Software Guide 2003
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Introduction
Congratulations on your subscription to the Finasia Software and Database. You will find the many tools and features of this software allow you to access large amounts of data in an easy, intuitive manner. We welcome all feedback including suggestions for improving the software. Click here to send us your comments. The FINASIA 2003 software is a powerful, easy-to-use interface for accessing and manipulating financial corporate data. It has been designed primarily for analysts and bankers in financial institutions who require complete, timely, and accurate data in a simple, integrated software. The FINASIA 2003 software allows you to easily sort through millions of data points on thousands of companies. The precise geographic coverage is explained further in Appendix I of this Guide, whereas the data content is detailed in Appendix IV, Appendix V, and Appendix VI. To maximize interactivity of this software with other applications, the structure has been built to interact seamlessly with Microsoft Excel. While you may find all your analytical needs met with the Finasia software, you may also wish to utilize some of the more advanced features of Excel for more extensive analysis and technical modeling. The major concepts that will aid in understanding the Finasia application are: - Universe: the universe of companies that you wish to analyze, screen, or review. Given the large database of companies covered, you must first identify your Universe of coverage. The selection of your Universe can be made either by: i) specific company (using company name or ticker code); ii) sector (using sector name or sector code); iii) any combination of exchange, sector, financial criteria, and stock market criteria. e.g. you can filter out any company with assets outside of a given range. - Template: each time you analyze or compare companies, you are in effect creating a new template, or analytical model, which consists of those data points that are relevant to your analysis. You will be prompted to enter those data items, and the criteria for each, as you create your template. Each time you open your template in the future, you will first be requested to identify the Universe for this template; this allows you to create a standard template for use in multiple universes. When you open a saved template, all the data will be refreshed with the most current data from our database server, subject to the criteria you set previously. - WorkFile: depending on the criteria you set in your Universe and your Template, the data itself may change. If you wish to save the precise data points, you must save this as an Excel format file , which you must then access through your regular Excel application. When you save a WorkFile, the data is frozen at that specific point in time, with the precise Universe, Template, and criteria that you have set. If you wish to refresh the data, you must use the <Open Template> command. You should never save the file as the FinasiaMain.xls template as this is used by the software as its initial document template. Upon closing the application, you will be prompted to save your WorkFile. The two main functions in the
software are SCREENING and ANALYSIS. As explained in more detail in the following
section, SCREENING allows you to compare thousands of companies
based on a number of major criteria. This
function is particularly useful in the initial stage of top-down analysis, when
creating aggregate data or for comparative purposes.
The SCREENING function provides access to the entire database of
Financial Statements (Level-1 and Level-2), Stock Price data, Formulas and
Ratios. The ANALYSIS function allows you to perform in-depth reviews of individual companies, based on any number of the hundreds of data points included in the Financial Statements (Level-1 and Level-2), corporate actions, capital structure, company releases, shareholder data, etc. It is important to note that your connection speed and the amount of data you choose to populate your template will have a direct impact on the response time of the application. Please refer to Section 2 for technical requirements and suggestions for improving the performance of the software.
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