Every business has accounting, tax, and other financial needs, and you most likely use software to handle those needs. With tax time possibly coming up for you, and with employees’ personal taxes due by the end of April, this is the perfect time of year to consider how your software solutions affect your taxes.
Topics: ERP, depreciation calculations, accounting, enterprise resource planning, taxes, tax laws, john shepperson, oates co, financial software
Today, business partners work together from multiple continents, spanning multiple time zones – facing multiple challenges. This is especially true when it comes to accounts payable and invoicing. In the past, working with a legacy accounting system was perfectly acceptable and certainly quite common. Now, however, legacy accounting systems that are not scalable, interconnected, and without cloud access are no longer going to cut it for a company that wants to compete in the current economy.
Topics: automation, 100 ERP, accounting, legacy systems, Sage 100 ERP, john shepperson, oates co, accounts payable, duplicate entries, double billing, scalable
Spending time on business analysis will enable you to make better plans for the future of your business. The planning cycle starts with a goal of where to go, an idea of how to get there, and a method for measuring progress. Next comes evaluating the growth, asking what enabled progress, and determining what needs to change.
Topics: Sage, accounting, enterprise resource planning, john shepperson, oates co, credit policy, work papers, roll forward, schedule, debit, reconciliation, month end
As your business has grown, it’s getting more difficult to generate timely reports on budgets and expenses and/or to align these categories with ongoing projects.
In the past, you’ve spent way too much time searching for and gathering much needed data and relevant information. Multiple open windows led you to more windows and separate programs like Excel and Word. Sometimes you have to open Outlook too, as you need to search your emails to find the latest information about the warranty, serial number, or other parts information for a broken piece of equipment.
Topics: ERP, Sage, accounting, enterprise resource planning, Sage 100, Sage 100 ERP, john shepperson, oates co, distribution, real time, parts inventory, reduce costs
What is one of the biggest items on your balance sheet? Your fixed assets. Did you know that you could identify potential savings among your fixed assets through a first-rate fixed asset accounting system?
Topics: depreciation calculations, fixed assets, compliance, fixed asset accounting, accounting, john shepperson, oates co, regulatory compliance
Do you have a Sage enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and need some help learning about it? Obviously you could go to your Sage consultant for help, but if that’s not an option, you should consider going to the source: Sage itself. Sage has a whole section of their website dedicated to teaching Sage; known as Sage University, it allows you to participate in trainings of your choice at any time. Working in a business, you’re busy – training is important, but you can’t leave your other tasks unfinished. With Sage University, you have the option to use real-time webcasts in virtual classrooms, but you can also watch pre-recorded training sessions whenever it fits your schedule.
Sage University offers training on 19 of their products, including (but not limited to):
Topics: ERP, Sage, MAS 500, fixed assets, Sage 500, MAS 90, MAS 200, accounting, oates and company, enterprise resource planning, software, crm, Sage 100, X3, john shepperson, Accpac, sage university, networking, sage summit, sage 300, hrms
The base – that is, out of the box – version of QuickBooks is for financial/accounting only – you have to purchase industry specific versions for manufacturing, wholesale, professional service firms, contractors, non-profit entities, and retailers. QuickBooks is best for very small companies, supporting only 1-5 active users with their general accounting needs.
Sage ERP X3, on the other hand, supports all those things right out of the box – it covers discrete, process, and mixed mode manufacturing, advanced financials, wholesale distribution, contractors, etc. – all without purchasing additional software. Its functionality extends from accounting to inventory control, material resource planning, shop floor control, supply chain management, and even human resources. It is also more flexible in terms of size capabilities: it is best suited for 50-1,500 employees, all of whom can be working in the system concurrently.
Topics: oates and co, sage erp x3, accounting, enterprise resource planning, john shepperson, versus, financial software, quickbooks versus sage erp x3, windows platform, quickbooks
In a previous post, we discussed some signs that might indicate your need for an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. We said that if you have these issues, it’s probably time for new software:
Our last post asked questions in each of these areas to give you an idea if the response to those indicators was “yes.” Today we’ll talk about how an ERP system will fix those issues.
Each of your processes uses different software
If your accounting department uses a different system than your sales department and both your accounting and sales departments use a different system than your warehouse, you’re doing too much work. In addition, when departments are operated separately from each other, their data may not match, which could affect everything from payroll to the marketing budget to inventory management.
