Customer Story: IBP Powers Forward with Mondial and SAP
Elevating Financial Operations at IBP with Mondial Software’s Real-Time Platform IBP sought seamless financial reporting with SAP Business One, turning to Mondial Software for timely and dependable solutions. They now have a modern, real-time platform that saves time, improves accuracy, and automates key elements of the closing process. The implementation of Mondial Software’s platform has brought about a paradigm shift in how IBP manages its financial data. IBP gains real-time financial insights for agile decision-making, responding swiftly to market dynamics with the platform’s immediacy. This dynamic responsiveness is particularly crucial in the fast-paced business environment where real-time insights can be a strategic advantage. One of the standout features of the Mondial Software solution is its time-saving capabilities. The platform streamlines various financial processes, reducing the time and effort traditionally associated with manual tasks. Efficiency gains cut costs and free IBP’s financial team for strategic activities, enhancing overall productivity and organizational effectiveness. Moreover, the platform’s automation of key elements in the closing process is a noteworthy advancement. Mondial Software automates tasks, speeding up the closing process and markedly reducing errors compared to manual execution. Enhancing accuracy bolsters stakeholder confidence and ensures regulatory compliance in IBP’s financial reporting. The strategic collaboration between IBP and Mondial Software has yielded a transformative financial reporting solution. IBP’s modern platform meets reporting needs, introducing efficiencies, time savings, and automation for a resilient, adaptive financial infrastructure. The partnership showcases their proactive use of technology for strategic business enhancement. To read the complete case study, click the link below. READ THE CASE STUDY
Financial Statements: Focusing on the Value-Add
Unlocking Efficiency Through Consolidation A full-time assistant managing month-end complexities frees time for strategic pursuits, enhancing efficiency in financial reporting for businesses. A streamlined approach to consolidated financial reporting is now a viable prospect, increasingly essential for businesses in today’s landscape. Challenges in Traditional Financial Statement Production Creating financial statements involves a burdensome process: collecting adjustments, reconciling, and ensuring accuracy through review and adjustments. Complexity amplifies within group companies, requiring coordination among multiple entities and rigorous oversight to prevent oversights. The Potential of Integration and Automation Integration and automation represent a significant opportunity for improvement. Despite the technical ring of terms like “robotic process automation” (RPA), their essence lies in reducing human intervention. Automation, once limited to larger corporations, is now accessible to smaller firms, serving as a starting point for refining processes. Comparing Traditional versus Automated Approaches The current process involves manual data transfer, followed by laborious formatting and verification procedures for financial statements creation. An automated system allows real-time data transmission to a centralized ledger, facilitating instantaneous and accurate adjustments according to diverse standards. Benefits of Automation: Reducing Errors and Enhancing Focus Automation streamlines tasks, minimizing errors and unnecessary communication. It empowers financial teams, shifting focus to strategic thinking from repetitive activities. This transition fosters a more efficient reporting environment. In addition to efficiency gains, automation reduces errors by following predefined rules. This enhances financial reporting accuracy and contributes to reliable decision-making based on trustworthy data. Moreover, financial teams shift from routine tasks to strategic analysis. With automation handling repetitive activities, professionals dedicate more time to analyzing trends and making informed decisions. This transition adds significant value to the financial reporting function.
