives.

Finance and Planning connects these activities so your team can see what has happened, what is expected and what may happen next. The first stage is to establish your accounts, categories and matching rules. Once those are in place, much of the ongoing work becomes a matter of reviewing what the Console has brought together and reconciling anything that needs attention.

Establish your financial starting point

Add the accounts your company wants to review and check their starting balances. Then import bank transactions using supported OFX or CSV files downloaded from your online banking service.

Review a sample of the imported records, including dates, amounts, currencies, descriptions and accounts. Your bank records represent money that has actually moved.

They provide the basis for reviewing cash activity and actual financial performance.

If your company has several accounts, identify transfers between them. An internal transfer moves money within the business; it should not be treated as new revenue or an external expense.

Set up categories and relationships

Categorise transactions so the Console can distinguish income, expenditure, investment, assets, liabilities and equity. Add more specific categories where they will help your team understand spending and earnings.

Connect transactions to the relevant customers, suppliers or other counterparties where that information is available. Review the initial categorisation and correct exceptions. Consistent categories and relationships make later analysis clearer and reduce the amount of manual work needed each time new records are added.

The aim is to establish a reliable pattern. Your finance team should not have to rebuild its understanding of the same recurring activity every month.

Set expected income and costs

Expected transactions describe money your company anticipates receiving or paying. They may come from customer work, planned production, purchases, journeys or other upcoming activity.

Review the expected amount, date, currency and counterparty. Set up recurring activity where appropriate, and keep expectations current when a plan changes. These records give your team a forward view before the corresponding amount appears in the bank.

Expected transactions and bank transactions have different purposes. One represents an anticipated movement; the other records what actually happened. They should be connected when appropriate, rather than counted as two separate payments or receipts.

Let the routine work connect

Once bank records, categories, relationships and expected activity have been set up, the Console can do much of the routine organising as new information becomes available. Work carried out elsewhere in the business contributes context to the financial view: materials, staff time, machines, inventory, journeys and delivery may all affect the expected cost or return of a job.

That connected view makes finance less dependent on someone reconstructing a job from separate spreadsheets and conversations. Your team can spend more time reviewing the result and less time assembling the information behind it.

The records still need to be kept current. A changed delivery cost, a delayed customer payment or an incorrect category should be reviewed so the picture continues to reflect the business.

Reconcile expectations with reality

After the initial setup, reconciliation becomes one of the main ongoing tasks. As new bank records arrive, review how they relate to expected transactions. Confirm appropriate matches and investigate items that do not agree.

A payment may arrive on a different date, cover more than one expectation or be a different amount from the original plan. In some cases, several bank movements may relate to one expected transaction. Review the underlying records and make the appropriate connection rather than assuming every difference is an error.

This process tells you which expected amounts have been settled, which remain outstanding and where the real financial outcome has moved away from the plan.

See the cost of work

A production job may use materials, staff time, machine capacity and inventory. Dispatch might involve an internal vehicle, fares, fees or an external courier. These activities can be considered alongside the income expected from the work.

Reviewing them together helps managers understand a job’s likely financial effect before every payment has reached the bank. As actual transactions arrive and are reconciled, your team can compare the expected position with what the work ultimately cost or earned.

Inventory records add another perspective. A bank payment shows when money left an account; inventory information helps you understand the materials the company holds and what production may use.

Set budgets and review spending

Budgets let you plan spending for a period and compare it with relevant actual transactions. You can examine a broader company budget or focus on categories and departments.

For an expenditure budget, review outgoing transactions within the budget period that belong to the relevant expenditure categories. Incoming payments and internal transfers should not count as expenditure against it.

Once transactions are categorised consistently, budget review becomes more useful. You can see which areas are responsible for spending, how much of a budget remains and where a result needs investigation.

Explore scenarios

FP&A Studio lets you test possible outcomes before making a commitment. Set a planning period and opening balance, then add or adjust the expected income and costs you want to explore. You can consider current expected transactions alongside theoretical ones and change dates or amounts to see the effect.

For example, you might explore a late customer payment, a higher material cost, a new production run or a delayed purchase. The resulting view helps you discuss possible cash positions and financial outcomes with your team.

Include unpaid expectations from before the planning period when they may still affect future cash. Check which transactions are included and make sure the projected closing cash follows from the opening balance and the movements in the plan.

You can save useful scenarios and prepare a report for review. If a plan becomes a real commitment, its relevant activity can be deployed as expected transactions to follow through reconciliation.

Work across currencies

Set your default currency and the other currencies your company uses. Record the correct currency for each relevant transaction, inventory item and plan.

Exchange rates must be entered and reviewed before amounts in different currencies are combined in one view. A pound amount, a euro amount and a dollar amount cannot be added meaningfully without converting them to a common currency. Check the rate and the date used for the comparison, particularly when reviewing international suppliers, inventory costs or future cash.

Where possible, review both the original currency amount and the converted total so your team understands what the combined figure represents.

Analyse performance

As transactions are imported, categorised and reconciled, the Console gives your team a clearer basis for analysis. You can examine income, costs, profit, margins, cash movement and category breakdowns, then compare actual results with budgets and earlier expectations.

Use the underlying records when a figure needs explaining. A change in costs can be traced through its categories and associated work. A difference between expected and actual cash can be reviewed through outstanding or matched transactions.

This makes financial analysis a continuing view of the business rather than a report assembled from scratch at the end of each period.

Focus on what needs attention

The first setup establishes the accounts, categories, relationships, expectations and currencies your company works with. After that, much of the routine financial picture can develop as the business records work and adds new bank data.

Your team’s role becomes increasingly focused on reconciliation, exceptions and decisions: checking unusual transactions, correcting categories, updating changed expectations and understanding why a result differs from the plan. Keeping those reviews current helps everyone work from a financial picture they can trust.