VisualNumbers – a SaaS product for SMEs

VisualNumbers is the budgeting tool for SMEs – developed in-house by xappido, from the first idea to market readiness. Import the chart of accounts straight from bexio, build budgets together as a team, compare scenarios: what many SMEs used to solve laboriously in Excel becomes a guided, traceable process.

The starting point

To this day, many SMEs budget in nested Excel files: missing links, incorrect formulas and no real overview. Anyone working with office software such as bexio will find their accounting there, but no tool for budgeting.

xappido saw an unmet need here – and decided to build a product of its own to close that gap. From the innovation idea through a Design Sprint and a clickable prototype to the MVP, VisualNumbers took shape step by step until it was ready for market. In parallel, xappido built up support, marketing and business development – proof that the company does not only deliver solutions for clients, but can also turn its own innovation into a market-ready product.

The solution

A digital assistant guides you through the entire budgeting process. The chart of accounts is imported directly from your bexio account – with the previous year’s figures if you wish; alternatively, established templates can be read in via Excel import. Individual accounts are activated or deactivated for budgeting with a single click.

Whoever is responsible for the overall budget shares individual accounts or whole account groups with specific team members. Comments are captured through the built-in chat function and questions are settled directly in the app; each person only sees the fields shared with them. In this way VisualNumbers replaces nested Excel files with a transparent, shared process.

Whether on an annual basis or with strong seasonal variation: budget amounts can be distributed across individual months with one click, or summed into an annual figure. The account details function maps projects, products and profit centres within an account – budget figures stay traceable and transparent.

In the scenario builder, strategic questions are played through: What difference does an extra person in sales make? How much room is left for marketing? What happens if a large order that seemed certain falls through? Using templates or their own sliders, SMEs map such scenarios in the budget, analyse the effects and gain planning certainty for the future.

The result

VisualNumbers is on the market and in daily use at SMEs. A recognised need has become a solution that makes budgeting noticeably simpler – and controlling along with it, as a side effect.

Technically, VisualNumbers is a web application built on xappido Nova Core, the portal core. The components and functions in use are continuously updated and checked for security. Customers therefore benefit from an extremely stable solution and regular additions to its feature set.

Planned extensions:

• Automated reconciliation with actual figures from the ERP
• Export of visualisations and automated reports