Built for the workflow, not just the feature
Four FP&A jobs Navifia is built around — board packs, model review, model building, and a shared team ribbon.
Refresh the pack, then prove every “as of” and figure still belongs
Who: an FP&A analyst or manager who owns the monthly or board reporting pack — dozens of charts and tables fed by linked Excel schedules.
The pain: month-end still means re-pasting when links aren’t used; even with a live deck, a stale “Q1” in a YTD pack or a leftover KPI is easy to miss the morning it ships.
- Build the deck once with Excel Sync linked shapes (and linked cell text where a KPI sits in a title). Quick sizing sizes tables/charts to your template widths before they leave Excel.
- At close, refresh the model and click Push Updates — every open deck refreshes in one pass. Spot-check status in Excel Links.
- Run Check Period so you see what periods the pack claims (FY26 ≈ FY2026; YTD and QTD stay separate; FY/CY mix is flagged), then Check Numbers for leftover figures (
80%≈0.8). - Stamp Draft during review; Finalize Deck saves a distribution copy with link tags and stamps stripped while the working deck keeps its links for next month. Send Slides exports a subset or the whole pack to PPTX/PDF or Outlook.
Keep review questions on the cell — with evidence and status
Who: a senior analyst handing a model over, or a reviewer chasing assumptions before the pack locks.
The pain: questions live in email; screenshots and source emails live somewhere else; the deck builder never sees what’s still open on the linked workbook.
- Anchor a Thread to the cell — it travels inside the workbook (Custom XML), not a separate inbox, and follows the cell as rows shift.
- Attach evidence on the cell: paste a screenshot, add a link, or drag an Outlook email (or
.msg) onto the pane. - Set status — Open, Pending Review, Pending Info, or Resolved — and filter the pane so unanswered items are obvious.
- Whoever builds the deck sees open threads on linked workbooks in PowerPoint’s standalone Threads pane (message previews), without reopening Excel.
Trace, split, consolidate, and clean — without fighting Excel
Who: a modeller assembling schedules from BUs, cleaning imports, and keeping a multi-sheet pack coherent through the close.
The pain: precedent hunting across sheets, BU files that need one consolidated workbook, period columns that should be separate sheets, and messy imports that burn an afternoon before any analysis starts.
- Formula Audit traces precedents and dependents (including cross-sheet) in a dockable pane; cycle hits on the sheet from the keyboard.
- Consolidate Workbooks pulls every sheet from several BU files into one new workbook (sources opened read-only). Split Sheet breaks a schedule by rows or columns — e.g. per period, or Assets vs Liabilities — with formulas preserved or re-linked.
- Sort Sheets orders tabs chronologically (FY25, Q4 2025, 5m26, scenario tags). Sheet Manager / Index / Export Sheets handle bulk tab ops and hand-offs.
- Batch Clean, text/date tools, Delete Blanks, Smart Fill, and Smart Formatting cycles clear import noise and format models without a Format Cells marathon. Variance & CAGR write the usual FP&A calcs beside the data (with “n.a.” across sign changes).
Roll out one firm ribbon — not once per analyst
Who: an FP&A lead who owns the house template and wants every analyst on the same layouts, elements, shortcuts, and Smart Formatting cycles.
The pain: each person reinvents button names and pin choices, so two people on the same team see different ribbons.
- Drop branded
ContentLayouts.pptxandShapes.pptxinto the templates folder. - In PowerPoint Configure → Settings: use slide previews to pick layouts by sight, rename ribbon labels, pin the layouts and elements people use most, set theme and master.
- In Excel, configure Smart Formatting cycles and preferred shortcuts.
- Export setup (`.navifia.json`) from each add-in; teammates run Import setup once — same ribbon without a setup project.