I often get calls from frustrated controllers or accounting managers regarding the problems they have trying to manage several companies accounting processes. When talking to prospects about their processing issues they often voice concerns about their current software not handling multiple company entities and if it does the end user spends way too much time switching between company databases. Or in some instances the end user has to open a different software package altogether to complete transactions. However the biggest complaint that I hear is that they spend hours upon hours trying produce good financial reports for their owners or board members. Most are extracting data into a spreadsheet and then manipulating it into a financial statement that is accurate as possible. There are several solutions to this problem that I will be addressing now and in the future.
With my prospects I always have questions that help me qualify what their solution should be based on their specific business need. I’ll talk about the simplest multi company scenario first. For example, some folks have just a few companies, perhaps the one main processing company and then maybe one or two more that they use to pay owners personal finances or perhaps they need a company to track another small business venture. In this case, a simple solution would be to use the out of the box functionality of Microsoft Dynamics GP available in the Business Essentials Suite.
A more complex scenario would be if I had multiple companies to manage and have to generate each entities financial statements along with a consolidated financial statement. This can be handled very nicely also with Business Essentials and the Microsoft FRx financials report designer that is included with this suite. Since FRx reads your General Ledger data it can save you hours of time each month with the generation of financials with no spreadsheets needed!
Custom Information Services has several existing customers that have many companies they manage very efficiently in one accounting system and one financial report tool; Dynamics GP, Sage PFW and FRx Analytics. Both GP and Sage PFW can handle as many company databases as you need to have. No extra charge; except of course the price of your hardware may go up with a large amount of data! I will talk more about other problems facing multi company processing such as high volume for accounts payable, centralized accounts payable, and document management problems and solutions in future articles.
If you care to comment on the information above or have any questions please feel free to contact me at nphillippi@customis.com.
By Custom Information Services – Texas Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner
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Handling multiple entities has always been a problem in MS Dynamics – Great Plains becuase a single GP database was only designed to handle 1 entity. If you had many entities, you had to have many databases and live with the workability headaches associated with them.
But Biniary Stream Software – a Great Plains solution specialist – has created a solution called Multi-Facility Processing which allows GP to handle MANY entities in 1 GP database. No more logging in and out of 20 databases,no more trying to add a vendor to 20 differenne databases, no more consolidation problems across databases because everything is in 1 GP database.
2 things must be in place for it work. First, all of the entities in the database must have the same year end. Second, if Multi-currency is used, all of the entities must have the same functional / home currency.
Go to http://www.binarystrea.com for more details!
George – Thanks for your comment. I totally agree that the Binary Stream solution is a great product for multi-company and/or intercompany processing. Nancy
We serve the Health Industry and have found the larger healthcare companies, such as long term care (assisted living facilities and skilled nursing facilities), are organized as separate companies for each facility (location), but operate as a single entity. We have found the Multi-Facility product from Binary Stream to be the right software module for this business need.
The combination of a competitive, global environment and mandatory regulatory compliance makes successfully managing your finances one of the biggest challenges you face.
[...] Challenges for Multi Company Processing [...]
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