Faster reporting and budgeting powered by analytics – a raving success

Australian-based events company finds a customisable Financial Statements and Budgeting and Forecasting solution that scales with business growth. 

Fuzzy implemented MYOB Advanced in 2020 and used Microsoft Excel as an add-on for financial reporting and budgeting purposes. However, version control issues and manual processes drove Fuzzy to look for a new financial reporting and budgeting tool.  

Fuzzy needed a flexible and automated solution that integrated with MYOB Advanced seamlessly, so they turned to Phocas’ Financial Statements and Budgeting and Forecasting solution. 

“When we started doing events again in 2022 (after Covid), it became apparent that Excel was insufficient for budgeting. As we grew, budgeting became such a manual and tedious process. I was looking for ways to automate and streamline those processes. There were 10 different versions of a budget, and you couldn't figure out the latest version as people weren't labelling them properly,” explained Daniel Lyons, Finance Manager, Fuzzy. 

Budgeting is no longer a headache 

“The Budgeting and Forecasting tool has allowed us to automate and simplify the process and help us reduce mistakes. In Phocas, you have access to the audit trail, and you can see who’s changed what and who has access to what. It makes the budgeting process a lot smoother,” said Daniel. 

Accessible, automated reports to their parent company 

Fuzzy was partly acquired by a UK-based company that owns 25 event companies. This acquisition brought a larger reporting requirement, as Fuzzy needed to share reports with the UK team. 

“The format the UK team wants for our reports is different from that of our local management.  They’re both interested in similar data but displayed differently. Before Phocas compiling these reports was a very manual and time-consuming process,” explained Daniel. 

“Phocas saved me an enormous amount of time, as we could map our chart of accounts to the UK parent company’s chart of accounts – so now I can produce all my reports in their P&L and balance sheet. I no longer need to export my data and enter it manually in Excel - the complete process has been automated,” explained Daniel. 

A customisable solution 

“Something that differentiated Phocas from other companies was their ability to customise the offering. Phocas offered us the ability to add our ticket sales data into the reporting mix.  There were also other custom databases and reporting that they built in for us,” explained Daniel.

"It’s powerful enough for an accountant to use when they’re doing quite complex workings, but also seems simple enough for a non-accountant to use. If they know what they’re looking for, they can find it. It’s not overly complex, it looks nice, and it’s easy to use"
Daniel Lyons — Finance Manager, Fuzzy

Ease of use 

Phocas’ intuitive and user-friendly solution allowed Fuzzy employees, regardless of job title or skill level, to engage in the financial planning and budgeting process readily. 

“It’s powerful enough for an accountant to use when they’re doing quite complex workings, but also seems simple enough for a non-accountant to use. If they know what they’re looking for, they can find it. It’s not overly complex, it looks nice, and it’s easy to use,” explained Daniel. 

Looking to the future

Fuzzy will continue to encourage employees to self-serve data to make better decisions.  

“Access to data is simpler and more streamlined. Rather than the finance team having to manage every single aspect of reporting, it allows our department managers, production site managers, and event managers to have instant access to the data that is related to what they’re working on. Nothing needs to be extracted and then manipulated. They can access the data they need directly from Phocas,” explained Daniel.