Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Discount or incentive
Reexamination Certificate
1999-01-28
2001-06-19
Downs, Robert W. (Department: 2165)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Discount or incentive
Reexamination Certificate
active
06249770
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to computerized financial spreading and forecasting and more particularly to a computerized method and system for manipulating historic accounting data and producing financial spreads and forecasts.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The process of determining the operating profitability and cash flow-generating ability of a company's operations requires a great deal of expertise. The existing approach to the process typically consists of a number of primarily manually-driven steps. Present manual methods for determining the profitability and cash flow-generating ability of a company is very inefficient and time consuming. There is a current need for a computerized method and system of automatically highlighting the operating profitability and cash flow-generating ability of a company's operations in a structured and standardized way utilizing a computer program capable of manipulating historic accounting data and producing spreads and forecasts.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is a feature and advantage of the present invention to provide a computerized method and system of financial spreading and forecasting which highlights the operating profitability and cash flow-generating ability of a company's operations.
It is a further feature and advantage of the present invention to provide a structured and standardized way of highlighting the operating profitability of a company utilizing a user-friendly and intuitive computer program capable of manipulating historic accounting data and producing spreads and forecasts.
It is another feature and advantage of the present invention to provide an emerging markets global risk analysis method and system which enables emerging markets users to automatically spread and analyze historical financial statements and to do financial forecasting.
It is an additional feature and advantage of the present invention to provide a computerized method and system for financial spreading and forecasting for use by a financial institution, such as a bank, which allows global data transferability across the global corporate bank
It is a still further feature and advantage of the present invention to provide a computerized method and system for financial spreading and forecasting which presents a standard format when users sign up initially.
It is still another feature and advantage of the present invention to provide a computerized method and system for financial spreading and forecasting which enables a user, such as a business, to make format modifications.
It is another feature and advantage of the present invention to provide a computerized method and system for financial spreading and forecasting in which the modified format is saved to become the standard spread sheet for the business.
It is an additional feature and advantage of the present invention provide a computerized method and system for financial spreading and forecasting which eliminates the need for reprogramming such modification repeatedly.
To achieve the stated and other features, advantages and objects of the present invention, an embodiment of the invention provides a method and system for performing financial spreads and forecasts for an entity, such as a company, utilizing an application program running on a computer, such as a personal computer. The system according to an embodiment of the present invention provides, for example, risk managers, analysts and approvers with a standardized financial analysis, spreading and forecasting tool. The system uses a basic accounting template, so that information can be easily transferred and used throughout a financial institution, and the template can be modified to reflect local accounting practice. Accounts can easily be added to or removed from the basic template. Ratios can be accurately added to present industry or geography characteristics. Using a customization function, businesses can create their own template and reports to present financial information exactly as they wish, without losing the ability to easily transfer the data in usable form throughout the financial institution.
In an embodiment of the present invention, financial statements can be created for economic groups by combining financials of companies within the group. The performance of an individual company can be compared against the performance of an industry or against any other combination of companies. By aggregating or averaging groups of companies, the system can be used to support stress testing. The system also allows users to compare actual performance of a company or group of companies against forecast performance from an analysis done in the previous year. Financial information can be presented in a common sized format and in any currency to facilitate comparisons. To minimize data loading, the system accepts automated downloading from several existing financial institution data sources and systems. Data bridges maximize the ease of inputting data into various debt rating models.
In an embodiment of the present invention, the system receives information about the entity, forecast parameters for the entity, historical account data for the entity, and automatically generates a financial forecast for the entity, based at least in part on the forecast parameters and the historical account data. The information about the entity that is received by the system consists, for example, of a Company ID which uniquely identifies the entity. The entity information received by the system also, includes, for example, the name of the entity and the industry classification for the entity. The information is entered on the system by the user at the computer in response to an automatic prompt for the information by the system. The system automatically displays a company information panel, and the user enters the information about the entity on the company information panel. The forecast parameters for the entity that are received by the system include, for example, last historic year parameters and inflation adjustment parameters. The forecast parameters are likewise entered in the system by the user at the computer in response to an automatic prompt. The system automatically displays a parameters panel, and the user enters the forecast parameters on the forecast parameters panel.
In an embodiment of the present invention, the historical account data for the entity is gathered by the user, for example, by retrieving the data from a database, such as a computer database, storing the data. Alternatively, the historic account data is imported from the database to the system, for example, over a computer network. The historic account data is received by the system, for example, by the user entering the data on one or more input reports of the system, such as an income statement report, a balance sheet report, or an input cash flow report. To facilitate entry of the historic data, the system automatically displays a company window showing the input reports, and the data is entered on the displayed input reports. The system automatically generates one or more calculated reports based at least, in part, on the input data, including, for example, calculated cash flow report, ratios report, and an executive summary report, which the system automatically displays for the user to view.
In an embodiment of the present invention, the system automatically generates a financial forecast for the entity for a pre-determined number of years based at least in part on the historic account data and the forecast parameters. The system automatically forecasts, for example, one or both of all accounts in a current report or individual accounts in a current report. The system also automatically forecasts any one of a number of forecast assumptions, including for example, growth rate of a previous year, growth rate of historic years, compound annual growth rate of historic years, moving average growth rate of a pre-determined number of years, and moving compound annual growth rate of a pre-determined number of years. In generating t
Erwin Austin
Fotheringham Stuart
McGuinness Christian
Citibank N.A.
Downs Robert W.
Kilpatrick & Stockton LLP
Marcou George T.
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