5 Benefits of ERP for Accounting and Financial Management
Many businesses have separate systems for accounting and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Depending on its size, a company may not even have ERP. Or, as is common, they acquired these applications at different times and implemented each for its primary purpose: an accounting package for the books and financial management, and ERP for operations management. This separation is not longer necessary, nor even a good idea. In fact, there are at least five benefits to using an ERP solution’s accounting functionality.
The Value of Integration
We will outline some of the reasons it’s wise to use ERP for accounting. At a high level, though, most of these benefits relate to one core issue, which is integration. Accounting systems require data inputs from a variety of sources. These include manufacturing management, warehouse management, logistics, billing, HR and so forth. ERP-based accounting automatically integrates these multiple data sources.
5 Benefits of ERP-Based Accounting
Having worked with many clients on ERP and accounting software implementations, we have found the following benefits arise from using accounting in an ERP suite:
1. Richly detailed financial reports
Standalone accounting packages offer basic financial reports like income statements, balance sheets and so forth. In contrast, ERP offers many more varied types of reports. Examples include cash flow projections based on inventory management and order statuses and accounts receivable aging overlaid with customer order pipeline. These reports give you more than just financial data. They help you manage your business more effectively.
2. More automation
Automation helps with productivity. By having ERP and accounting linked, it’s easier to automate workflows that cross between the two systems. When you use ERP for accounting, many accounting and financial tasks can be completely automated. For instance, you can streamline accounts receivable and accounts payable management and cash management. Automation also lets you track financial transactions more quickly.
3. Freedom from duplicate data entry
Having separate systems usually means manual re-inputting of data from one to the other. Integrating ERP and accounting removes this tedious process of data entry by hand. ERP makes data entry fast and consistent.
4. Not so many errors
Manual data entry is notoriously prone to error. These include transposed digits and incorrect client names, etc. These can cause calculation mistakes, which then take time to unwind. You can also see who did what, for each transaction, in case you need to track down someone who made a mistake.
5. A higher degree of control
Using ERP for accounting gives you more control over your business. You can see the bottom-line impact of events and decisions in real time.
Financial Management With Acumatica Cloud ERP
We have experience setting up customers on ERP-based accounting. For a going concern, this means migrating off of a legacy standalone accounting package. It’s a process. There doesn’t have to be a lot of complexity or challenge, but it does take focus and some effort. We provide the expertise. If you want to learn how we can help you run your business better by taking advantage of accounting in ERP, let’s talk.
Acumatica Cloud ERP delivers, providing adaptable, feature rich, and integrated enterprise resource planning software that streamlines your processes and facilitates your decisions. The core of your ERP, Acumatica delivers powerful business finance software – simple enough for small shops and comprehensive enough for complex multi-nationals – that can support your needs today and in the future.
