The "Formula Wizard"

Most long-time Peer users are familiar with the phrase "Formula Wizard" to describe the tool that allows you to find accounts when building custom graphs or peer groups. In Peer 1, the icon used to a be a little magic wand (I'll bet many of you never even realized that...it took me 2 years to figure it out).The icon for Peer 2's Formula Wizard (FW) is a set of binoculars so now we need a new name for it. Ideas?

Admission: the new FW isn't as comprehensive in some ways as Peer 1 (yes, we've heard from those of you who liked the Simple mode in Peer 1) but it's better in other ways. Bear with the software team as they balance the need to make something very complicated user friendly and comprehensive at the same time.

So, what is the Formula Wizard (FW)? The FW is designed to give Peer users quick access to the most commonly used account codes on the 5300, as well as dozens (hundreds?) of formulas and shortcuts to make your analysis easier. Ok, so how does it work? When you click on the binoculars, you are presented with this screen:

As you can see, it's organized like the 5300 itself. I'll discuss the Loan section in some detail (already highlighted in the above image), and you can extrapolate from there for the Other Assets, Liabilities and Income/Expense sections. At the bottom of this post, I'll cover Ratios & Scoring, Contacts & My Formula(s) (Typo....programmers, please fix!).

As you can see above, when you highlight the main Loan folder, there is a list general loan formulas: loan growth, average loan balance, etc. To drill down into specific areas of the Loan portfolio, highlight the sub-sections. Here is an example from the Real Estate section. (Note, if you're familiar with Schedule A, you know that there are multiple "704" codes...704a, 704b, etc. we've combined them into a704 so you don't have to type them all in. )
If you got to the FW from the custom graphing page, just double click on any account to add it to the Account Selection screen. You'll see it added to the list on the bottom right (where a703 is listed).

Ratios & Scoring: This section contains our world-famous ROM ranking, as well as NCUA's Financial Performance Ratios (FPR), shortcuts for the PCA calculations and some of our favorite productivity & efficiency ratios.

Contacts, Services & Partners: This section contains 2 types of proprietary, non-5300 data that Callahan & Associates collects, as well as information from the CUSO and IT schedules of the 5300. The proprietary data includes 9 personnel titles (ranging from CEO to CLO to CMO) and a dozen supplier relationships (what company the credit union uses for the data processing or home banking platforms for example...new field including mobile banking and RDC will be coming in the next data cycle).

My Formulas: Here is where you can create your own shortcuts. For example, there are 10 accounts that make-up "Equity" and no shortcut (yes, I've added it to the request list). In the meantime, you can add it to your own shortcuts under My Formulas. Now, going forward, all you ever have to type is "Equity" rather than a940+a931+a668+a658+a658a+
a996+a945+a945a+a945b+a602 (Whew!).
One cautionary note: if you create your own formulas or custom graphs, be sure to check all formulas each time NCUA releases new accounts. In the above Equity example, I was helping a client convert their Peer 1 custom displays and we found out they had never updated their formula for equity and were missing accounts added in the last year.

Our analysts review all the accounts before we release each quarter to make sure the same shortcuts reflect any changes in the call report. So, if you use our built-in formulas, we take care of that for you. For example, "Mutual Funds & Common Trusts" were grouped together under a743c until 1Q09. Now they are, respectively, a743d and a743e.