I want to talk to my accounting system!

How many businesses use an accounting system?  Its safe to say that pretty much 95% of businesses do.  I would say 100%, but there are always those conservatives that store cash under their mattress, or the Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) types that manage by “If there is money in my bank account, I’m good!” method.

Today’s accounting systems are powerful.  From Quickbooks to Peachtree to Sage Business Works to Microsoft Great Plains, there are numerous accounting systems out there.  For the most part, we let our accountants and bookkeepers deal with them, so we can do something more fun!  Let’s face it, not everyone was cut out to be a bookkeeper, and bookkeeping is often outsourced to companies like Quicksilver Business Solutions and Quicktrainer.

However, we all either need to get something IN or OUT of an accounting system at some point in our business careers.  If its a rare request, we just call up our bookkeeper and let them handle it.  Easy.  But what if its a frequent request?

Here are some examples of information that we need to get IN or OUT of an accounting system:

1. New Customer (address, phone, website) – You already have customer information in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, so why are you having an administrative assistant or bookkeeper RE-TYPE it into the accounting system?
2. eCommerce Transactions – Your website registers a sale…woohoo!  So, why not move the sale transactions directly from the website into the accounting system?  Or do you like re-typing information just for the fun of it?
3. Order/Entry – Your distribution company uses an order/entry system to process all your phone orders and notify your warehouse of which products to ship.  You also need an invoice generated and sent to accounting…is that a manual or automated process when creating an invoice?
4. Inventory – There are two purposes for tracking inventory: 1) You have to track it to manage your sales properly so you don’t have too many or too few items in stock, and 2) if you capitalize inventory for tax purposes, that is done in your accounting system.  Is your inventory system in sync with your accounting system?  Is it handling one of the two inventory purposes well, but messing up the other one?
5. Project Management – There are many project management systems on the planet, too numerous to even summarize.  Most of them have some financial component to them.  Its not a complete accounting system, but they may contain key information that your accounting system needs.  Or, your project management system may need to get actual costs from accounting to compare with the estimates that were put in the project management system.  How do you get those two systems to talk?
6. Reporting – Inevitably, senior management wants to see key metrics about their business, and they usually involve a combination of sales, operations, and accounting information.  How do you get all the data together for the boss man?  Is it an Excel spreadsheet that you manually run reports from the other systems?  How long does that talk you?  Would it be cool is the boss man could run that report himself anytime he wants to yell at someone?

Don’t think of your software as little “islands” of information, each on its own.  The real power information technology brings to a business comes from interconnecting these systems together.  You can reduce data entry and speed up work flow, which lowers costs and increases your profit margin.  You can ask and get answers to key business questions on a real time basis, which allows the big  bosses to make better decisions.

NeoNexus has worked with integrating all sorts of accounting systems with other software, including:

• Quickbooks , including Quickbooks Enterprise
• Peachtree Accounting
• Sage Business Works
• Macola Accounting
• Primavera Project Management
• Pipeline Deals CRM
• Salesforce.com CRM
• Microsoft Great Plains (via our partner, Intellipoint)

Don’t see your software listed?  No problem.  With most software, we can use API or SDK information from the developer and work with it.  While all accounting systems are different, all of them are also the same.

Just remember…its your accounting system.  If you need to talk to it, but don’t speak techo-accounting, all you need is the right translator!