Understanding Solution Reporting and the Excel Templates

Solution analysis within the interface has been designed to enable users to quickly develop alternative modelling scenarios to arrive at increasingly refined outcomes. Users can then extract the results of the forest estate model into more detailed and comprehensive Microsoft Excel valuation and reporting templates.

The reporting templates have been designed to be used across forest estates and to quickly extract and consolidate the solution into a standardised reporting format. Users are free to change and alter the templates as they may require.

The standard types of Microsoft Excel templates that are provisioned by the software cover:

1. Physical forest metrics and measures such as wood flow, age, area and forest growing stock
2. Specialized forest valuation templates of varying degrees of complexity
3. Carbon sequestration templates for reporting changes in forest estate carbon stocks
4. 'Spread-Back' templates for assigning forest value across discreet components of the estate

Blocked VBA Macros

Microsoft has recently introduced an automatic block of VBA macros in Excel workbooks that are sent via email or downloaded from the internet. The automatic macro blocking can be identified by the red Security Risk warning that is visable when a workbook is opened. This warning is shown below.

To enable the macros in the workbook, save the workbook to a directory on your local C: drive and close Microsoft Excel. Navigate to the Excel workbook file using Windows Explorer and then select the file name, and then right-click and select 'Properties '. On the General tab click 'Unblock' and then click 'Apply' followed by 'OK'. The Excel workbook can now be opened and the VBA macros will not be blocked.