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Journals and Schedules in Fathom
Journals and Schedules in Fathom

Forecast depreciation, amortization, loan repayments and other Balance Sheet movements with journals and schedules

Updated over a year ago

Contents:

Use journals & schedules to forecast Balance Sheet amounts

Journals allow you to create one off or recurring Balance Sheet movements of the same amount. Schedules allow you to create Balance Sheet movements of differing amounts.

For example, a journal may be used to forecast a one time an owner’s or director’s draw, a dividend payment, the sale of a fixed asset, or the purchase of inventory. A schedule is often used to forecast amortisation, a loan repayment, or depreciation, as the loan interest or depreciation or amortisation amounts change over time.

Each journal or schedule line has at least two accounts associated with it, creating movements in both accounts. The movements amounts are calculated according to the journal entry amount or according to Balance Sheet account value for a schedule.

A journal or schedule may touch any Balance Sheet account; however, in the P&L a journal or schedule may only impact Balance Sheet Derived P&L Accounts (e.g. Loan interest accounts, depreciation expense accounts, etc.).

Multiple schedule lines can be added to an account (e.g. a loan may have a schedule line for collection of repayments and a schedule line for posting interest expenses to an account in the P&L).

💡Pro Tip: If you’re wanting to forecast AR, AP, Unearned/Deferred Revenue, and/or Prepaid Expenses, then this can be done through timing profiles. To forecast tax, you'll need to go to the 'Tax' tab in the 'Forecast Settings'. You can learn more about forecasting tax in the following articles: Withholdings Tax, Consumption/Sales Tax, and Tax Expense accounts.
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Creating a journal

To set up a journal,

  1. Navigate to the Balance Sheet accounts or to the P&L account that requires your journal entry in the main grid
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  2. Click on the cell to open up the preferences side panel
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    ❗Note: If there are microforecasts impacting the account, then you’ll want to be sure to select the ‘Baseline’ for the account to ensure you’re impacting the baseline instead of editing a microforecast
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  3. Select ‘Add a custom journal’.
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  4. You’ll then be asked to fill in the relevant information

    1. Name

    2. Date

    3. Debit Value(s)

    4. Credit Value(s)

    5. Recurring nature
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  5. Once you've filled out the required information, select 'Create journal'

❗Note: Fathom will not allow you to proceed with a journal entry unless the entry is in balance. A red ‘not in balance’ indicator will appear to prompt you to add additional line entries or accounts to the journal or make changes to the current entries.

Schedules in Fathom Forecasting

To create a schedule,

  1. Navigate to the Balance Sheet accounts or to the P&L account that requires your journal entry in the main grid
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  2. Click on the cell to open up the preferences side panel
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    ❗Note: If there are microforecasts impacting the account, then you’ll want to be sure to select the ‘Baseline’ for the account to ensure you’re impacting the baseline instead of editing a microforecast
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  3. Select ‘Add schedule’
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  4. In the menu that opens, you will be asked to select the account to which you need to apply the schedule and the method for calculating the adjustments needed. Depending on the chosen method, you will be asked to input more information. You can choose from the following methods:

    • Constant/Growing: A repeating value that may be increased or decreased each period

    • Straight Line Depreciation: Calculated as (purchase price of an asset - residual value of the asset) / the asset’s useful life

    • % of Opening Balance: Increase or decrease the baseline value of the account by a percentage each month

    • Loan Repayment/Interest Calculation: Input parameters for calculating a principal & interest or interest only repayment of a loan
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      💡 Pro Tip: When creating a loan repayment schedule, you can check the 'Balloon Payment' option to model a large, significant payment at the end of the loan.
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    • Direct Entry: Input values for the schedule
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  5. Once you've filled out the necessary information, select to 'Add schedule'

❗Note: The ‘Loan Repayment/Interest Calculation’ option for a schedule will only be available if you’ve selected a Balance Sheet account classified as Short Term Debt or Long Term Debt and a P&L account classified as a Loan Interest account. You can reclassify accounts in ‘Step 3 - Chart of Accounts’ in the Settings for the entity.

Next steps

Continue the 'Forecast Creation & Setup Workflow' by choosing from one of the next steps below:

What you want to do:

Where to go next:

Track the performance of key metrics throughout your forecast

Quick Metrics

Plan for potential business events & actions

Using Microforecasts

Additional knowledge & common questions:

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