In today’s competitive business environment, budgeting and forecasting are important financial disciplines for business success. The budgeting and forecasting process plays a significant role in the growth of an organization. Calxa makes budgeting and forecasting easier. Calxa helps not-for-profit organizations, small businesses and accountants to save time by providing most accurate, automated and user friendly budgets and cashflow forecasts and some useful reports.
Accurate and Automated Reports
Calxa was founded with the aim of saving time for accountants, small businesses and non-profit organizations in satisfying their reporting and budgeting needs. By linking its software directly to popular accounting software such as MYOB, Xero, and QuickBooks and using smart algorithms, Calxa provides accurate and automated cashflow forecasts and a range of other reports, all designed to be readable to non-accountants. Calxa has a special affinity with non-profit organisations and, right from the start, it has implemented a donation program for the smaller ones who often have the same complex reporting needs of their larger counterparts but lack the resources to manage them.
Calxa automates the production of management reports that are delivered automatically to the user. Being cloudbased, it enables access from anywhere on any device, giving its users the opportunity to co-operate and collaborate on the production of budgets and reports. Its solution for very small businesses, The Invisible Accountant takes the whole process one step further by almost eliminating the need for an app at all. After a simple, 5-minute sign-up process, no more effort is required and the customer gets a bundle of reports delivered automatically to their inbox on their chosen date every month. There’s no need to remember as The Invisible Accountant does all of that for customer.
A Talented team on-board
The CEO and Co-Founder, Mick Devine, has led the company from startup to growth within Australia and New Zealand and now onto the international stage. It was built on the knowledge gained in his original reporting startup but with a desire to do even better than that one. He has assembled a talented team of developers, marketers and customer support people that have consistently delivered not just a great product but has been renowned and recognized for outstanding customer service. There has been a steady stream of awards over the years for innovation, for contributions to the non-profit community and recognition by the accounting industry. Mr. Devine is regularly invited to share his ideas on public platforms.
A Customer-Centric Approach
At Calxa no one has the fear of talking to its customers, of listening to what they have to say. Making lives of customers easy is the purpose of everyone at Calxa, so everyone does make a point of calling customers, of visiting them when they can. Everyone at Calxa believes that the insights they gain from customers are worth every minute.
Making Complex Simple for Customers
Like any journey worth taking, Calxa’s journey has been one of ups and downs. There have been challenges sometimes in finding the right people to join the team – which is why Calxa now has an internationally dispersed team. There were times in the early days when cash flow was tight and Calxa raided the credit card to pay wages. But through it all, the resoundingly positive feedback from customers helped Calxa to stay on the right track and to be persistent to find smarter ways of working and creative ways of getting around its difficulties. There were many technical challenges over the years and sometimes heated discussions in the team on how to solve them, but Calxa was always guided by the principle of making the complex simple for its customers. If that meant it was difficult for its designers and developers, that’s just what had to be done. The outcome had to be something that was easier for the user – no matter how complex the world in which they operated.
User Friendly Reports
In the days before Calxa, spreadsheets ruled the world of budgeting and forecasting. People built complex models, manually entered data from their accounting systems and then prayed that no errors had crept in since the previous month. Calxa brings integrity to the process, collecting data directly from the accounting system. It eliminates time-consuming tasks with smart and easy ways to create budgets and then it automates the process of delivering reports to the end user – reports that don’t need an accounting degree to be understood.
By listening to the feedback from its non-profit customers, considering their suggestions and input, Calxa designed an application that can simplify complexity without compromising integrity and flexibility.
Future Perception
For Calxa, the future is in some ways more of the same – identify the bottlenecks in the budgeting and forecasting process and remove them – but it is also pragmatic about using new technologies and techniques. Calxa is investing heavily in Artificial Intelligence to bring shorter-term forecasts and automated budgets to its users. Calxa sees that budgeting will become a more collaborative process and it will be much easier to involve the whole team in that process. Calxa sees its role as to build the tools to facilitate that collaboration.
Customers Love the Reports
“We have now been using Calxa coming onto 6 years. It still works a treat.” -Trevor McFarlane, Business Manager, Leisure Networks
“I’m a raving fan. The most enjoyable budgeting experience I’ve ever had.” – Joanna Williamson, Owner, Golden Goose Foods Ltd
