Customized, All-in-One Financial Reports for Your Small Business | Consolidation Reporting with Fathom

What’s stopping you from consolidating your financial reports? If you’re like most small business owners, you’re hesitant to take on anything new that seems complex or time-consuming. That’s why at Fleming & Associates, we test-drive financial apps and accounting software, so you don’t have to. We have seen the benefits of what a solid consolidation reporting tool can do for our clients and want to show you how you can bring those benefits to your small business. Fathom is the consolidation reporting tool we currently use with many of our clients. Our clients have found it to be a game-changer, saving them time while propelling their businesses’ growth and profitability.

What is Fathom?

Fathom is an all-in-one financial reporting system that provides sophisticated reports, including analysis and forecasting, yet it is surprisingly intuitive and easy to learn and use. Fathom can provide you with an in-depth assessment of your company’s profitability, growth, cash flow, and other key performance indicators (KPIs) by compiling your data into one easy-to-read report. In addition, it seamlessly integrates with QuickBooks Online and several other accounting platforms popular with small businesses.

The Key Features of Fathom

You need actionable financial insights to make good decisions as a small business owner. With Fathom, you don’t need a financial background to produce the type of reports you need for business planning and forecasting. 

Here are the key features Fathom offers:

• Financial analysis
• Management reporting
• Cash flow forecasting
• Consolidated reporting
  
  

Fathom’s financial analysis feature gives you a clear image of your business performance and a comprehensive breakdown of your numbers. This feature helps you make faster decisions allowing you to get better results in less time. No more boring spreadsheets! Now you can see your company’s financial data on charts and graphs for an easier read and a more interesting visualization of your business’s financial status.

The management reporting tool effortlessly creates custom management reports that let you share your results in a clear, concise, and compelling manner. Fathom can combine your content and comments with data and charts for reports that are truly useful to your team. Fathom provides ready-made management report templates that you can use as-is or for inspiration. You can also pre-schedule the delivery of reports to your inbox and your management team’s inboxes, and report recipients can read the information on any device, online or offline.

Cash flow forecasting allows you to build a month-to-month business road map to plan ahead. Wouldn’t it be nice to have an accurate projection of your P & L and cash flow in the coming months? 

Fathom uses a simple, cash flow forecasting system based on your company’s existing budget that can save you hours over doing it yourself manually. This easy-to-use feature will stop the guesswork and enable you to “know your numbers” month after month. In addition, you will be able to bring greater confidence and faster decision-making to purchasing decisions and negotiations with vendors.

Consolidated reporting combines all of your financial data reports into a single statement. The report integrates the information from your company’s balance sheet, income, and cash flow statements in minutes instead of days. According to Fathom, small business owners save 14 hours each reporting cycle on average.

You can also use Fathom to do some fairly sophisticated financial modeling. Simply change out any of your data variables and instantly assess the results in chart or graph form. This allows you to strategize and play with “What if?” scenarios without wasting precious time.

How Consolidation Reporting Benefits Your Small Business

From our experience, we have found consolidated reporting to be the most helpful feature of Fathom. For example, it saved one of our clients three days of manually consolidating financial statements and allowed them to see their financials for all of their businesses in just one report.

Here are just some of the ways our clients have benefited from consolidation reporting through Fathom:

• Time-savings: Creating multiple reports with just a few keystrokes 
• Clarity: Finally, having a complete and clear picture of their business finances
• Accuracy: Eliminating manual processes improves the accuracy of their financial data
• Timeliness: Clients are always up-to-date with their accounting information
• Consistency: Financial data from different accounting systems, multiple currencies, and various businesses are consolidated into a single, consistent format
• Customization: Reports are customized to focus on the specific metrics that matter to our clients and their funders. Our clients also love how easily they can create professional-looking reports customized with their brand colors and logo.

According to Bloomberg, “Data is the currency of business — and managing your data with intelligence is essential for business success.” With this in mind, the ability to see all your finances in one report through consolidation reporting is worth the small amount of time it takes to get started.

A common question clients ask is whether Fathom’s consolidated financial statements are audit-ready. Fathom is primarily designed to be used as a management reporting tool; therefore, its statements are not audit-ready. However, Fleming and Associates offer pre-audit services to help you identify the items an auditor would need to complete an audit.

Is Fathom Right for Your Business?

You may be convinced that Fathom is a worthwhile consolidation reporting tool but concerned about whether it will integrate with your current systems. Fathom is fully compatible with leading accounting platforms including, QuickBooks Online and Desktop, Excel, MYOB, XERO, and recently added Google Sheets.

At Fleming & Associates, LLC, we apply best practices and effective financial tools to help grow your business. We are constantly studying the newest technologies and software tools to best serve our clients and their companies’ financial needs. Get in touch with us online or email Bonnie Fleming, a caring, virtual CFO with over 20 years of experience, at bonnie@flemingandassoc.com.