Project Summary

We partnered with a major banking institution to modernize and extend a mission-critical legacy application used across their Australian and New Zealand branches. Originally built in Microsoft Excel, the tool facilitated FarmLedger forecasting, loan simulations, and accounting projections for agricultural clients. The system was heavily relied upon by both customers and banking staff for conducting financial assessments, enabling loan decisions, and producing regulatory financial reports.

Over the course of several years, we refactored the legacy tool into a scalable and modern software platform — preserving offline usability while enabling powerful data syncing, report generation, and administrative control. The tool is still actively used today across more than 800 users and has become integral to both customer engagement and internal financial workflows.

Client Context

The bank’s agricultural and rural lending division was dependent on a complex Excel-based solution that had evolved over time. It supported financial modelling for:

• Predicting farm income and expenditure
• Estimating long-term cashflows
• Simulating borrowing scenarios
• Preparing profit and loss statements

The tool, while powerful, had outgrown the limitations of Excel:

• Manual data entry errors were common
• Performance degraded with larger datasets
• Lack of centralized controls made updates slow and inconsistent
• Data was siloed — making integration with CRM or reporting tools difficult

The bank sought a modern, secure, and maintainable replacement — without disrupting existing workflows or losing offline functionality.

Objectives

• Rebuild the legacy Excel tool as a secure desktop application
• Ensure offline usability with database sync to central banking systems
• Enable advanced cashflow forecasting and farm income projections
• Add a configurable loan calculator based on dynamic interest, repayment, and tenure options
• Introduce an admin-only control panel for setting key financial parameters and projections
• Generate financial statements and regulatory reports (e.g., P&L, Cashflow)
• Later evolve the system into a modern web-based application while maintaining backward compatibility

Solution Highlights

Phase 1: Legacy System Reconstruction

We began by re-engineering the Excel workbook into a desktop software tool using Microsoft technologies, keeping the financial formulas and logic intact while vastly improving performance and reliability.

Key modules included:

• Income Entry & Forecasting Engine: Allowed users to input data for various income sources like livestock, crops, leasing, and grants across current and previous years. The tool generated predictive trends for future income using multi-year averages and projection algorithms.
• Expense & Budget Planner: Enabled detailed capture of operational and capital expenses at farm level, with comparison across seasons or business units.
• Loan Simulator: Provided a full-featured loan calculator allowing users to enter loan amounts, interest rates, repayment frequencies, and fees — and receive amortization schedules and payoff timelines.
• Admin-Only Parameters Control Panel: Accessible only to authorized banking staff, this module allowed for dynamic configuration of:
  • Interest rate rules
  • Sector-specific yield assumptions
  • Regional financial modifiers
  • Default tax and depreciation rates
• Offline/Online Mode with Sync Engine: The application supported full offline usage with encrypted local storage, and synced securely with central banking servers when reconnected to the network.

Phase 2: Reporting & Data Integration

To support enterprise analytics and compliance reporting, the application was integrated with:

• SSRS Reports: For generating Profit & Loss, Cashflow, Balance Sheet, and Budget reports in standardized formats
• Power BI Dashboards: Aggregated tool usage and financial data across branches, enabling executives to track portfolio performance and customer engagement
• CRM Integration: The financial summaries produced by the tool could be exported and ingested into custom CRM pipelines, supporting faster lending decisions and compliance audits

Phase 3: Modernization with JavaScript Tech Stack

After four years of successful deployment, we modernized the platform with a full-stack web application using:

• Frontend: React.js + Redux, Tailwind CSS
• Backend API: .NET Core Web API
• Database: SQL Server with EF Core ORM
• Offline Sync: IndexedDB + Service Workers for PWA-style offline functionality
• Security: Azure AD Authentication, role-based access, audit trails
• Deployment: Azure App Service, Docker containers, CI/CD pipelines via GitHub Actions

Both the desktop version and web app continue to co-exist, serving different user groups based on connectivity, access, and operational preferences.

Technology Stack

Outcome & Impact

• Successfully replaced a complex legacy Excel workbook with an enterprise-grade application
• Maintained full offline support across 800+ bank users throughout AU/NZ
• Improved operational efficiency and reduced manual error rates
• Enabled faster loan decisioning and customer onboarding
• Provided reliable integration with Power BI and CRM for insights and forecasting
• Future-proofed the application by transitioning to a modern tech stack without disrupting usage

Client Confidentiality

Due to confidentiality and data protection obligations, all client-specific identifiers have been removed. This case study is a representative overview of the architectural and business challenges addressed.

Conclusion

This project exemplifies our strength in legacy software transformation, enterprise integration, and offline-first financial tooling. By rebuilding a spreadsheet-based business-critical tool into a modern, scalable application, we helped our client enhance productivity, meet regulatory standards, and deliver meaningful value to thousands of internal users and customers — both online and offline.