During this morning’s live session, someone shared a great piece of feedback in the poll:
“I wish it was easier to compare trends over time in Finance Analytics.”
I wanted to take a moment to expand on that and show you how you can easily do this using a built-in feature: Snapshots.
🔍 Benefit of Snapshots in Finance Analytics
Snapshots capture your portfolio or key metrics at a specific point in time.
They allow you to “freeze” data so you can later compare how your portfolio or risk profile has changed.
Snapshots are useful for:
- Tracking performance over time
- Validating models
- Understanding the impact of changes in your customer base or credit policies
✅ Key Benefits
- Enable historical comparisons and trend analysis
- Support regulatory or audit requirements by providing a record of past states
- Help identify patterns, improvements, or emerging risks over time
📈 How to Compare Trends Over Time
- Use snapshots taken at different dates to compare changes in your portfolio, risk scores, or other metrics
- Analyze differences between snapshots to identify trends (e.g., improvements in payment behavior or increases in risk)
- Many modules in Finance Analytics (like Portfolio Insight) provide dashboards and reports that visualize these trends for you
Typical Steps:
- Take or access snapshots at regular intervals (e.g., monthly, quarterly)
- Enable your free snapshot upgrade to automatically capture a snapshot of every single report you view—this makes trend analysis even easier
- Export data if needed to compare metrics across snapshots
- Look for patterns such as:
- Rising or falling risk
- Changes in receivables
- Shifts in customer segments
💡 Why Use Snapshots?
- Enable historical comparisons and trend analysis
- Support audit and regulatory needs
- Reveal patterns, improvements, or emerging risks
If you’ve used snapshots before, I’d love to hear how they’ve helped you!
And if you haven’t—this is a great time to start.