DPA stands for Digital Platform for Attorneys and is the national organisation that develops and manages digital solutions for lawyers. The platform offers a wide range of applications that simplify the work of lawyers and legal professionals, such as the fast and secure retrieval, exchange and processing of data, electronic litigation and digital communication with courts and institutions.
DPA operates under the mandate and with funding from the Flemish Bar Association (OVB) and the French- and German-speaking Bar Association (OBFG), its two major shareholders. The organisation is not a commercial enterprise in the traditional sense: its mission is not to maximise profits, but to create value for the legal profession.
Mission and vision
DP-A needed a financial report that was suitable for presentation to the board of directors. This report should help to reduce the operational burden on shareholders, allowing them to focus more on strategic business activities. An important part of this was the need for accurate and frequent P&L reporting.
In addition, Power BI dashboards are used to obtain a global overview of the various products and overall performance on the one hand, and to gain insight into the performance of specific products on the other.
At the start of the project, a reporting and technical workshop was organised. This enabled Cloubis to gain a good understanding of DP-A’s needs and expectations. During the reporting workshop, reference was made to the Cloubis finance template, which served as a starting point for further development of the report.
There was only a three-week period between the organisation of the workshops and the presentation of the first report to the board of directors. In order to speed up this first version, it was decided to work with Excel exports from Exact Online. Direct integration with Exact was planned for a later phase.
To ensure smooth collaboration, close contact was maintained between Cloubis and DP-A throughout the project. This allowed the figures in the report to be validated quickly. This made it possible to take immediate action on data quality issues.
The first phase of the project resulted in a financial report in which the P&L, balance sheet and budget were visually displayed in a Power BI dashboard. This led to a dynamic and clear report that was suitable for presentation to the board of directors. In addition to the reporting function, the dashboard also served as a control tool to quickly detect incorrectly posted invoices.
Furthermore, the report contributed to a more accurate setup of cost centre reporting. This resulted in more detailed insight at product level and supported the organisation in drawing up the budget.
