Cloud ERP Makes Year-End Closing Easier

What challenges does your business face when it embarks on its year-end close?

If you are like most companies, each year you face two reporting challenges: taxes and inventory. Calculating taxes can be difficult, especially if your company sells globally. Reporting accurate inventory counts is essential to a thorough financial year-end close but often takes considerable time and effort, especially if your business relies on manual stock counts and reporting.

A cloud ERP system can solve both challenges by providing you with simplified and easier tax records and reporting as well as the ability to integrate with automated warehouse and inventory systems. Here is how these systems work and how a shift to cloud ERP can make your year-end close easier.

Tax Reporting Challenges Solved by Cloud ERP

Preparing the company’s year-end cash flow statement and balance sheet are both important tasks. These documents provide insight into the financial health of the business. But, to ensure they are accurate, the system creating the reports must be up to date.

Cloud ERP systems provide accurate and timely information. They can automate all tax reporting documents so that they are prepared quickly and efficiently. Cloud ERP also provides the documents required to fulfill tax compliance needs under various jurisdictions, making this element of year-end close easier.

If you currently rely on spreadsheets for reporting and tax compliance, switching to cloud ERP will be like night and day. You will find it faster and easier to manage tax reporting at year-end on a cloud system.

Inventory Tracking and Reporting

No matter what the size of the company, inventory tracking and reporting can be challenging. A few SKUs or thousands of SKUs still require time to manage, count, and record. Add to this the challenge of manual stock-taking or updating spreadsheets and you have the potential to introduce small mistakes that can add up to larger impacts on revenues.

For most companies, inventory is a major asset. Therefore, it makes sense to manage it carefully and strive for accuracy. Cloud ERP systems enable such accuracy in several ways.

First, if a cloud ERP system is integrated with a warehouse management system, the ERP is updated continuously with real-time information. As stock moves into inventory, is transferred to another location, or is shipped to a customer, the cloud ERP system receives notification through the WMS and updates the inventory count. If you are running year-end close, then the inventory numbers reflected on the year-end closing date in the cloud ERP system will be accurate and up to date.

When using modern warehouse technology, there is no need to shut down the warehouse for days to take inventory or spend hours typing the information into the system. Barcode scanners make the process easy and there is software that can transform smartphones into scanners. This takes some of the learning curve out of using the software and enables even temporary workers to quickly pick up the skills of scanning barcode labels if they can use their smartphones or a tablet, devices they are quite familiar with, to conduct inventory.

Cloud ERP Year-End Close in Hours, Not Days

Just imagine it. With cloud ERP, your year-end close can be accomplished in a matter of hours instead of days (or weeks). It simplifies the entire process and ensures accurate and timely data for your financials. This, in turn, means your reporting is more accurate and you have a much better gauge of your financial position at the end of the year. And it means you can shut down on the last day of the year and enjoy the holidays without thinking about all the manual data entry you need to do for year-end close. It is done!

By Mindover Software – Acumatica Gold Certified Partner

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