I can’t quite believe 6 months have passed since our last “What’s New” post. It’s actually been so long, I don’t remember all the changes made, but there have been many.
These changes can be grouped into 3 broad categories. These categories will also set the tone for much of the coming calendar year.
In addition, we have worked on the following items.
OdataLink Performance Improvements
Performance is one of those things we are constantly monitoring and improving.
Recently, we’ve provisioned additional servers. These can scale up as demand for OdataLink is high, and scale down when demand is low. This will ensure a better experiencing regardless of the time of day you are pulling your data.
When monitoring performance spikes, we noticed they occurred overnight. These peak coincided with both:
- the overnight refresh of those in Australia/New Zealand
- and those in Europe creating reports and dashboards
By provisioning these additional servers, we hope the experience of users in Europe and other parts of the world improves. We also have additional enhancements we will be testing and rolling out to ensure the best possible experience.
Ultimately, we want OdataLink to be the lightest middleman that sits between you and your Xero or MYOB accounting data.
Ease of use enhancements for OdataLink
While building report templates (more on this later), we felt the experience configuring OdataLink was a bit lack lustre. Specifically, the Model screen required quite a bit of scrolling.
The latest update has added Tabs to allow you to navigate through the various options much quicker.
In addition, new options have been added to easily allow all Data Files, Endpoints, IP Addresses or Users. Turning these options ensure that any future entry will automatically be added to the model. It means one less thing needing to be configured.
Downloadable Templates for Xero and MYOB
The end goal for the OdataLink platform is to be a simple connector.
We also want to ensure that those less familiar with Power BI, Excel and Power Query are able to get up and running as quickly as possible.
With that in mind, we are designing templates you can download from our main website and hook up with your data. These templates are not locked in anyway. They can be further configured or refined as needed.
As a starting point, we designed two reconciliation report for Xero.
However, we will not be stopping at these two reports. Our main focus for 2023 is to add many more templates ranging from:
- Profit and Loss
- Balance Sheet
- Trial Balance
- Sales
- Purchases
Keep an eye out on the Report Templates page on our website.
Additional Endpoints for MYOB
A few additional endpoints have been added for MYOB:
- InventoryBuildTransactions
This endpoint provides access to the build items transactions when converting individual components to items. - BalanceSheetSummaryReportTable
This endpoint is similar to the BalanceSheetSummaryReport but provides data in a format more compatible with Tableau, Azure Data Factory and SQL Server Integration Services. - ProfitAndLossSummaryReportTable
This endpoint is similar to the ProfitAndLossSummaryReport but provides data in a format more compatible with Tableau, Azure Data Factory and SQL Server Integration Services.
Additional Endpoints for Xero
A few additional endpoints have been added for Xero:
- JournalsAccrualTable
This endpoint is similar to the JournalsAccrual but provides data in a format more compatible with Tableau, Azure Data Factory and SQL Server Integration Services. - ProfitAndLossTable
This endpoint is similar to the ProfitAndLoss but provides data in a format more compatible with Tableau, Azure Data Factory and SQL Server Integration Services. - BalanceSheetTable
This endpoint is similar to the BalanceSheet but provides data in a format more compatible with Tableau, Azure Data Factory and SQL Server Integration Services. - TrialBalanceTable
This endpoint is similar to the TrialBalance but provides data in a format more compatible with Tableau, Azure Data Factory and SQL Server Integration Services.
Internal Processes
Finally, let’s end with the most boring enhancements.
We’ve been working on our internal processes that reconciles your OdataLink subscription with our CRM and accounting systems.
From December 2022 to January 2023, the main focus was to streamline most of these internal processes to relieve the pressure on the accounting team. This provides one major benefit.
In the next few months, invoicing will be mostly automated. Invoices will be sent out directly from our Accounting Systems (and possibly even downloadable from the OdataLink app). This is in addition to the existing mechanism provided by our payment gateway.