Snapshot© is an innovative and comprehensive tamper proof and highly automated Reporting Application utilised by several of New Zealand's major hospitals.

Snapshot© has ultimately been designed to satisfy all current and near future Legislative requirements, is totally auditable on all reporting levels and is adaptable to suit all individual Management Reporting styles.

Following are examples that illustrate Snapshot's© ingenuity, functionality and ease of operations.

Hutt Valley DHB

Hutt Valley District Health Board has been a Snapshot© client for over nine years. Each month, a comprehensive set of reports is generated and electronically distributed to over 150 cost centres.

The key operating report is the Financial Statement containing multiple levels of instant "drill down" to GL transactions level. A separate report, sourced from a single template, is generated & distributed to each Cost Centre. Reporting templates are designed and implemented at Hutt Valley DHB by John Fajner with the requirements of individual Cost Centres in mind.

Snapshot© has been implemented in such way so as to allow the "seamless" reporting of any of the three charts of accounts that have historically been used at Hutt Valley DHB. This means that Managers can run reports for any financial year without having to change any major settings

The Snapshot© Report production process at Hutt Valley DHB is controlled by two easy-to-maintain schedules that define what reports are generated and who they are distributed to. The Snapshot© multifunctional and “customer need” driven design templates produce reports customised to individual Cost Centre Manager needs and Executive Management can ultimately control the width and depth of each report’s content.

Hutt Valley’s reports also adopt another unique Snapshot© feature that automatically detects account codes that have been omitted from reports or included more than once.

Monthly Reports Include:

• Statement of Financial Performance (4 report layouts with drill down available to GL transaction level):
• Financial Statement
• Contribution Statement
• Month Financial Spread
• Summarised Statement of Financial Performance
• Customised DHB Fund Financial Statements in summarised & detailed formats
• Public Health Project Code reporting (financial data)
• Statement of Financial Position
• Payroll Employee Detail Report. This report comes in two styles:
• Employee detail by Class, Cost Centre and GL Account
• Employee detail by Class, GL Account and Cost Centre

They both contain actual, budget and variance data for:

• FTEs (Fulltime Time Equivalents)
• Salaries
• Indirect Costs (e.g. Penal and Overtime).  An Indirect Costs detailed breakdown can be viewed at the push of a button.

Further Statistical Reports include:

• Business Plan Summary Report (budget information with drill down to individual account code level)
• Patient Statistics (issued monthly):
• Outpatient Attendances (new and follow-up) with drill down from Service to Clinic level
• Inpatient Service Data (with drill down from Service to Patient Cases Detail) showing:
• Number of cases
• Case weights
• Length of stay
• Average length of stay

Patient Cases Detail shows individual patient information such as Case Number, Length of Stay, Case Weight, Ethnicity, Diagnostic Related Group (DRG), Admission & Discharge Wards, etc. It can be viewed in DRG or patient order.

Tairawhiti DHB

Operating Reports

Helen Steed, Tairawhiti's Finance Manager requires a "push button" Reporting System that is easily maintained by Accounting Staff within the Finance & Administration Department.

A reporting schedule has been set up using Snapshot's© spreadsheet-like Report Editor. Within the schedule, various permutations of Group, Unit & Department have been defined along with the identity of Managers' responsible for reviewing the reports. Snapshot's© uses the schedule to generate & distribute reports and the whole process is actioned by a single mouse click.

Like Hutt Valley Hospital, all Statement of Financial Performance Reports are generated from a single template that uses Snapshot's© unsurpassed mathematical functions to customise headings for the multitude of individual reporting levels.

Managers can access the Reports using Snapshot's© unique Report Browser which itemises all the reports available to that user. Reports are usually opened, viewed at Summary Level and areas of interest instantly drilled down to at account code and transaction levels as required.

