Most businesses start with basic accounting software. Then, as financial and customer service requirements demand, they move to more sophisticated business systems. The challenge is in recognizing the right time to make the switch. Here are 15 questions to help you determine if this is the right time for your business to consider upgrading to a more robust and competent system:
Question #1: Is your accounting system slow and unstable?
Does the system slow down or freeze up causing frustrated users and data errors? Are the reports running slowly or do you see the “not responding” message more frequently?
Question #2: Do you have a growing paper problem?
Are you spending too much time tracking down and matching up invoices or searching for previous orders and payment history?
Question #3: Are you experiencing production schedule delays?
Have there been schedule inaccuracies which led to short builds, rush orders that incurred premium freight and overtime and loss of confidence from customers and suppliers?
Question #4: Have there been inaccurate cost calculations?
Have you lost contracts due to pricing “with a cushion” or experienced high raw material costs due to poor inventory tracking?
Question #5: Are your employees building reports manually?
Do they have to compile information from multiple sources, wait for each department to contribute their data and double check numbers for accuracy?
Question #6: Have you ever sold out-of-stock products?
Are customers ordering products that are not available or have the wrong price? Do you have customers with special pricing arrangements who must call your office each time they order?
Question #7: Are you making errors in tracking time and equipment?
Are you still using time consuming, manual entry for multiple teams? Do you lack insight into time use and performance and experience inflated equipment costs due to missing assets?
Question # 8: Are you experiencing document delays and slow month-end close?
Have you noticed increased processing times due to higher transaction volumes, longer lead time to route, approve, and retrieve documents and financial statements that were outdated by the time they were released?
Question #9: Do your technicians experience service and warranty confusion?
Does lack of up to date inventory information lead to service trucks being dispatched without the parts they need or techs being unable to tell customers if work is covered by warranty? Are you experiencing inaccurate and delayed billing for service work?
Question #10: Are you seeing excessive overhead costs?
Is your staff spending extensive hours manually computing multi-currency adjustments and multi company consolidations? Are you incurring significant IT costs for workarounds in order to create the reports and audit trails that you now need?
Question #11: Are you noticing inaccurate inventory levels?
Are you lacking the means to track bulk weighted items such as nuts and bolts sold by the pound? Do you need better insight into store to store inventory transfers?
Question #12: Are you experiencing cash flow slowdowns?
Do you lack the ability to track project performance at all levels? Do you have excessive write-offs because you can’t provide backup for time spent on a project months ago? Do you have cash sitting in WIP accounts unnecessarily?
Queston #13: Is your Point of Sale system disconnected?
Are you dealing with exceptions and discrepancies between the POS system, the bank and QuickBooks? Are you using numerous Excel spreadsheets to track everything from inter-company allocations to inventory? Are you unable to analyze data for monitoring store performance?
Question #14) Do you use unsupported Inventory practices?
Is there a lack of visibility into company-wide inventory, production capacity, and order status? Is your inventory control and financial reporting unreliable?
Question #15: Are you not in compliance with GAAP principles?
Are you having trouble producing the reports needed for government compliance, to meet grant requirements and to assure boards of directors of fiscal responsibility?
Results
If you answered yes to these questions, Microsoft Dynamics ERP accounting software can help.
We’ve put together an informative and practical whitepaper: 15 Red Flags: Is Your Accounting Software Hurting Your Business? It contains real life stories of businesses just like yours that were having problems because they kept their entry or legacy accounting systems just a little too long. You’ll see how switching to Microsoft dynamics ERP systems helped them to meet the various challenges of their growing businesses and helped them to continue to move ahead.
Then check our Microsoft Dynamics ERP partner directory to find a partner to work with.
By ERP Software Blog Editors, www.erpsoftwareblog.com