Grid Grouping

Before:

After:


When a grid exists as multiple boards, say one per year of account, Packola's Grid Grouping concept lets the user switch between looking at one and looking at all together. The instructions for grouping are subtle, but the screens above show a typical scenario. A title line is copied, here just the currencies, followed by a line from each board in turn, then a total. This is repeated for a selection of the lines on the boards.

Making the Easy Things Trivial

Packola's goal is to make the easy things trivial. Then your attention can focus on what's important.

As much as possible, we make Packola fetch data automatically and safely. Then we give you clear places to put amendments. That leaves you to worry about the significant issues in your figures.

Workflows

A workflow can remind you what you're meant to do next, help you do that task, and let you show that you've done it.

In Packola we've a screen which shows a flow through any number of related steps. You can load the relevant board just by right-clicking on the step. Simple but effective.

Special Cases

Packola has a mechanism for the carbuncle figure. That number which represents a one-off situation and which doesn't fit into the regular calculation. Perhaps its an exchange rate adjustment to cover the recent huge shift in rates. Perhaps its a reserving position which you may or may not want to include in the return.

We call these Special Cases. You can define as many as you want, and then replace different cells with that value. If you change the Special Case, all the related cells are changed. You can put it in an adjustment or a formula by referring to the case's name, not its value.

Find Function

On the toolbar, there's a pair of binoculars which let you Find a number anywhere in the exercise. With a tolerance to allow for rounding errors. It's striking how often certain numbers are copied around.

Getting the Data in

You can enter the data into the yellow Scoped Cells.
You can paste data as well.
But it's preferable to have numbers directly fetched from Accounting or Underwriting Systems. That way you do less work and make fewer mistakes. We mark those cells with a special colour - a blue for Underwriting and a green for Acounting. If they look wrong you know who to check with.