Getting Started

This Quick Start Guide will help you begin creating your own financial models as quickly as possible. As soon as you understand how the software is organized and grasp a few concepts, you will find that creating complex financial models is really not a difficult task at all. This guide is not intended to cover all of the details of the program. Whenever you need a more detailed explanation of some feature or topic, select the appropriate Help button to view context appropriate information and access complete reference documentation.

Getting Started

If you are an experienced spreadsheet user, you know that a spreadsheet can be a convenient and effective tool for solving two dimensional problems. Because of this, many users become adept in defining problems into spreadsheet terms and getting them to work. But complex financial modeling requires a specialized software tool designed specifically for handling multi-dimensional financial problems.

The software is designed specifically to make it easy for you to do this. A number of flexible, visual tools are provided that enable you to create complex layers, activate and de-activate different pieces of the model, provide for alternative scenarios, handle complex dependencies automatically, track all of the individually calculated Financial Objects (FOs) in the model and view, analyze and display your data in a variety of customizable reports and charts.

It's very important for you to stop thinking in spreadsheet terms. It will be far more helpful to your thinking to compare our software to an accounting package. Your focus should be on creating the structure for your financial model. The software is a fully integrated package, with the sophistication to understand that things you do in one area of the system often affect many different line items in the resulting projected financial statements. The software's great strength is handling these dependencies automatically, so you can focus on higher level thinking and analysis. For example, your financial statements will always balance, because the software understands that all your financial transactions eventually affect cash, and so uses cash as your balancing account.