Flatten Arrears

An Excel add-in for the Arrears Listing with Notes export

The report comes out banded — a block per property, premises and tenant, with TOTAL rows, merged cells and a summary at the bottom. Install this and a Smart KWB tab appears on the ribbon; press Flatten Report and you get one row per invoice line on a sheet called Flat, in a couple of seconds.

Download manifest.xml This is the file you sideload. It is tied to this site.

Install it

Pick the one that matches how people here use Excel. Nothing needs administrator rights except the last option.

Excel on the web — quickest

Open any workbook in Excel on the web.
Home → Add-ins → More Add-ins.
My Add-ins tab → Upload My Add-in.
Choose the manifest.xml you downloaded above, then Upload.

The add-in stays available in that browser until the cache is cleared.

Excel on Windows — a shared folder catalogue

Put manifest.xml in a folder on the network and share it, so everyone who needs the add-in can read it — for example \\fileserver\ExcelAddins.
In Excel: File → Options → Trust Center → Trust Center Settings → Trusted Add-in Catalogs.
Paste the folder's UNC path into Catalog Url, press Add catalog, tick Show in Menu, then OK.
Restart Excel. Home → Add-ins → More Add-ins → Shared Folder → Flatten Arrears → Add.

Each person does steps 2–4 once. Updates to the add-in itself arrive on their own — the manifest only points at this site, so the code is always the current one.

Excel on Mac

Quit Excel.
Copy manifest.xml into ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Documents/wef (create the wef folder if it is not there).
Open Excel. Home → Add-ins → My Add-ins → Flatten Arrears.

Everyone at once — Microsoft 365 admin centre

admin.microsoft.com → Settings → Integrated apps → Upload custom apps.
Choose Office Add-in, then upload the manifest file.
Assign it to the people or groups who need it and deploy.

The tab then appears for everyone, on Windows, Mac and the web, with nothing to install locally. Needs a Microsoft 365 administrator.

What it produces

One row per invoice line, fifteen columns:

Col	Header	Where it comes from
A	Property	Column A block header, `(ref)` removed, filled down
B	Property Ref	Hidden column Q; failing that, the `(ref)` in the name
C	Premises	Column B minus its trailing `(ref)` line, filled down
D	Tenant Ref	Hidden column R; failing that, the `(ref)` line in Premises
E	Tenancy Details	First line of column C — the tenant name
F–G	Invoice Date / No	Columns D, E
H–I	Charge Code / Description	Columns F, G
J–K	Period From / To	Columns I, J
L–N	B/Forward, Current, Received	Columns K, L, M
O	Arrears C/Forward	Formula `=L+M-N`, as in the report

TOTAL rows, headers and the CLIENT CHARGE TOTALS / RECOVERABILITY TOTAL sections are dropped. Refs and invoice numbers stay text, so leading zeros survive.

Using it

Flatten Report: Adds or replaces the Flat sheet in the open report. Your file is not changed on disk until you save it.
Flatten to New Workbook: Puts the flat table in a brand new, unsaved workbook and leaves the report exactly as it was.
Save Flat as CSV: Opens the panel and hands you the flat table as a .csv download.
Open Panel: The same three actions with progress and notes, in the side panel.

The add-in finds the report sheet on its own, so it does not matter which sheet is in front. If it cannot find one it says so rather than failing.