BoardSolvency User Manual

Section 5.1

Why import rather than manual entry

Manual data entry is a reliable way to get started with BoardSolvency — and for many users it remains the right approach, particularly when historical data is being entered for the first time from printed or PDF financial statements. But for ongoing use, importing directly from your accounting system offers significant advantages.

Three reasons to use the import function

Accuracy — figures imported directly from Xero or MYOB exactly match your accounting system. There is no risk of transcription errors, transposed digits, or figures entered in the wrong field.

Speed — a full year's P&L and Balance Sheet can be imported in under two minutes. For organisations monitoring multiple companies across multiple years, this is a significant time saving.

Consistency — imported data uses the same field classifications as your accounting system, making it easier for your accountant to verify the BoardSolvency analysis against the source records.

The import function is available from the main menu under Import Data. It accepts CSV files exported from Xero or MYOB, and Excel XLSX files from QuickBooks or any accounting system that supports Excel export. One file covers one financial year — import each year separately, working from oldest to most recent.

Section 5.2

Supported accounting systems

BoardSolvency Phase 1 import supports the three accounting systems used by the overwhelming majority of Australian businesses.

Xero

Export your Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet reports as CSV files from Xero Reporting. The most common accounting system for Australian SMEs and mid-market companies.

CSV export

MYOB

Export your Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet reports as CSV files from MYOB Reports. Widely used across Australian professional services, retail, and construction sectors.

CSV export

QuickBooks

Export your Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet reports as Excel XLSX files from QuickBooks Reports. Used by many Australian businesses with US parent companies or international operations.

XLSX export

If your company uses a different accounting system — such as Sage, NetSuite, or a bespoke ERP — you can still import data if the system can export to CSV or Excel format. There is no separate "generic" mode to select: the same automatic label recognition applies to any CSV or Excel file, whatever system produced it. Any rows it doesn't recognise are listed clearly in the confirmation message (see Section 5.6) so they can be entered manually instead.

Section 5.3

How to export from Xero — step by step

The following steps produce the two CSV files needed to import a full year of financial data into BoardSolvency from Xero. Your accountant can perform these steps on your behalf if you prefer.

Exporting the Profit & Loss from Xero

Log into Xero and navigate to Accounting in the top menu, then select Reports
Under Financial Statements, select Profit and Loss
Set the date range to your full financial year — for example, 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024 for the FY2024 year
Click Update to generate the report
Click Export in the top right corner and select CSV
Save the file with a clear name — for example CompanyName_PL_FY2024.csv

Exporting the Balance Sheet from Xero

Return to Accounting → Reports
Under Financial Statements, select Balance Sheet
Set the date to the last day of your financial year — for example 30 June 2024
Click Update to generate the report
Click Export and select CSV
Save as CompanyName_BS_FY2024.csv
Repeat both exports for each financial year you wish to import — working from oldest to most recent

Section 5.4

How to export from MYOB

Exporting the Profit & Loss from MYOB

Log into MYOB and navigate to Reports in the left sidebar
Under Profit & Loss, select Profit & Loss Statement
Set the financial year date range and click Run Report
Click Export and select Export to CSV
Save as CompanyName_PL_FY2024.csv

Exporting the Balance Sheet from MYOB

Under Balance Sheet, select Balance Sheet Summary
Set the date to the last day of your financial year
Click Run Report then Export to CSV
Save as CompanyName_BS_FY2024.csv
Repeat for each financial year required, oldest first

Section 5.5

The import process — a short, automatic three-step flow

Once you have your exported files, importing into BoardSolvency is a short, three-step process — deliberately kept simple so it can be done without any training.

Select the company and navigate to Import Data

Open the company you wish to import data for and select Import Data from the hamburger menu.

Select the financial year and choose your file

Choose the year this file covers from the dropdown, then click Choose File and select your exported CSV or XLSX file. A CSV should contain one statement at a time (Profit and Loss, or Balance Sheet — not both combined); an Excel file can contain all three statements as separate sheets in one workbook. Import each report separately if you're using CSV — Profit and Loss first, then Balance Sheet, for the same year.

There is no need to tell BoardSolvency which accounting system the file came from, or which report it is. The import recognises row labels automatically — whichever wording Xero, MYOB, or QuickBooks happens to use.

