Part 4: ERP Analytics/Reporting and Finance Control
As I finish up this series of blogs, I want to encourage managers at new, small, and midsize businesses to start to look beyond QuickBooks to ERP accounting and financial functionality. It’s time for ERP for accounting and financials when your current solution can’t deliver:
- Accurate and real-time financial reports
- An up-to-date audit trail
- Faster financial closing
- Accurate job and inventory costing
- Financials connected with manufacturing processes
- GAAP compliant reporting
- Inventory costs associated with specific jobs
This four-part blog series highlights the eight considerations managers need to embrace before moving from QuickBooks to manufacturing ERP, specifically for accounting and financials. Part 1 described the growth and business needs that trigger a move from QuickBooks to ERP for accounting and financials. Part 2 outlined ERP benefits and the value of the cloud. Part 3, highlighted the competitive advantages of ERP on a single platform. This final installment focuses on ERP analytics, reporting, and finance control.
Read our Guide to ERP Accounting and Financials: Grow Your Manufacturing Business Beyond QuickBooks.
ERP Analytics and Reporting
QuickBooks was never designed to be a reporting and forecasting solution – all-in-one manufacturing ERP definitely is. It delivers a single database from which management can pull an endless variety of reports using templates and report-writing options. With ERP, managers gain multiple reporting options and modules that eliminate the need to maintain spreadsheets and paper files.
An end-to-end ERP solution offers the ability to create reports, schedule them, and automate the entire reporting process, in real-time, with complete accuracy. Isn’t that what manufacturers are looking for? Users can gather financial data from different departments to generate general ledger and related reports. Moreover, ERP accounting and financial options streamline GAAP compliant reporting and audit trails.
Other accounting and financial features available with ERP include:
- Pervasive Analytics Designer – Create flexible ad-hoc analysis from any data source within the platform using your choice of embedded report templates.
- Semantic Layer – Access information easily using common business terms without creating complicated and time-consuming queries.
- Cockpits and Advanced Dashboards – View real-time information at a glance with forms, common functions, KPIs, and analytics – all embedded in user-specific, role-based cockpits.
Check out our blog Forecasting made easy for manufacturers with intelligent ERP software.
Manufacturers Reap the Benefits of Finance Control with ERP
ERP software delivers significant benefits in the area of finance control, including streamlined financial operations, faster closing processes, and improved decision making. It is a financial management system which ensures revenue tracking, credit management, and payment schedules across the enterprise. It simplifies billing, payments, cost analysis, profit tracking, invoicing, budgeting, investments, and more.
Specific accounting and financial control features found in ERP streamline:
- Cash management
- Banking and reconciliation
- Financial reporting and analysis
- Subsidiary and intercompany integration
- Multi-currency management
Manufacturing ERP software automates and integrates all financial processes with a single database, a single solution, and a single version of the truth. It delivers a unified financial view of your enterprise by integrating accounting data with sales, purchasing, inventory, manufacturing, and operational information.
Looking for more reasons to switch from QuickBooks to ERP for accounting and financials? Read Why Manufacturers Can’t Afford to Delay Their ERP Decision.
Customer Story
BILLY Footwear, known for its fashion and function forward shoe line, saw the need to move beyond QuickBooks to proactively anticipate, design and deliver to increased demand – quickly and cost-effectively. Its pace-setting growth, with sales growing nine times year-over-year in the last year, revealed the critical need for a central business management platform to connect and automate business processes, gain real-time visibility into its operations and proactively manage its supply chain.
By modernizing its technology with OptiProERP’s innovative cloud ERP solution for manufacturing and distribution on SAP Business One’s leading-edge platform, BILLY Footwear will be able to support and drive its rapid growth and best-in-class customer experience.
Partnering with OptiProERP and SAP to connect and digitize our business, streamline our operations and strengthen our overall brand experience is just the kind of innovation we need.
– Billy Price, Co-Founder, BILLY Footwear
About the Author
Allan has more than 35 years of hands-on manufacturing operations and IT systems experience. Having served as the Vice President of IT with Husky Injection Molding Systems (a leading manufacturer of injection molding equipment), the President of Euroserve Ltd., (a manufacturer of construction fasteners) and the Manager of Materials and Logistics during his time with Engel North America, Allan understands the challenges that must be overcome to run a successful manufacturing operation.
A seasoned IT advisor and business process consultant, Allan has guided many hundreds of SMEs on how to select and successfully implement ERP software applications. Notably, he was the Vice President of Business Solutions with IT solutions provider Gibraltar Solutions Inc., and the CEO of ERP provider Jeeves North America.
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