Introduction to FRx and Forecaster
The next three posts will be quick introductions to the products our team owns. There are four products in total: Microsoft FRx, Microsoft Forecaster, Enterprise Reporting, and Management Reporter. We'll start with FRx and Forecaster since these are the products our team has owned the longest.
Microsoft FRx
FRx focuses on financial reporting for small to medium size businesses and divisions of larger corporations and global enterprises. Direct integrations exist to a variety of general ledgers. There is little to no IT involvement required to get FRx up and running. The most recent public numbers I read stated FRx is licensed by over 130,000 sites and has over 500,000 users. Since FRx has such a tight integration with the general ledger, it automatically understands accounting concepts such as fiscal periods, chart of accounts, various types of balances, variances, posted and unposted transactions, etc. As I once heard one of our partners state, "FRx is the gold standard for financial reporting".
Microsoft Forecaster
Forecaster is a budgeting and planning application that allows companies to build budgets based on specific objectives. These budgets can then be adjusted and modified as the business climate changes. Forecaster is also extremely easy to use. The product can be implemented, training completed, and you can begin building budgets in as little as two weeks. Forecaster includes features for flexible data input screens, human resources budgeting, revenue modeling, capital expenditure planning, expense allocations and adjustments, workflow, reporting, and many others.