Budgeting & Forecasting

Snapshot© has been dramatically utilised to streamline these two time consuming a nd tedious issues to produce advanced and accurate budgets & forecasts:

• A special budgeting/forecasting form has been set up in Snapshot©.  It is similar to the Statement of Financial Performance with the addition of extra columns to show a projected next year budget based on a mathematically calculated forecast to end of current Fiscal Year. The budgeting process starts well in advance of end of Fiscal Year.
• A central table defines various account groups and the rate of CPI applicable as well as a cut-off point for using actual data. Snapshot© forecasts annual values based on the cut-off date. The table is also used to globally enable/disable the budget & forecast review process and individual Managers can be inhibited from carrying out further updates at any point in time.
• When preparation of the Annual Budget commences, Snapshot© accesses the master reporting schedule (set up for Operating Reports) and generates and distributes budgeting & forecasting forms to Managers flagged with budget responsibility.
• Managers then review Department level budgets & forecasts adding manual overrides for items that are exceptions to the mathematically derived values.
• On a periodical basis, Helen Steed globally disables all further updates and uses Snapshot© to consolidate all the budgeting & forecast forms.
• Snapshot's© Ad Hoc Query module can be used to look at consolidated values and decisions made to carry out further reviews or even revise the budgeting & forecasting form layout.
• Once the budget is deemed complete, Snapshot© produces an interface file which is uplifted by Tairawhiti's General Ledger software.
• The most recent values from the Budgeting & Forecasting system are included in the Monthly Statement of Financial Performance Reports sent to Managers.

Not only does the budgeting & forecasting system offer a tightly controlled environment, it has also cut a considerable amount of time, effort and expense to produce an explicitly accurate set of values.

Remittance Advice Faxing

Tairawhiti require automated faxing of Remittance Advices to selected Suppliers.

Snapshot© has an Additional Forms Publishing Module which is used for this process. The Forms Publishing Module allows Tairawhiti to easily design their own remittance advice form and automate faxing as follows:

• After a Creditors Payment run has been completed,Snapshot's© SForms Publisher Module is activated and searches a predetermined folder where the Accounts Payable software has deposited sets of raw data - one for each fax to be sent.
• Tairawhiti has the option to fax all queued remittance advices or just selected documents.
• After transmission, faxes are moved to an archival folder where they can be reviewed on screen, re-faxed or printed.
• Snapshot's© Forms Publisher can be used to publish any type of form (e.g. Statements, Purchase Orders etc). All published forms are archived and available for retrieval, viewing and printing.

Wairarapa DHB

The key report produced at Wairarapa District Health Board, located in Masterton is the Statement of Financial Performance. Masterton have opted for a slightly different approach to Tairawhiti and Hutt and Don French has designed / implemented a report which initially displays the report summarised to a level so that it completely displays on a standard sized screen.

However, within each summary level there are a further four levels: Major Category, Group, Account and Suffix which can be progressively opened by the user clicking on drill down buttons.

The reporting template is very compact with only 13 rows that define the entire report. Snapshot© report formatting mathematics are employed to render data at the various reporting levels by changing font typeface, font size, italics and applying background colour bars. In a generated report, the 13 rows may well expand to thousands of rows - simply achieved by telling Snapshot© to report data by Major Category, Group, Account and Suffix.

All of the above examples have a common requirement: sets of reports need to be generated a nd distributed to Managers responsible for hundreds of Cost Centres. The report generation & distribution process needs to be simple (i.e. single mouse click), robust (ability to audit and trace reported values) and tamper proof (no manual cutting & pasting of values during production or alteration of values whilst viewing reports). By use of Cost Centre and User profiling tables, Snapshot© is able to satisy these needs and at the same time catch reporting exceptions brought about the failure to map new report code in reports.

The Snapshot© systems at each Hospital report from a variety of Databases and Systems. Snapshot© is not restricted to just Financial Reporting and can be used for Statistical & KPI reporting as is the case at Hutt Valley DHB and budgeting in the case of Tairawhiti DHB.