spreadsheet professional excel financial planning and budgets south africa
spreadsheet professional excel financial planing and budgets south africa


Accounting Records

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Enterprises often have difficulties in managing and controlling critical mass and important business accounting records.

Copies of the accounting records are widespread throughout the company, proving to be a daunting task to keep track of and control of people accessing confidential information. In addition to this, it is difficult to establish who is working with the most current version of the accounting records.

To overcome this problem, Office Excel 2007 has been combined with other Excel applications such as the Excel Services and also the SharePoint Server (2007). By doing this Excel overcomes problems mentioned above. This ensures better management of information within the enterprise structure.

 
 

 Through the provision of centralized access to accounting records contained in spreadsheets for a specific group, the confidentiality of the data can be protected. This is made possible with features allowing view rights restrictions and making sure that the copy shared is always the most current one.

Excellent Control

The Excel Server control provides more consistency for information sharing and updating within the enterprise. Delivering performance is increased and through automatic refresh functions the latest version of a spreadsheet can be seen.

Contact and sharing through database functionality

Excel has gone one step further to improve access and importation of data into spreadsheets. It is now possible to access data and use it in the spreadsheets without knowing all the data sources. The enterprise IT division can make a set of databases available to the employees, which can be accessed through the Data Connection Library. This makes it possible to use the vital sources and import the required data into specified spreadsheets without passwords.

Accounting records contained in spreadsheets can also be managed through snapshots. Although the snapshot has the same look as the original copy, it only holds the values and format of the original one. Formulas and confidential or restricted properties are hidden. The value of the snapshots view is in sharing information with clients in a secure form without compromising sensitive information. It is also the ideal tool to use in analysing data for the purpose of trend identification and compiling reports.

With the SharePoint Server 2007 an additional benefit is gained in Excel; that of View Item Right, which restricts the execution of files available on the server and access in the snapshot view to hidden values and formulas contained in specific sections of the spreadsheet. This is especially important to protect sensitive information contained in accounting records. It prevents the downloading of a whole spreadsheet by clients. This is an improvement in security and safeguarding of enterprise intellectual property. Even with the restriction in place, interaction is still possible and users can still view the required data through a web browsing facility.

Uploading spreadsheets to share on SharePoint Server 2007

The new version of Excel and the provision for uploading data to the SharePoint Server holds several advantages for the users and the enterprise alike:

  • Secure publishing since Excel Services makes files available - held in the administrator folders. The list of locations where the files are stored is provided to allow SharePoint Server to make it available.
  • Control is maintained when documents are published to the SharePoint Server through access restrictions to parts of sheets within spreadsheets.
  • Simplification of the maintenance for specific data connections through the Data Connection Library is obtained.

Reporting enhanced

Excellent report management is available that enables clients and or colleagues to view specific information contained in the spreadsheets while the company intellectual property is still safeguarded. It is possible to select which cells to publish so that the required information can be shared.

Obtain feedback

After you have created the spreadsheets, they can be forwarded to colleagues for feedback via electronic mail. If you need feedback urgently, you can also make use of the review workflows application available on the SharePoint Server and Excel. To do this, simply select the relevant SharePoint Server workflow in Excel. Tasks are created for all the participating persons and they are notified of the attachments needing review. Once received, they can update their status in the completion form supplied.

If your company makes use of Excel as part of its daily functions, visit the Audit Excel site on a regular basis where Miricle Solutions provides innovative solutions to risks associated with spreadsheets usage, including the sharing of accounting records in Excel spreadsheet formats.


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