After starting the company in January of 2021, we were approached by a number of family offices and other investors with complex accounting requirements and large amounts of historical data. They wanted to come onto our platform immediately. As a result, our work over the past year was focused on the following areas:
Converting Data – Drawing on our past experience, we immediately converted these new clients from selected earlier software systems onto the Forest platform. We refined our techniques for reading old data files and creating new ones that can be read by Forest. We are now able to convert a large number of entities from a new client onto our system overnight.
Improving the User Interface – With a product that delivers as many powerful features as the Forest platform does, it is important to make sure the capabilities do not overwhelm the user. Our clients have many demands on their time and it can become frustrating if the user interface is not intuitive and easy to use. We rose to the challenge in 2021 with releases that made the screens easier to navigate, simplified the keystrokes required, and removed time-consuming bugs. We know Forest is now a better product after all our work and we hope you enjoy those changes.
Completed Enhancements – Significant aspects of the program that were improved over the last 12 months include:
- The ability to set the page orientation of a printed report within ForestView instead of relying on the browser.
- Improved performance in the Reconcile tab in Enter.
- Current account balances are always displayed on Transactions and Reconcile tabs.
- Journal option to allow or disallow duplicate check numbers.
- Numerous small new features.
Client Consulting – We had extensive success in 2021 providing consulting services to clients that enabled them to do a better job with their accounting and reporting. While converting data to our system, we often saw how clients were attempting to perform certain accounting functions and knew there were better, more efficient ways for them to do so. In such cases, we frequently entered into consulting engagements that helped clients learn to do their accounting in ways that resulted in better reporting.
Conclusion – Despite the challenges caused by the Covid pandemic, 2021 was an exciting year for everyone involved in the evolution of the Forest platform. As it looks right now, 2022 is going to be an even more exciting year. Stay tuned!