2021 EFP FAQs

EFP - Frequently Ask Questions

FAQS Frequently Asked Questions

What exactly is Epicor Financial Planner? Epicor Financial Planner or EFP is a cloud-based software designed to streamline and automate your financial reporting, budgeting, planning, KPI management, and consolidation. It is a unified platform for the entire FP&A process. It uses best practice approach by incorporating the latest FP&A trends as features of the software. For example, you get access to a curated personal homepage which gives you a good overview of all key tasks and metrics. You can also do driver-based budgeting, live forecasting, sophisticated business rules automation, among other things. This solution has a modular approach which means when you buy the software, you get a base financial package that comes with various ready-to-use, prepackaged finance logic. You can then decide to extend its capability by adding other available modules like advanced financials, sales budgeting module, HR module, etc. What are the capabilities included in EFP? EFP works as a unified FP&A platform that delivers best practices through pre-packaged finance logic. This includes Cash flow, CAPEX, OPEX, and many more. While EFP offers robust capabilities for reporting & analysis, budgeting & planning, financial forecasting, financial consolidation, and BI capabilities, the choice of which ones you want to deploy is on you. These functions are available upon purchase and you can decide if you want to use them or not. You may also just start with budgeting and planning if you wish and add the reporting functionalities later once you have gotten more comfortable. This FP&A solution has Web and Microsoft Excel as user interfaces giving you a user-friendly solution to work with while allowing you to leverage existing excel skills.

What are the benefits of Using EFP? • Streamline your entire FP&A process to shorten the reports and budgets cycle time • Increase efficiencies and significantly reduce errors • Enforce your chart of accounts (COA) and enable accurate forecasts • Perform what-if analysis to immediately see the impact of business decisions • Automate P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow reporting • Boost security by restricting access to sensitive information • Create and track driver-based plans while considering periodic trends • Compare actuals versus budgets and analyze variances • Drill through underlying transaction details, trend analysis, filters, and multidimensional hierarchies • Reduce time spent on budgeting and foreca vnbgv sting and lead time business to board by 50–90% • Improve team collaboration and communication • Gain full transparency and accountability of the entire process What is the target company size for EFP? EFP comes with various packages suitable for small to large companies wanting to improve their FP&A process. However, it is most ideal for mid-sized to large companies with at least 3 people in their finance team working with FP&A. The solutions can be packaged as a basic or extended version depending on your organization´s needs and resource availability. What are the minimum system requirements of EFP? • Any modern browser (Edge, Safari, Chrome) • Microsoft Excel 2016 or later • 32- or 64-bit version

EFP - Frequently Ask Questions

Does Epicor Financial Planner manage different access level for each user? Yes, you get to decide who gets to access what through its role-based user access. This feature enhances confidentiality of information within the organization. Is it possible to customize report with other metrics (SaaS metrics)? You can use any metric you prefer. All reports are delivered as templates and can be changed. You can also create new reports from scratch using the parameter driven report tool or use the excel drag and drop report wizard. Could we start with just reporting? You can start with Reporting only and then go on with Budgets or Consolidation once you feel content with the reporting implementation. A stepwise approach is recommended. Is it possible to have multiple currencies within the same budget as different line items? Yes, the tool can handle multi-currencies and multi-companies.

• Microsoft Excel must be license activated—trial license is too limited • Minimum physical memory available to Excel

• 3 GB RAM (32-bit) • 6 GB RAM (64-bit) • Windows 10 or later How long does it take to implement?

The actual installation itself takes 5 minutes but for it to be completely implemented, it takes anywhere between 5-90 days depending on what needs to be implemented, the availability of staff resources on the customer´s side, the complexities of the internal process and approval authorities on the client´s side. Needless to say, the implementation of Epicor financial planner is finance team led, not IT team led. The IT team is only needed for the initial install process and some required testing. Majority of the setup will be led by the team expected to know and use it the most – the finance team. What are the collaboration abilities of Epicor Financials Planner? Epicor financial planner comes with several team features. For example, you get a clean summary of tasks, person responsible, and deadlines. This will help the manager have better control and visibility on bottlenecks of the process. You also have an organizational tree where tasks are attached to positions. You can then view, control, or delegate assignments for any temporary or permanent changes to positions. To illustrate, if someone goes on maternity leave, you can simply delegate tasks assigned for that particular person to another. When the person comes back from her leave, you can simply transfer back all tasks. You also have a more laser-focused approval process. You can submit an entire input sheet for approval to your manager. If the approving manager sees something is amiss, he or she can simply highlight that particular area that needs explanation or modification while locking the rest to avoid having to go through the entire sheet again. You also enjoy versioning issues which means everyone in the team can be guaranteed they are working on the latest version at all times. What makes Epicor Financial Planner an improved, unified, and simplified organization management tool? Epicor financial planner automates and unifies management of security, workflow, access, and distribution of tasks and follow-up reports. It is designed to make managing access and tasks effortless. This means editing access control or workflow assignments can be done all in one place making it quick and easy for the administrator to do.

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