Within the Financial Services Sector, there is a multitude of reasons why a company will choose to have many ABNs and process the relevant transactions under any one of these ABNs. What I hadn’t realised is how complicated it could get where a sales from Entity 1 to Entity 2 needs to be replicated as a purchase from Entity 2 to Entity 1; and, vice versa, and when banks receive money on behalf of multiple entities and these all need to be reconciled separately in each of the companies.
This has been exactly the scenario with my current implementation. Working with MYOB meant that they had to have an individual ledger for each entity. Reporting has been a nightmare as they would individually open these entity files (more than 70 or so) and then export the trial balance, consolidate all the entities, eliminate inter-company transactions and then submit their reports.
The Fenwick Gold module Multiple Entity Operations (MEO) has allowed them to have 8 companies instead of 60-70 companies. Looking at the trial balances for any entity now requires only two filters on the Chart of Accounts screen, and the Balance Sheet and Income Statement reports involving multiple entities are only a few clicks away.
Gone are the days where transactions had to be replicated in multiple entities. Now, these have to be entered only once and they are automatically replicated.
With the ease of operations, something new has emerged. Previously, users were limited to their own entities/companies and they didn’t have to know anything about the other entity/company. Now, their transactions impact multiple entities and they need to know more about other entities as well. Initially, this has been a learning curve for the users but greater understanding has provided greater collaboration and more empowerment for all users.
Overall, the implementation has been very successful. Even though go-live is in its early days and users are still getting comfortable with the system, they can already see that their lives are going to be much easier as time progresses.
As a consultant, this is a really good feeling. We implemented a system that just works and we helped the users simply their work lives. These are just some of the things that get us up every day.
