Keep up to date with the significant changes we're making to Castaway Cloud.
September/October 2024
Consolidations sneak peak (shhh!): at long last, we've released the consolidations feature for preview. If you'd like a private sneak peak, contact our team
User Storyboards: this is a big one! You can now design your own custom storyboards. Choose a cover page, a disclaimer and dashboards, then add commentary pages to give you maximum flexibility to build board reports, management reports, business plans, improvement programs, advisory insights, updates for investors or financiers ... and much more
Copy Projects: another big one! Copy an existing project with one click. This is great for building out company groups (works very well with consolidations), creating multiple versions of a file for in-depth scenario planning, or setting up a template.
Formatted Excel exports: you can now export formatted Castaway reports to Excel. Fonts, brand colours and lines are all transferred to Excel
Software version number: to make it easy for you to see you are using the latest Castaway release, we've added a version number to the main toolbar
Drivers: we've introduced a Driver setting to tell Castaway whether the Driver is subject to currency adjustment (ie financial) or no (non-financial). This is the first step in a comprehensive package of changes
Inventory Finance element: we adjusted the calculation logic to ensure that finance balances can reach the facility limit in months when repayments are made
Tidying up: we've resolved an issue with linked values being doubled when adding years to a forecast, prevented elements being deleted when they are referred to in element formulas, upgraded the Xero integration (again), resolved a problem with Loans Payable elements that were out of balance when interest was accrued for periodic/intermittent payments and fixed an issue with column headings in variance reports
July/August 2024
Dashboard comparatives: this great new feature lets you add comparison lines to all of the graphs in a dashboard with one click. Choose from Budget, Forecast or both
Custom dashboards in Storyboards: design your own custom dashboards, add them to a storyboard to tailor your visual reporting
Storyboard from/to date range: open a storyboard, set the date range for your data, and let Castaway take care of the rest. With From and To dates, you now have much better control over the graph data you present in storyboards
Upgraded the Xero integration: we refreshed our Xero integration (several times) so we're right up to date with the changes Xero made to their API.
Rename Excel integration files: to give you more flexibility, you can now rename the Excel workbook(s) you have connected to Castaway
MYOB Integrations: the Organisation table now shows the type of MYOB file you are integrating with, including AccountRight and MYOB Business
Clear data from the Actuals Data screen: if you need to refresh your Actuals data, it often makes sense to clear the existing data to give you a fresh start. You can now clear data from a single column, or clear the entire sheet
Invite Customer Support: the Castaway team cannot see or access your project files, so when you need support on a tricky file problem, we may ask you to invite us in to take a look. This button makes the process easier
Performance improvements: we're always working on ways to improve the Castaway experience. With this release, we've made reporting noticeably faster and dramatically improved the calculation speed of element links
Tax Reconciliation report: the Tax Reconciliation report (which reconciles GST/VAT) now shows the Total Liability, the sum of the accrual and payable balances
Drivers in report formulas: we've added the Cashflow, Peak Borrowings and Income Statements to the list of reports where you can use Drivers to calculate report formulas
Profit & Loss variance: elements in the Overheads section now appear in the same order as the chart of accounts
Fixed Asset elements: to provide more clarity, you can now see the Asset Value and Accumulated Depreciation lines in the data grid
Tidying up: this release includes a whole range of small improvements, bug fixes and tidy-ups, including work on graph widgets, chart of accounts display, display of decimals in report formulas, font sizes, integrations and lots more.
