Tools, Forms & Guides
ANZ Impact™ - Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Can any business customer of ANZ use ANZ Impact™?
A. Yes. ANZ is providing the web-based version of ANZ Impact™ as a complementary offering to its business customers on anz.com.
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Q. If my ANZ Manager has access to ANZ Impact™, how will he/she use the tool to view my business financial information?
A. As you can only save the financial information that you input into ANZ Impact™ to your own computer, your ANZ Manager cannot view this data directly.
As you will most likely be already providing your ANZ Manager with your business financial statements on an annual basis, your ANZ manager will now use ANZ Impact™ to assist him/her to review these, as well as using it to communicate with you about your business's current and future banking and financial needs.
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Q. Does this mean that my business will be required to use ANZ Impact™ to deliver financial data to ANZ in the future?
A. In the future, the ANZ Impact™ initiative will enable ANZ business customers to lodge their financial data electronically with ANZ. This will enable you to engage your Relationship Manager in a more meaningful and timely discussion around your business' financial needs.
For now - your business will still be required to continue to provide signed paper based financial statements to the bank, in accordance with your existing terms and conditions of provision of banking facilities.
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Q. Who can I contact if I need further information or help?
A. We recommend that you refer to the help function (i.e. the 
icon) within the ANZ Impact™ application for any product specific questions that you might have. The ANZ Impact™ Tutorial may also assist you with any questions that you have also relating to your navigation or use of ANZ Impact™.
Alternatively, you can:
- Complete and submit an ANZ Impact™ enquiry form; or
- Contact the ANZ Impact™ Help Desk weekdays on
1800 332 722 between 8.00am and 5.00pm AEST.
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Q. What equipment do I need to run this product?
A. You will need:
- Internet Explorer V5 and higher web browser. ANZ Impact™ is not currently compatible with Netscape web browsers.
- Windows® 95, Windows® 98, Windows® 2000 or NT operating system.
- It is recommended that users operate it on a PC with a Pentium processor and minimum 32 Mb of Ram.
- Users will require a connection to an Internet Service Provider (ISP).
- It is recommended that users have a modem to connect to the Internet of no slower than 28.8 Kbps.
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Q. Does ANZ Impact™ interact with accounting software?
A. In the future, ANZ will be working towards providing you with the capacity to integrate your accounting package data directly with ANZ Impact™. It is expected that this integration capability will be available with most major accounting packages. For Optimist users, you will be unable to upload these files into ANZ Impact™. However in the future, you will have access to a mapping table that will allow this functionality.
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Q. When using ANZ Impact™, how secure is my data?
A. To minimise the risk of unauthorised access and viewing of your data, ANZ has employed the following security measures:
- All data transfers between you and the ANZ Impact™ server are carried out in an encrypted format. ANZ Impact™ natively uses 128-bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption.
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Q. Can you explain a “what if”?
A. The ‘What-if’ function enables a User to project financial performance, based on testing a range of key financial drivers and financial statement scenarios. Performing a ‘what if’ is usually done when attempting to improve specific areas within the business.
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Q. What is the strategy screen?
A. This is the one-page financial summary. ANZ Impact™ calculates all a business' performance measures based on the data that has been input into the system, and also displays profit and loss and balance sheet details.
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Q. What is goal seeking?
A. Goal seeking is a process that allows a user to target a key performance measure. You can then identify relevant strategies that can be adopted with a view to achieve that measure.
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Q. Can you tell me about the graphics application?
A. The graphics application displays the relationship between each performance measure and is an effective method to communicate how each performance measure works.
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Q. What is the loading page?
A. The loading page is where you capture the profit and loss and balance sheet details.
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Q. What is roll forward?
A. Roll forward allows you to prepare an estimate of the following year's budget based on the existing data and a number of basic assumptions, in a few keystrokes, so you can evaluate future outcomes in an instant.
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Q. How does ANZ Impact™ calculate “Funding Surplus/(Requirement)” and how is the cash movement from “what if’s” reconciled?
A. ANZ Impact™ calculates the financial surplus/ (requirement) as the change in Short and Long-Term debt from the Previous to the Current year.
Short-term debt is used as the balancing field for “what if’s”. If Short-term debt becomes negative in the projected year, it means that there is surplus cash. You may decide to reduce debt or re-invest into the business. (note: for re-investing into business, load as positive figure in an appropriate asset account, for debt repayment load figure as negative in an appropriate liability account)
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Q. Is there any restriction on the type of numbers that I can enter into my Balance Sheet or Profit and Loss fields for ANZ Impact™?
A. For any Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss fields, ANZ Impact™ will only accept numeric cell values up to nine characters long. (Decimal places are not accepted), eg. 888,666,888. The application will therefore accept any numeric entries between the values of -999,999,998 and 999,999,998.
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Q. Is there any restriction on the type of ‘What-if’ or ‘Goalseek’ scenarios that I can run in ANZ Impact™?
A. For performing a ‘What-if’ on any financial driver, except Effective Interest Rate or Effective Tax Rate (i.e. the left hand column on the Strategy Page) you will be restricted to inputting numeric values between the range of -998 to +998 or -998% to +998%. Within these parameters, values up to only two decimal places can be entered.
For performing a 'What-If' on the Effective Interest Rate and Effective Tax Rate drivers the parameters are 0% to 150% and 0% to 350% respectively.
For performing a 'Goalseek' on any financial result item (i.e. the right hand column on the Strategy Page) you will be restricted to inputting numeric values between the range of -200 to +200 or -200% to +200% for any ratio or percentage field. For the following cells with 'absolute' values, you are restricted to entering characters within the parameters of -999,999,998 and 999,999,998:
- EBITDA
- Funding Sur(req)
- External Debt
- Valuation
Within the parameters, for all ‘Goalseeks’ values up to only two decimal places can be entered.
