What To Do When Your Systems Cannot Connect to Fathom?

Fathom has fantastic financial visualisation tools to help the decision makers behind businesses drive their performance, plan for the future, and win. The system connects seamlessly to Xero, MYOB, SAGE, Quickbooks, and even Microsoft Excel inputs. 

However, sometimes a business is operated through a system that cannot connect to Fathom automatically. We often see this with inventory based businesses when stock is controlled through a proprietary system, and that system also acts as the accounting software. 

Reports out of the proprietary system often can be hard to comprehend. If such reports can be produced at all.

The owners become frustrated. They want (need) to be in control, but the tool they have cannot perform the job. Fathom can, but it seems the data cannot flow in. 

Where we have encountered such an obstacle we have designed, built & implemented what we call a ‘Data Bridge’ - a piece of code that bridges the gap between the proprietary system and Fathom. 

For instance, the proprietary system may produce a profit and loss and balance sheet, but in a clunky Excel format. The data is there, but it would take all day to organise it the way Fathom requires. 

To solve this the code ‘reads’ the clunky Excel file and organises the data into a format that seamlessly uploads to Fathom. 

One such data bridge we built allowed an agricultural equipment sales company to upload multiple monthly Trial Balance reports. From this came a single Excel file that could be uploaded to Fathom. 

What would have taken hours (even days) to organise now takes just a couple of minutes. With this Fathom came alive. The business gained a clear and timely view of their past and present, allowing them to forecast, plan for the future, inform critical decisions and ultimately win! Best of all, the solution was not cost prohibitive.

Data Bridges can also be built between seemingly disparate systems, either through an Application Programming Interface (API), or through reports they produce. Imagine 3 systems, each with a piece of the puzzle, that only when combined, create the kind of data Fathom needs. 

Ultimately, every Data Bridge is unique. They depend on the systems they connect to, and the business requirements. But at the time of writing, we are yet to encounter a system that we could not somehow connect to Fathom.