Now that you are set up in Brixx, it’s time to start customising your plan. This article will run you through the basics and provide some specific tips for Xero users getting started.


  1. Navigation

  2. Check the opening balance

  3. Create new Sections & Groups

  4. Expanding your model beyond your chart of accounts

  5. Enter your figures


1. Navigation

On the left-hand side is a dark blue panel containing all the components of your plan. This is where you structure everything that goes into your business and choose the level of detail you’d like to model in. 


You’ll start in your dashboard and reports can be accessed through the menu at the top.


Head to this guide for a full breakdown of all the interface elements.


At its simplest, you’ll build a model of your business in the left hand panel, which outputs a forecast into your dashboard and reports in the right panel. 


2. Check the opening balance


A good initial step is to make sure your opening balance is correct. Your opening balance is the starting point of your plan. It’s a snapshot of your balance sheet the minute before your plan starts. Entering numbers here will ensure items like starting cash are set properly.


You can find it by clicking SETTINGS in the top left of your screen. Then click OPENING BALANCE.


Figures like your starting cash, accounts receivable, accounts payable and retained surplus will automatically be pulled from Xero. 


There might be other entries required for the complete picture though. Some opening balance entries are also fed from certain types of components in your plan.


Check our full opening balance guides for how to complete it.



3. Create new Sections & Groups

After plan creation, you may have a large list of items such as expense accounts in one costs section. You are not limited by these sections and groups. They can be reordered, renamed, added to or removed.


Creating new sections and groups will help to organise your plan making it easier to navigate, view and report on. 


You can create a new section by pressing +SECTION at the bottom of the list in the left-hand section panel.



You can create a new group within any section by clicking the +GROUP button at the bottom of the list inside an open section. 


Once you’ve added new sections or groups, you can drag components between them. To move more than one at a time, select the desired components by clicking the tick box to the left of any item.



This will provide you with an option to batch move them to another group.


4. Expanding your model beyond your chart of accounts

Your plan starts with components that match one to one to your income and expense accounts. 


You’ll also have several components representing other areas of your business such as asset purchases, equity and loans. 


As Brixx is a modelling tool, this starting structure is flexible. You aren’t obligated to keep these components matching your chart of accounts one to one, it can be modified to forecast in the level of detail you desire. 


Many of your Xero accounts might have been set up to make historical accounting easier. When it comes to forecasting and modelling future scenarios you might want a different structure. You might want more detail in some areas and less in others. 


For example:

  • Breaking your products/services down into more income components

  • Breaking your salary costs down by individual employee (one employee component per staff member)

  • Breaking assets down into individual equipment purchases


This works because every component has an option to choose a Xero account to match to. So you could have 5 income components all matching to a single 200 Sales account.


In order to achieve the level of detail you want, you can delete, rename and add components as you desire. 


Check out our introduction to what all of the components do in this guide.


Employee detail example:

You want to model the salaries of individual employees so that you can look at the timing of hires you make in the future.


The Xero import starts with Employee components that represent your salary accounts like ‘477 Salaries’.


First, you would select these employee components and delete them. Note: This will not delete any of your Xero actual data from the Brixx plan. This is all stored independently and can’t be deleted. This delete action will only remove the forecast component.


Next, you’d click +ADD COMPONENTS and add a number of employee components equal to how many people you employee (and perhaps the roles you are planning on recruiting for).


Now you are set up to enter individual salaries for each employee and adjust the hiring dates of new employees.You can also group these employees together by team or salary amount too. 


When it comes to your reports, the total of Xero Salary accounts will automatically be matched against the total of all the employee components in your Brixx plan.


5. Enter your figures

If you chose to extrapolate from your historical data, many of your plan components will have data in them already.


Click any of the components on the left hand side to open the forecast for that particular activity. 


You can edit the figures that have been entered there. If you’ve added any new items, they will start blank.


There are several different types of components in Brixx which calculate your figures and populate different areas of your reports. 


Go to our components guide to learn more about how they work and for details on each type.