A Business System
Your back-office system should really be a business system and not just a resource for the accounting staff. Although checks are cut, cash is applied and financials generated from your system much of time that data is a result of other transactions in system. Here are a few ways you can use your system to generate powerful data.
Sales Information
When you process orders in the sales order modules you are recording important information that can be used for analysis at a later date. You can determine the quantity sold for a particular item, the quantity sold per customer or the quantity sold by month or period. All of this data can be used to spot trends and help you determine the proper product mix. In addition, by grouping customers and items into classes you can gather valuable information about groups of items or customers. The sales order functionality also has user defined fields that allow you to track information such as the source (i.e. web, phone fax) or type of order.
Purchasing Information
By properly using the purchasing functionality you will be able to see who are you buying from and how much. This information can help you negotiate volume discounts or better coordinate deliveries and reduce costs. Just as with sales information vendor classes and item classes will allow you to segregate key data about groups of suppliers.
The Next Step
If you are already taking advantage of the ideas mentioned above, it may be time to move to the next level. The Microsoft Business Portal can allow more people to access data and benefit from the value of the system. For example, the Purchase Requisition Management functionality allows users to submit requests for purchases and have them approved or denied. This can be helpful for large purchases or capital expenditures. Once the requisition is approved it can be turned into a purchase order. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are another benefit of the Microsoft Business Portal. KPIs are metrics that you use to measure the performance of your operations. Often times executives or managers use a series of KPIs as a dashboard to determine the health of their organization.
As you can see the term "accounting software" only scratches the surface. A business system can be used for these and other objectives. If you feel you are not maximizing your investment in your system please let us know.