Integrate Your Systems to Streamline Reporting Processes

On how to integrate your systems to streamline reporting processes - As your distribution company grows, your financial reporting needs become more sophisticated. It’s time to move away from the manual systems that got you started. Focus on simplifying and streamlining the reporting and close process. This will help you to better meet reporting deadlines, improve controls and add value to the company.

Integrating your business applications can accomplish all of these things while offering you insights to and control over your business like you’ve never had before.

Think about your month-end close and all of the moving parts involved in collecting a lot of information in a short amount of time. Integration of business management applications can help you smooth the process and reduce the time to close, freeing up your staff for higher level analytical work.

Here’s how:

Perpetual Inventory – Know What You Have and Where it is Right Now

While simple systems like handwritten notes, walking the warehouse floor, or using Excel spreadsheets might have been simple methods to initially track your inventory, those processes are now keeping you from knowing what’s really happening with your inventory at any given moment. How do you know which spreadsheet is the most current? Manual processes can lead to human error, leading to the need for a painstaking physical inventory, something you want to avoid at all costs. In addition, if purchasing and receiving aren’t integrated with sales and shipping, you’re missing opportunities to know and manage your profit.

Ultimately, you need a system that’s integrated with your sales function. When something leaves your warehouse, you want to know immediately, not in three weeks’ time when someone starts manually counting widgets on hand.

A system that enables perpetual inventory will address all of these challenges. Imagine pulling up a screen, entering an item number, and then instantly seeing what quantities are on hand, what the value is, and where everything is located. Now you have the information you need to manage your inventory and make critical decisions right at your fingertips and in real time.

Cost of Goods Sold - Setting Parameters

Your sales team needs pricing flexibility. They've established the customer relationships and know what's needed to close the deal. But the people in the field also need to understand they can only go so low on a customer deal before their decisions impact the bottom line. Perhaps you have a product that must clear a 50% margin. Or maybe another product can go as low as 20%. An integrated system allows you to set parameters so that your sales force can be flexible in negotiations, but cannot set the pice below a certain threshold and jeopardize profitability.

The same integration functionality allows you to view and manage gross profit and gross margin in many different ways - by item, item group, and item type - so you're not left wondering whether you're making a profit.

Accounts Receivable - Creating Red Flags to Avoid Risk

An integrated system also allows all kinds of flexibility in creating checks and balances, as well as red flags, related to accounts receivable. For example, say you have a customer whose balance is already 30 days old and you'd like to limit them to $20,000 in credit. If a new $50,000 order rolls in, it would trigger a red flag telling you the order cannot be processed and why.

Integrating your systems makes it possible to identify and monitor these points of risk and address them before they become a large-scale problem. In this scenario, the order is put on hold while A/R takes care of the issue.

Put your company’s information to work for you. Whether you’re assessing inventory levels, analyzing your cost of goods sold, or addressing A/R issues, an integrated system will help you quickly gather the information you need to prepare financial reports.

GoVirtualOffice can help you find and implement solutions to simplify your accounting challenges so you can focus on making critical financial decisions. Contact us or call 888-773-2123 to learn more.

If you found the above content interesting, be sure to watch our video on:

Whether you're a financial professional, an accountant, or a business owner overseeing the process, this video provides insights for all levels of expertise. Get ready to simplify the NetSuite year-end close process and gain confidence in your financial management. Hit that play button to embark on a journey towards mastering this crucial task. Don't forget to subscribe for more invaluable content that will empower your NetSuite journey. Your path to a seamless year-end close starts here!