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Q. What makes up the amount described as “Miscellaneous Transactions” in the “Profit to Cash” report?
A. “Miscellaneous Transactions” is made up of the movement in the following fields:
- Other CA (Excluding Investments; Loans and Advances and Other Non Operating Current Assets)
- Other NCA (Excluding Intangibles; Non Operating NCA’s and all Loans)
- Other CL (Excluding Tax, Dividend and Loans from Associated Entities)
- Other NCL (Excluding Convertible Notes/Bonds; Redeemable Preference Shares and Other Non Operating NCL's)
- Investments (Excluding Investments; Investments Unquoted and Investments - Group/Assoc Coys)
- And Other Income/Expense from the Profit & Loss (Excluding Profit (Loss) on Asset Sale)
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Q. How does ANZ Impact™ distinguish between interest on short-term and long-term debt?
A. It makes no distinction between interest applied to long term and short term debt, i.e. the effective interest rate is applied to the average of opening and closing short term and long term debt.
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Q. How does ANZ Impact™ deal with a company that has no debt? For instance, when I load my accounts, ANZ Impact™ gives me a cashflow of zero?
A. ANZ Impact™ calculates the financial surplus/requirements as the change in Short and Long-Term debt from the Previous to the Current year. Short-term debt is used as the balancing field for “what if’s”. If Short-term debt becomes negative in the projected year, it means that there is surplus cash. You may decide to reduce debt or model the re-investment of it into the business. (note: for re-investing into the business, load as a positive figure in an appropriate asset account, for debt repayment load figure as negative in an appropriate liability account)
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Q. When I load the numbers into ANZ Impact™ I notice that the Retained Earnings for the current year are calculated for me. How does ANZ Impact™ do this? And can I change this number?
A. ANZ Impact™ calculates the retained earnings for the current year by adding the Change in Retained Earnings from the current year's profit and loss to the retained earnings from the previous year. As for changing the number, yes you can. However, from a data integrity perspective, it is important to remember that retained earnings for the current year should be equal to the retained earnings from last year, plus the profit and loss amount retained.
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Q. The pop-up boxes have 10 lines of detail. What if I have more than 10 items - for example, overheads?
A. ANZ Impact™ is a strategy, scenario analysis and financial reporting and analysis tool. It is designed to provide a brief overview of your business, and to assist you in the strategic financial management of your business. Details such as a list of all overheads may not aid in this process. Therefore, a limit of 10 items of detail has been deliberately set. You should combine similar items into categories (e.g. selling costs).
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Q. What if my company is in the service industry and does not have any COGS?
A. Almost all companies do have a Cost of Generating Services (COGS) figure, although this is not always evident from the profit and loss statement. In order to generate revenue, a company has costs that are directly related to the actual generation of that revenue. In the service industry, this is usually the cost of paying the people that earn the revenue. This amount should be put into the COGS field, not overheads.
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Q. Why does ANZ Impact™ assume that all overheads are variable?
A. From a budgeting perspective, most overheads are neither totally variable nor totally fixed. Instead, most overheads are semi-variable. ANZ Impact™ assumes the overheads are variable - this allows you to easily change the overheads driver to reflect what you expect the overheads to be.
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Q. How can I make more than one change and see the impact? When I make a series of changes, the net change only shows the last change.
A. The net change feature only shows the impact of the last change. You can make multiple changes through goal seeking, accepting the changes and then selecting net change.
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Q. What if my business operates through a trust and has no share capital?
A. Most trusts have beneficiary loan accounts, which are, in effect, the equity of the trust. It may be the practice of your accountant that the beneficiary loan accounts are loaded into the other equity field, and the settled sum into share capital. Extract these in the way that they are normally presented in your financial accounts.
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Q. We calculate ROCE % differently to ANZ Impact™. How do I change the formula for a result?
A. You can't change any ANZ Impact™ calculations. The fact that the calculations cannot be changed ensures that an ANZ Impact™ report can be understood and accepted as being generated using consistent principles by an outside party (e.g. a financial institution).
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Q. How does ANZ Impact™ calculate an accurate cashflow without knowing the depreciation figure?
A. The overheads or COGS loaded into ANZ Impact™ include depreciation. By loading your net fixed assets, depreciation has been taken into account. The depreciation in the profit and loss will be the same as the depreciation in the balance sheet.
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Q. How do I treat inter-company loans, shareholder loans and directors loans?
A. Treatment of these items will depend on what they actually are. For example, a shareholders credit loan would normally be treated as other equity. The following table may offer suggested treatments.
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| Item | Suggested ANZ Impact™ Field |
|---|---|
| Loan from Shareholder | Other Equity |
| Loan to Shareholder | Other Current or Non-Current Asset |
| Loan from Directors | Other Current or Non-Current Liability |
| Loan to Directors | Other Current or Non-Current Asset |
| Loan from Inter-Company Interest Bearing | Short or Long-Term Debt |
| Loan to Inter-Company Interest Bearing | Other Current or Non-Current Asset |
| Loan from Inter-Company Non-Interest Bearing | Other Current or Non-Current Liability |
| Loan to Inter-Company Non-Interest Bearing | Other Current or Non-Current Asset |
ANZ may make any required internal adjustments to the various liability items based on any loan documentation which may govern such loans, or in accordance with ANZ credit assessment policy.
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Copyright Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) 100 Queen Street, Melbourne 3000, ABN 11 005 357 522, 1996-2008.
ANZ's colour blue is a trade mark of ANZ. Any advice does not take into account your personal needs and financial circumstances and you should consider whether it is appropriate for you.
ANZ recommends you read the Product Disclosure Statement and the Financial Services Guide before acquiring the product.