Background

Summit Ledger is a leading Fractional Accounting firm based in Toronto, Ontario. The company provides fractional Accounting and Financial services, with a specialty in Manufacturing and Construction. Founded in 1987, Summit Ledger’s key offerings include, but are not limited to, Bookkeeping, Accounts Payable and Receivable, Strategic Financial Planning, Month-End and Year-End closing.

Challenge and Current State

Ledger faces a significant challenge in streamlining and expediting the process of approving journal entries as part of its clients Month-End process. The current system is characterized by inefficiencies, delays, and a lack of transparency, hindering the ability to maintain accurate financial records and make informed business decisions.

Summit Ledger’s existing process is characterized as follows:

• • • Anywhere between 200-300 Journal Entries require monthly analysis and approval.
    • Financial Analysts compile supporting documentation for each Journal Entry, saved in a designated SharePoint folder.
    • Once complete, the supporting documents are packed together and sent to a Manager for approval in an email.
    • The Manager will then either approve the Journal Entry, or requests clarification or adjustments.

Summit Ledger’s existing Journal Entry approval workflow presents several challenges:

• • • The reliance on Email to request Approval has led to several instances of missed requests.
    • The reliance on Email chains makes it difficult to track the status of each Journal Entry.
    • With documents scattered across SharePoint and email, maintaining an audit trail is a challenge.
    • A lack of reporting capability to track important KPIs, such as volume of Journal Entries by category, and Financial Analyst.

To this end, Summit Ledger reached out to Alphabyte for an integrated Power Platform solution to streamline the process of managing and approving Month-End Journal Entries.

Primary Objectives

With these challenges in mind, there were a few must-haves features to be incorporated as part of the solution:

1) Streamlined Journal Entry approval process for improved operational visibility and efficiency.

2) A comprehensive audit trail for each journal entry, encompassing all file attachments and revisions.

3) Stringent, role-based security measures to ensure that only designated personnel can access, create, edit, and approve Journal Entries.

4) Automated reports to facilitate trend analysis, forecasting, progress tracking and error detection.

Solution

The implemented solution included the following components:

1) A PowerApps Application to transform the manual approval processes into an integrated, digitized, automated processes.

2) A Data Storage Solution leveraging the existing SharePoint environment to house and store all journal entry records along with file attachments.

3) A Power Automate workflow to deliver timely notifications when Journal Entries are ready to be reviewed and omnichannel alerts to enhance accountability.

4) A Power BI Reporting Environment providing instant access to key metrics.

1. PowerApps Application

The PowerApps application serves as a one-stop general hub for both Financial Analysts and Managers to manage all operations pertaining to Journal Entries. Reporting has also been embedded directly into the application so that users are not required to navigate between multiple environments.

2. Power Automate

Power Automate workflows have been integrated into the Power App application enriching it with additional features to streamline operations. Some of these features include:

1) Triggering alerts to Microsoft Teams and Outlook for journal entry approval.

2) Scheduled automated tasks to add new recurring journal entries.

3) Mass export of all journal entries data for audit purposes.

3. Power BI Reporting

A summary Power BI report allows users to understand trends and meticulously review existing journal entry data. By connecting directly to the SharePoint lists where the data is stored, the summary reports can update once every 15 minutes to provide near real-time information.

A Success Story

In a transformative move toward efficiency, Summit Ledger successfully implemented Power Apps to automate its Journal Entry approval process.

Leveraging the intuitive capabilities of Microsoft’s Power Platform, Alphabyte designed and deployed a tailored solution that streamlined Summit Ledger’s approval workflow. Summit Ledger now has the foundation to streamline operations and effectively service its clients.

Background

VIM AEC (www.vimaec.com) is an engineering technology firm that has developed a novel method for producing powerful analytics from Revit BIM documents using its proprietary SaaS solution.

Their SaaS platform enables users to export BIM data from Revit and transform it into comprehensive Power BI reports for developers, architects, and engineers. This goes beyond reporting, as users can also ask complex questions of their models, identify issues and anomalies, and conduct LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) analysis.

Challenge

The task of interpreting data from Revit Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a challenging one. It’s further complicated by the need to create a universal model that can adapt to projects of all sizes, from small-scale construction to massive government initiatives with millions of parameters and elements. Moreover, this data is often unstructured and hard to make sense of. To conquer these hurdles, VIM AEC partnered with Alphabyte, to develop a state-of-the-art data model.

Sample Relationship between BIM entities 

An Engineering Problem

Engineers face several challenges when working with their BIM data, including the following questions: 

Parameter Analysis: How can elements and parameters be analyzed across multiple interconnected hierarchy levels, including Instances, Family Types, and Families? 

Data Modeling: How can data be effectively modeled for projects with millions of parameters and elements? 

Technical Analysis: How can data be modelled in a way that can answer technical scenarios such as the following: 

• • • Identifying steel beams with a yield strength over 50 KSI in the basement. 
    • Identifying concrete slabs less than 6 inches thick. 
    • Finding rooms on the third floor with an area less than 100 square feet. 
    • Identifying windows larger than 20 square feet facing south. 
    • Determining electrical panels on the second floor serving loads over 200 amps. 
    • Finding circuits with a voltage drop greater than 5%. 

These complex challenges required a sophisticated data model capable of navigating interrelated data hierarchies and relationships.

Enterprise Solution

To take on the challenge, we partnered with VIM’s engineers to develop an enterprise-grade Data Model using Azure SQL Server and Power BI. 

A segment of the Data Model we built. 

Our Data Model consolidated data across numerous BIM entities from the Revit API, including the following: 

• • • Parameter 
    • Family 
    • Family Type 
    • Element 
    • Compound Structure 
    • System 
    • View 
    • Geometry 
    • Host 
    • Level 
    • Phase 
    • Room 
    • Work Plane 
    • Work set 
    • Material 

Data Model Features 

The data model we built included several key features: 

• • • Data Analysis: Capable of answering complex technical questions about how various instances and parameters relate to each other. 
    • Scalability: Structured to handle extremely large projects with millions of parameters. 
    • Data Integration: Seamlessly integrates diverse data types from Revit, consolidating them into a unified model for easier analysis 

The data model supported the development of multiple reports, including: 

Electrical QuickView: Analyzes the electrical components of Revit models. (Report) 

Structural QuickView: Explores the structural elements of Revit models. (Report) 

Architectural QuickView: Provides a thorough summary of the architectural content of Revit models. (Report) 

A Success Story

The implementation of the data model has been a game-changer for hundreds of VIM AEC end-users. It unlocked new analytical capabilities which have provided the AEC end-users with valuable insights that were previously unattainable.  

This case study exemplifies how Alphabyte’s expertise in data modeling and analytics can drive significant advancements in the AEC sector, ensuring that software companies and Engineering Firms alike can utilize the Microsoft Stack to its fullest capabilities. 

Overview

Data Warehousing through API Integration

Background

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