Certinia (previously known as FinancialForce), is the leading Salesforce-native PSA and ERP solution on the Force.com platform. The Certintina Spring ’23 release boasts new features and improvements will make it simpler for customers to execute their business operations digitally and achieve true customer-centricity. We’ll go over the elements that, in the opinion of our Big Bang specialists, are most pertinent to this significant update.
Click here to jump to the Certintina PSA improvements.
Certinia ERP (formerly FinancialForce ERP) improvements
1. Revenue Management
Revenue Recognition Configurability
Thanks to this release, users can configure their company’s revenue recognition process taking currency and revenue stream into consideration to build an overall more dynamic recognition process.
2. Accounts Receivable
Manage Collections
Collecting payments is much easier and less manual in this new version: distribution for customer reminders and statements has been reviewed and the interface for reminder and statements rules has been redesigned to enhance the user experience.
3. Cash and Bank Management
Cash Matching Enhancements
By leveraging more automation in Cash Matching and minimizing human operations, Certinia has improved the reconciliation process. Background cash matching now takes into account journals and negative sales invoice to positive sales invoice scenarios.
Cash Matching LEX
To enable background matching to complete cash matching automatically, users can now link each cash entry line to a particular set of documents. Furthermore, a cash entry line’s Account Reference field now accepts a much larger number of documents.
4. General Ledger
Schedule Period Close Templates
The feature introduced in Winter ’23 was extended by this new release, which allows companies to plan their close option combinations saved in period-end close, minimizing manual work and accelerating the period closing process.
Date Effectivity for GLAs and Dimensions
Certinia (formerly FinancialForce) has introduced improved mechanisms for better management of dimensions and general ledger accounts, incorporating effective dates for GLAs and dimensions. The utilization of posting effective dates offers a validation process to ensure that assigned dimensions for documents are valid, thereby minimizing errors during document posting.
5. Fixed Assets
Manage fixed assets
Journal entries created from Fixed Asset Management are now entirely automated thanks to the addition of a new status for fully-depreciated fixed assets, and improvements brought to the generation and export of depreciation schedule jobs.
6. Planning and Analysis
Planning Versions
This new ability to capture snapshots of budgets, run scenarios and compare different versions lowers operational risk and helps increase revenue.
Planning Multiple Sources
Select and import SObjects (Source Objects) to define and manage additional data sources for budgets, plans, and forecasts. In order to give insights that inform decisions, planners can construct budgets and forecasts with the required data, analysis, and presentation.
Financial Report Builder: Real-Time Reporting for Trial Balance
In order to improve the accuracy of reports and generate genuine business value, Certinia (formerly FinancialForce) has added real-time reporting to its platform. Based on transaction data, users may now generate financial reports in real-time. With this improvement, creating month-end trial balance reports is easier, and financial statement accuracy is improved.
Certinia PS (formerly FinancialForce PSA) Cloud improvements
1. Services CPQ
Create Multiple Expenses
In order to increase the precision of the pricing and costing process, multiple expenses can now be included in a single estimate: users can link a new Estimated Expenses object to an estimate product.
Estimated Expenses tab on an Estimate record page
The new Total Estimated Expenses Amount field on the Opportunity Product object allows the total amount of all projected expenses to be pushed to an opportunity.
Export Estimates
Summarized estimate information can now be exported to be included in statements of work and quotes. An out-of-the-box Output Builder email template as well as leveraging new APIs to integrate with an external document generation tool are two new options that users will be able to use thanks to this release.
The Generate Document button will create a preview of an email using Output Builder.
Example of an Estimate exported using the out-of-the-box Output Builder email template
2. Management
Resource Manager Work Planner
A new Work Planner Lightning page has been created for Resource managers to view and modify all resource and assignment requests, even in large numbers. Certinia (formerly FinancialForce) is working hand in hand with users to propose new improvements in the future in order to replace the Resource and Project Planners.
The Work Planner displays unscheduled work as well: this makes it easier to staff a request as users can view scheduled work simultaneously.
Example of a Work Planner in schedule view which displays unheld Resource Requests and grouping schedules by Resource
The multiple settings that exist for this interface help Resource Managers detect whether resources are correctly allocated. They can make staffing decisions while viewing all the needed contextual information.
Example of Work Planner with project details card
External Calendars Integration
Through interfaces to their external calendar, resources may now see their assigned work and manage it together with other commitments. Both Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar are now fully integrated.
When users create a PTA or assignment in PSA, an event is created and synchronized with the external calendar to keep track of the timeline. Updates and deletions are reflected in external calendars as well.
3. Project Management
Project Team Schedule Enhancements
Improvements brought to the Project Team Schedule component include the ability to update resource allocations week-by-week thanks to the dedicated zoom level, the ability to identify which resources are correctly allocated or under-allocated, and the possibility to view resource requests without an associated schedule.
Gantt Enhancements
In this release, financial fields have been added to the Project Task, Project Task Assignments objects, and Gantt. This way, project managers can consider the financial impact of project plan changes in a more effective manner.
Example of an Estimated Cost displayed on the Task Editor in the Gantt
4. Time Management
PSA Time Entry Component – Days Support
Users now have the ability to capture time entries as days in the PSA Time Entry Lightning component. The system now supports entries as hours (default), days, or dual (hours and days) through resources’ Work Calendars.
5. PS Cloud Advanced Analytics
Project Scheduling Risk Dashboard
The new dashboard PSA Project Scheduling Risk gives project managers and services executives access to more information in order to proactively manage projected risk to schedules across their portfolio. Analytics Studio or an App page can both embed this dashboard.
Users can see a list of active projects that are ranked by risk on the dashboard. Based on weekly estimates versus actual records, the degree of deviation between scheduled and actual hours is used to assess this risk.
The graphic shows historical variation for a maximum of 13 weeks before projecting a trend forecast for a maximum of 13 weeks to contrast with what is planned. Project managers can take action if the prediction is significantly lower or higher than anticipated.
Example of a PSA Project Scheduling Risk Dashboard