An ERP system has one database that integrates all the data from all the departments and keeps it in a centralized location. Integrated data means several things: more accessible, more accurate, and more up-to-date data than was ever possible before; in addition, your employees will be able to make better decisions more quickly, which leads to higher productivity.
Statistics about your business are not easily accessible
With your current system, key performance indicators, like sales-to-date or average sales margins, take a lot of effort to find. The ERP system’s database gives you and your employees immediate access to all available data. The data, being real-time, offers a current, holistic view of business processes and key performance indicators.
And there’s more: an ERP system can automate reports, so if you need a daily report about completed transactions, the software can create one for you, automatically, every day – and then send it to you in the medium of your choice.
Your accounting tasks seem interminable
Anything being paper-based in your accounting department is a red flag that you need a new system. Paper-based items required manual entry into different systems, which is a huge waste of time when an ERP system could do the job instantaneously. The need for cross-posting, re-typing, reconciling, and compiling data will be gone, along with the high levels of human error that manual data entry is prone to.
Your customer service is suffering
One of the biggest challenges that your growing company will face is inventory management. Learning how to order and stock product so that you have enough is difficult to do when you’re gaining new customers all the time. If your sales, inventory, and customer data are maintained in individual systems, your numbers could easily be thrown off.
An ERP system, on the other hand, allows staff in all departments to have access to the same information. Therefore, an employee in sales can view what inventory is available before he/she promises an order; customer service employees will be able to answer questions without consulting another department.
Best of all, the system automatically updates itself, so when an order is taken, the inventory number immediately refreshes to show current available inventory.
Your Information Technology team is stressed out
If your information technology team is bogged down with maintaining multiple systems, an ERP system will greatly ease the burden. Each team member will be supported by the other members because they all need know only one system, and
So if you found yourself nodding along when you read the reasons that your business should get an ERP system, and you like how an ERP system can fix those problems, contact Oates & Company today to get started!
Topics: ERP, ERP implementation, accounting, enterprise resource planning, john shepperson, do i need an erp, oates co, statistics, customer service, it team, checklist
Do you need new accounting software for your business? Now is the time to invest in the Sage ERP X3 system. Businesses with complex accounting needs can truly benefit from the way that enterprise resource planning systems automate many of the processes that were being done manually in the past. Tech Republic, which is an online resource for information technology professionals, says that using a system like Sage ERP X3
Topics: ERP, oates and co, Sage, automation, sage erp x3, accounting, implementation, accounting software, tax
Multi-site medical practices have unique challenges when it comes to accounting. Because services are spread out over several sites as well as several physicians, it is necessary to capture the costs and revenues in a timely manner. Capturing this information is only the first step, however. What comes next – allocating it to the correct accounts and departments – can often be the real challenge.
Revenue allocation for multi-site, multi-physician practices can be done in a number of different ways. When collecting the revenue, it is very important to have it assigned to the site as well as to the physician that was responsible for generating the income. The accounting software must be able to assign the revenue no matter where the doctor is working when he charges the fee. In many practices with more than one site, doctors may, for example, work two days a week at one location and three days a week at another. Each site will need to be capable of correctly accounting for that doctor's work and revenue generated regardless of where the work was performed.
Cost centers help when dealing with multi-site practices. A cost center will track expenses for each location and each physician that is part of the medical practice. Overhead costs for each location can vary greatly and cost centers will clearly let the partners of a multi-site practice know where the costs are being generated and if they are in line with expectations. For example, if one site's costs are considerably higher than another site’s for any reason, the administrator will have the information to check into the problem.
Some expenses affect single locations – for example, a facility that handles x-rays would need to purchase x-ray equipment and hire an x-ray technician, whereas another facility would not – and some expenses affect all the locations of a medical practice – such as software or tax preparation. Determining what these costs are and allocating them to the correct site is important.
When a medical practice has the correct data from its multiple sites, it becomes easy to create a realistic budget based on the costs of the previous year. An accounting system should be used to collect all the information from each site and integrate it into a useable financial statement. This involves having a chart of accounts that will, when correctly set up, allow the reporting of profit and loss for each location and each physician as well as an overall income statement. Without an accounting system that covers all the sites, there is way to be positive that all bases are being covered.
Topics: medical accounting, accounting, multiple physicians, multi-physician practice, accounting software, multi-site, allocation, expenses, cost center, budget, budgeting, john shepperson
