Hi,
I have a complex need. We have 5 sites. All in the same country. So we want to have a single finance single logistics company where all sites would login. But the requirement is that each site should be able to maintain separate books too. So, they want to print P&L and BS statements individually and also need to print in consolidated way. Kindly note that each of these sites may have units under them which also may want to maintain separate books.

The idea is to have separate Enterprise Unit for each site, all pointing to same financial company. Ledger accounts with dimensions and further definitions by Options by integration element should be able to segregate further. There is also a need for a centralized Purchase and Finance departments. Every EU may have a Sales Office linked to it.

Can this be achieved this way? How complex could it get? Is it manageable with Enterprise Units? Any alternative suggestion most welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

A straight forward answer is NO. Just having a single finance company for the need of 5 or more P&L statements is just not possible in Baan (though you can have multiple EU's pointing to same finance company).

Your number of financial companies should be same as the number of P&L statements that you need.

Reaon being, ACR/ACP control accounts, also I think because of CMG based ledger accounts, which poses this restriction,.

How ever, if you need just multiple Balance sheet statement without multiple P&L statements, then it is possible with in same financial company by means of dimensions.

The above restriction really violates the basic principle of EU. Reason why this restriction has cropped is because of the nature of evolution that Baan Finance has undergone(better say, how it lacked). Till date, apart from using EU's in integration mapping schemes and options, EU's are not implemented with in Baan Finance.

Thanx,
Venkatesh.

I think this needs clarification.

It is the balance sheets that are the issue - as ACR/ACP control accounts are balance sheet items, and cannot hold the relevant dimension record, it is the balance sheet that determines the limitation.

That is:
If you require separate balance sheets you need separate companies.
Separate Profit & Loss accounts can usually be handled quite easily via dimensions.

Hi Phil,

I greatly appreciate your answer.

I feel, there is no need for multiple Enterprise Units too as this is a single finance setup, after talking with a couple of my consultant friends.

What if all sites require separate Balance sheet too? In that case, from your answer, there is a mandate for multi-finance setup.

Is there anyway this can be handled with single finance?

Thanks Venkatesh and Phil for your ideas.

Hi,

Which country are you working in. This could also determine whether you need to have a single finance set up or a multi finance set up.

As said earlier barring local legal restrictions, it is possible to take out P&L's for multiple units using dimensions. It is the Balance Sheets that limit this usage.

regards

Wouldn't it be possible to write custom Balance Sheet reports, taking into account the dimensions? Just wondering, as this might easily solve the problem.

Regarding NvanBeest's question: No.
There are too many balance sheet transactions where you cannot use dimensions to create separate balance sheets (for starters: all ledger accounts in fin supplier/customer group, cash management).

What's wrong with multi finance anyway? Just go for it.

This is for Denmark. Is there any statutory requirements that are specific to the country?

I greatly appreciate the answers.

There are some other issues in goin for multi finance entity. Hence single finance.

What is wrong with multiple finance companies?
Actually quite a lot - apart from the difficulties of setting them up, it multiplies the month-end work load and processing time. Best to avoid this.

You always have to ask your users - what do you actually want?
If it is a full, balancing (i.e. adding to zero) balance sheet that comes straight off the system - you need separate finance companies, but this is not usually want they actually want. You take it in stages:

If you need the ability to separate most balance sheet accounts - you can use dimensions.

If you need to separate out control accounts, you need separate finance companies.

Balance Sheets normally only make sense for legal entities anyway - you have things like share capital that it is impossible to split further. It is very ambitious to try to get any lower, if you think about it, you would find it very hard to keep any dimension in balance - you would have to check every manual journal...

I found in a previous case that the customer wanted receivables split by dimension. However there were many dimensions and it would have taken a lot of finance companies. So what we did was write a clever report that took the recievables and linked them back to the original orders - in this way you can use logistical data such as sales offices etc.