• Illustration: FRx Report Manager Creates Report Books

A new module for FRx, a financial reporting application offered by Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS), helps users build report books: collections of financial reports and other documents related to specific events, such as quarterly executive financial reviews. In addition, FRx 6.7 improves integration with Excel and offers new currency translation capabilities. These features will be available to customers of Axapta, Great Plains, and Solomon with the next major revisions of those products, planned for the third quarter of 2004 (for Great Plains and Solomon) and the second quarter of 2005 (for Axapta).

FRx integration with other Microsoft products is proceeding selectively. A Windows SharePoint Services–based report portal is slated for a future FRx release; however, no plans to integrate FRx with SQL Server Reporting Services have yet been announced.

A New Module, Feature Tweaks

FRx was acquired by Great Plains in its Feb. 2000 purchase of FRx Software. The product helps financial analysts and planners build detailed financial reports from data in companies’ general ledger systems and provides facilities for e-mail distribution and Intranet-based report publishing via an FRx report portal called WebPort. Report recipients can drill into and examine data within reports and export report data to other formats (such as Excel tables or OLAP cubes) for more detailed analysis and charting.

FRx is available as a module for the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) Great Plains, Solomon, and Axapta products and is also sold to customers of other financial and accounting systems. The product generates reports from more than 50 general ledger systems (such as Best Software’s MAS 500 and Epicor’s eBackOffice) and has garnered more than 115,000 customers, many of whom use FRx with non-Microsoft accounting systems.

The new release adds a module to FRx and enhances several existing FRx features.

Report Manager, a new module in FRx 6.7, offers a menu-driven user interface for consolidating documents, reports, and other information in structures called report books. This will help financial planners organize various information sources that comprise periodic financial reporting events. For example, a report book created to support a quarterly executive review could contain a Word document consisting of an executive summary and next-quarter outlook, a PowerPoint presentation, and a set of FRx reports containing income statements and balance sheets.

A report book is packaged as a single, proprietary-format file for distribution via e-mail, printing, or posting to a company’s intranet. Users open the report book with the Report Manager, which allows constituent files to be extracted from the package and viewed with their associated client application (Word, for example) or viewed directly using an FRx tool called DrillDown Viewer. DrillDown Viewer recognizes and displays FRx reports and Office documents; documents of other types (such as Adobe PDF files) need to be opened with their respective client application.

(The Report Manager’s user interface is shown in the illustration "FRx Report Manager Creates Report Books".)

Enhanced features in FRx 6.7 include the ability to automatically generate Excel pivot tables based on FRx reports, for more involved analysis and charting. Pivot tables provide a convenient means of summarizing large, complex data sets, such as multiregion sales data or corporate expenditures. Generating pivot tables directly from FRx eliminates a step in previous versions of the product, which required users to export reports to Excel tables first, then build pivot tables from those Excel tables.

FRx 6.7 also supports the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) 2.0, an XML schema standard that specifies how financial statements, such as government-mandated 10-Q filings, can be expressed as XML. Users can export reports in XBRL 2.0 format, which will help them exchange financial information with regulatory and financial organizations that have moved to the XBRL 2.0 standard.

Finally, FRx 6.7 improves currency translation by providing an additional method for calculating average monthly translation rates and supporting calculation of annual average translation rates, giving companies doing business in multiple currencies more flexible and accurate reporting.

Integration Steady, Measured

Because many FRx customers use accounting systems that compete with MBS products such as Great Plains, Microsoft must carefully consider how tightly to couple FRx with MBS products and where best to integrate FRx with mainstream Microsoft technology. Although tighter integration could help the company differentiate products like Great Plains and Solomon and promote adoption of other Microsoft products and technology among FRx customers, it could also alienate the large block of customers whose main interest is straightforward reporting from (and integration with) their non-Microsoft accounting system.

To date, Microsoft has been circumspect in its approach. It continues to market and sell products under the FRx Software trade name and has assured customers of non-Microsoft accounting packages that FRx will continue to support their systems. Nor is FRx biased toward MBS products. Although Microsoft recently announced integration of Axapta with FRx, FRx does not yet connect with Navision’s general ledger (although Navision integration is planned for a future release). Microsoft has also avoided creating schedule dependencies between FRx and other MBS products: compatibility with Axapta, Great Plains, and Solomon is not a criterion for shipping FRx. Availability of FRx with these products will follow a compatibility-testing process carried out by the respective Axapta, Great Plains, and Solomon test teams. This process mirrors that used by other FRx general ledger partners and begins after FRx ships. Completion of FRx compatibility testing, and thus availability of FRx 6.7 with Axapta, Great Plains, and Solomon, is scheduled to coincide with the next major release of those products—in the third quarter of 2004 for Great Plains and Solomon and the second quarter of 2005 for Axapta.

Integration with other Microsoft technologies appears to be an even lower priority. For example, the FRx WebPort is a simple Active Server Pages-based Web site (rather than ASP.NET-based) and FRx uses its own report server (rather than SQL Reporting Services) to schedule and distribute reports. Although plans are on the drawing board to move WebPort functionality onto Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft has announced no plans to integrate SQL Reporting Services for report creation and distribution.

Availability, Editions, and Resources

FRx 6.7 was released Mar. 16, 2004, but its availability is typically determined by individual general ledger vendors and depends on certification of FRx compatibility with their products.

FRx contains several components that can be purchased independently or in one of three bundled editions. The FRx Desktop Edition contains client components that allow users to design reports, launch reports against the general ledger, and view and drill down into reports. FRx Professional adds a report server, which automates report scheduling and distribution, currency translation features, and the WebPort report portal feature. FRx Enterprise includes all components in FRx Desktop and Professional and adds the new Report Manager feature. FRx client components run on Windows XP and Windows 2000 Professional; server components such as the report server and WebPort run on Windows 2003 and Windows 2000 Server.

FRx is typically purchased in conjunction with a general ledger solution. Pricing is based on product configuration and number of licensed users, and is determined by the sales channel offering the general ledger solution. However, Microsoft suggests a list price of US$7,500 for FRx Desktop with four user licenses. Other components can be added individually or purchased via the Professional or Enterprise Editions. For example, Microsoft suggests a price of US$3,500 to add either the report server or WebPort components to an FRx Desktop installation. The new Report Manager feature can be added for US$4,500.

The FRx Software Web site is www.frxsoftware.com.