April/May 2024
Quickbooks integration: Full integration with Quickbooks Online has been added to Castaway Cloud
Client ID: a new non-compulsory data field, Client ID has been added to the Project Setup screen
Projects Report: the first use of the new Client ID field, the Projects Report is available to Owners and Admins of an Organisation. It lists the number of Projects connected with each Client ID, as well as the total of Projects with no Client ID. The report data can be exported to Excel, making it easy to import into billing systems
Private Projects: a great new feature that allows Owners and Admins to restrict visibility and access to Projects within Organisations. Specific users from within the organisation can be given access. External guests can also be invited, just as they can be for standard (non-private) Projects
Storyboard cover page templates: Organisations can now create a library of cover page templates that can be used for any Storyboard in any Project created within that Organisation. This is a great time saver and ensures brand consistency with almost zero effort
Inventory Finance element: in response to user feedback, we've added a new Inventory Finance element that models the financing of payments to suppliers
Debtor Finance element: the existing Working Capital Finance element has been renamed Debtor Finance. We also expanded the calc model to let the user control how much of Opening/Actual Debtors is recognised as being funded
Retained Earnings calculations: fixed an issue where the balance sheet retained earnings calculation did not update properly in some circumstances
US Balance Sheet format: to meet the layout requirement of US balance sheets, we added a new report formula, Totals Liabilities & Equity below the existing Total Equity row. The new formula is hidden, but can be enable through Edit Rows
Inventory report: a new report that reconciles all of your Inventory elements. It also highlights any inventory element that is out of balance (when the Inventory Method is set to Enter Inventory Balance and the balance falls by more than the total of COGS and inventory write-down, Castaway sends the element out of balance rather than calculating negative purchases)
Investment report: a new report that reconciles Investment elements
Intangible Assets report: a new report that reconciles intangible assets, ie Fixed Asset elements where the Asset Type is set to Intangible Asset. This report is similar in layout to the Fixed Asset report
March 2024
Maintenance advance notification: from time to time we take our servers down for maintenance and upgrades (like we will this Sunday). We've added a banner notification that will display in Castaway for several days before the planned downtime
Offline notification: If you try to log into Castaway Cloud while our servers are down, you will now see a notice screen letting you know what is happening
Variance report negation: we've upgraded the Profit & Loss, Cashflow and Balance Sheet variance reports, reversing the sign of variances for (respectively) expenses, cash outflows and liabilities
Actuals Data screen: we've added a notification that pops up when you successfully Save the Actuals Data screen (just like when you Save elements or Integrations mapping
Dividend element: we added another logic step to the 'Periodic % of NPAT' dividend calculation method to give you more flexibility in modeling
... and fixing a few issues
Refresh of MYOB integration: we fixed an issue where refreshing MYOB data in our integration upset the saved mapping file
Mapping to non-current loans: we fixed a problem where, in specific circumstances, our Integration mapping would not import data for non-current loan balances
Declining Value depreciation: we fixed an issue where the Declining Value depreciation method was not calculating properly
February2024
February has been a month of behind-the-scenes work, laying the groundwork for some big releases in the coming months. As always, bugs and issues get sorted out with highest priority, so we invested the time to fix a few problems
Accruals bug: we fixed a bug where Accruals calculations in Sales and Costs elements were sometimes pulling the wrong values from Actuals data
% Spread calcs: we sorted out a problem that arose with % Spread calculations when the Active Actuals Month was moved forward and backward
Upload forecast data: it's a leap year, so we fixed a tricky little problem that affected the Upload Forecast Data process in projects started in February of any leap year
January 2024
After a big 2023, most of our team took a well-earned break in January. We still managed to squeeze a few improvements out, while working hard on a whole bunch of new goodies for February
Links to Sales Units: we resolved an issue where Link to Sales Units presented a list of elements including the one being modelled. Our circularity controls meant it could not be selected, but it should not have been in the list
Improved COA controls: we added some new rules to the Chart of Accounts to prevent inbuilt sections being deleted
Inventory elements: an Add Formula option was added to the Inventory calc methods to give more flexibility in forecasting month-end Inventory balances
December 2023
Text widget improvements: added Title text styles, vertical alignment, ordered and numbered lists options to text boxes in Dashboards and Storyboards
Revenue Spread invoice option: In Sales elements, a new Revenue Spread invoicing option makes complex milestone billing and payment schedules easy to manage
Working Capital Finance element overhaul: we reworked the Working Capital Finance element to focus it on Debtor Finance. This let us streamline the logic to make the element more powerful and more easier to use
Actuals Data screen: we removed a number of summary lines from the Actuals Data screen to make it easier to navigate and work with ... and we're already planning more radical surgery
Interest-only loans: we built a new logic flow for interest-only loans to remove settings, options and data rows that only apply to principal and interest loans
Integration mapping tooltips (part 2): following our tooltip work in November, we sorted out the other side. In the Integrations mapping screen, you can see the accounts (from Xero, MYOB, or Excel) that are mapped to it. Just hover over the element in the Castaway chart of accounts, click the 3-dot (ellipsis) button and choose 'Mapped To'
November 2023
Integration mapping tooltips: you can now hover over an account number in the Integrations mapping screen and see which Castaway element it is mapped to
CASTAWAY CLOUD LAUNCHES!! Three small words that mean a huge amount. Our incredible team invested tens of thousands of hours, millions of dollars and a huge amount of energy and love into Castaway Cloud. We hope you like it