Click Upload and Import

The figures it recognised are written straight into the company's data for that year, and a message confirms exactly what was imported. There is no separate mapping or confirmation screen to work through — the whole process takes seconds.

Section 5.6

What happens if the cash flow statement is missing or incorrect

One of the most common situations BoardSolvency addresses is the company whose accountant has not prepared a cash flow statement — or has prepared one that is not properly integrated with the P&L and Balance Sheet. This is more common than most directors realise, particularly for smaller companies where cash flow statements are not a statutory requirement.

BoardSolvency's response to a missing or incorrect cash flow statement

When you import a P&L and Balance Sheet — whether or not a cash flow statement exists — BoardSolvency generates the integrated Cash Flow Statement automatically from the two reports you provide.

The operating section of the cash flow statement — net income, depreciation, receivables movement, inventory movement, and accounts payable movement — is calculated entirely from the imported data. No manual entry is required for these fields.

The investing and financing sections — capital expenditure, debt repayments, and dividends — are pre-populated from balance sheet movements where possible, and flagged for review where manual confirmation is needed.

The result is an integrated three-statement analysis that may be more complete and accurate than the cash flow statement your accountant originally prepared — because it is derived directly from the balance sheet movements rather than assembled manually.

A note for accountants reviewing imported data The cash flow statement generated by BoardSolvency uses the indirect method, derived from balance sheet movements between consecutive years. Minor reconciliation differences between the BoardSolvency cash flow and a manually prepared direct-method cash flow statement are normal and expected. The BoardSolvency analysis is designed for director solvency monitoring — not as a replacement for the statutory financial statements prepared by your accountant.

Section 5.6 continued

If something doesn't import — how to fix it yourself

Not every row in every export will be recognised. Accounting systems use slightly different wording, and a business with an unusual chart of accounts may have a line item BoardSolvency has never seen before. This is expected, and it is designed to be fixable by the director alone — without waiting for support, wherever in the world you happen to be at the time.

What happens when a row isn't recognised

BoardSolvency does not silently drop a figure it can't place, and it does not stop the whole import over one unrecognised row. Instead, everything it does recognise is imported immediately, and the confirmation message lists — by name and amount — every row it found a number in but could not match to a field.

For example: "3 row(s) in your file had numbers but were not recognised and were NOT imported: 'Freight Recovery Income' ($45,000); 'Sundry Trading Adjustments' ($3,200)..." — naming the exact label and figure, not a vague error.

Read the confirmation message carefully

It tells you exactly which figures were imported and, if any weren't, exactly which rows were skipped and why — because the wording didn't match anything BoardSolvency recognises.

Enter the skipped figures manually

Open the company's three-statement screen (Chapter 4 covers every field) and enter the missing figure directly into the correct box yourself. This takes moments for one or two rows, and requires no accounting knowledge beyond knowing which line the figure belongs on.

If you're not sure where a figure belongs, ask your accountant

Because the message names the exact row label and amount from your own file, you can forward it directly to your accountant or bookkeeper and ask which BoardSolvency field it belongs in — without needing to describe the problem from memory or take a screenshot.

This is a deliberate design choice. Rather than building an interactive mapping wizard a director would need to learn, BoardSolvency does the automatic matching silently and tells you plainly what's left — and the fix for anything left over is the same simple data entry screen covered in Chapter 4, not a separate tool. A director working from a different city, a different state, or a different time zone from their bookkeeper is never stuck waiting on someone else to unblock an import.

Section 5.7

Import capability — current and future

The BoardSolvency import module is being developed in phases. The current Phase 1 capability covers the formats used by the large majority of Australian businesses. Future phases will extend this capability as the platform develops.

Phase 1 — Available now

CSV and Excel XLSX from Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks, and generic formats

Phase 2 — Under consideration

Digital PDF extraction from machine-generated accounting reports

Not pursued

Image or scanned document import — manual entry remains the reliable alternative

For financial statements that exist only as scanned images or printed documents, manual entry using the field guide in Chapter 4 remains the most reliable approach. The accuracy of the solvency analysis depends entirely on the accuracy of the data entered — and manual entry from a clearly printed document is more reliable than optical character recognition from a photograph or scan.