Mondial announces partnership with Pilot Solutions
BEDFORD, New Hampshire, APRIL 20, 2022. Mondial Software’s Partnership with Pilot Solutions: Elevating SAP Business One Reporting Capabilities Mondial Software partners with Pilot Solutions for SAP Business One channel enablement programs. It expanded its product with real-time integration for enhanced SAP Business One reporting. Also, enhancing ERP Reporting tools worldwide as a backbone to optimization and digital transformation. Partnership Accelerating Mondial’s SAP Business in Channel Enablement Mondial accelerates SAP’s presence, leveraging Pilot Solutions’ 30 years in the channel. Pilot Solutions enhances channel support, offering improved financial reporting services for SAP Business One customers.” Mondial is especially well-suited for companies who need to produce consolidated financial statements, and who require multi-GAAP, multi-ledger reporting. SAP’s global presence in the SME space, makes Mondial a perfect fit for the SAP Business One channel. Mondial extracts data from diverse companies under one umbrella, despite varying ERP systems and accounting. It merges varied subledger data, ensuring compliance with GAAP, IFRS, and other regulations.” Mondial links group companies in real-time for centralized consolidations in a cloud-based hub. The result is a single, centralized, automated and fully auditable ledger that serves as a single source of truth for financial reports. Mondial’s Product and Partnership with Pilot Solutions “Mondial’s product is a great value for any SAP Business One customer,” said Greg Robinson of Pilot Solutions. “That’s especially true for businesses that operate multiple entities and need a way to produce consolidated financial statements more efficiently. The product yields swift ROI by reducing manual efforts in typical processes. Mondial is invaluable for reporting in IFRS, US-GAAP, or any other standards.” “We’re delighted to be partnering with Pilot Solutions to develop and support a global partner channel for the SAP Business One market,” said Mondial’s CEO Mark Richardson. “As veterans of the SAP Business One channel, they understand the dynamics of the SME market and the SAP partner organizations in particular. Pilot also has deep domain expertise in ERP software, with experience in training, implementation, and project management services for SAP Business One partners and customers. We see that as a winning combination.” About Mondial Solutions Mondial Software is a global provider of cloud-based tools for multi-ERP financial reporting and consolidations. Founded by experienced accounting professionals from Epicor, Sage, SAP, Avalara, and Plex Systems; Mondial serves global customers.” For more information, visit https://mondialsoftware.com. About Pilot Solutions Pilot Solutions aids SAP Business One partners with go-to-market enablement, consulting, integration, support, analytics, and compliance.For more information, visit https://www.pilotsolutions.net.
Closing the Year With Limited Staff?
The finance team needs to earnestly start thinking about closing the year’s books. Many CFOs will find the task particularly challenging due to a shortage of qualified CPAs and finance professionals. If you haven’t yet considered ways to reduce the workload for your staff in early 2022, it’s time to start exploring creative solutions. Here are some suggested strategies. Do as Much as Possible in Advance You don’t necessarily have to prepare all your year-end worksheets after December 31st. You can often reconcile lease accounting and loan amortization tables before year-end on a preliminary basis. Identify accounts that usually need periodic reconciliation and have predictable activity in the final weeks of the year. Lease and loan accounts, fixed assets that were bought or sold, and certain cash accounts with minimal activity might qualify for a preliminary reconciliation. Maintain a list of such accounts and related backup materials to verify balances after closing year-end transactions. Line up Temporary Help It’s a busy time for everyone, but it’s valuable to line up temporary resources early. Part-time staff from temp agencies, internships, and recent retirees open to short-term engagements can help. It’s essential to find and schedule them in advance, delegating appropriate tasks. Retirees who left on good terms can provide valuable temporary assistance due to their familiarity with your organization. Offering competitive pay and remote work opportunities can attract them for a month or two in the new year. It’s Not Too Late to Automate Many of the most time-consuming tasks in year-end closing involve extensive manual data manipulation in spreadsheets. Excellent software solutions in the market automate these tasks, saving time and reducing errors by eliminating copy/paste and manual entry. Don’t assume automation requires an expensive, time-consuming software project. With modern cloud-based solutions, a small investment in time and resources can quickly implement automation. Signing up for a limited-scope commitment can enhance the cost/benefit ratio. For Consolidated Financials, Automate the “Last Mile” Companies with multiple locations often face the challenge of consolidating data from various entities to create unified financial statements. Finance teams gather and harmonize information from different entities, deal with various currencies, and manage different ERP systems, resulting in a cumbersome process. The presence of multiple accounting standards like GAAP, IFRS, and country-specific variants complicates this task further. For organizations utilizing distinct ERP systems across separate companies, merging data into a cohesive view becomes challenging. The central finance team must handle adjustments, eliminations, and currency revaluations, and create financial statements adhering to diverse standards. Mondial offers an accounting system, that integrates with all group-company ERPs, preserving detailed audit trails and supporting multiple currencies. This facilitates producing compliant financial statements for all jurisdictions. Implementation takes only a few days, significantly reducing year-end closing efforts. Until December 17th, a limited-commitment trial of CRx is available without obligation. Schedule a free, no-obligation demo to learn more.
Five Problems With SAP Business One’s Financial Reporting
Overview of SAP Business One Reporting SAP Business One generally receives positive reviews for its general-purpose reporting capabilities. Crystal Reports, acquired with BusinessObjects, has significantly enhanced its reporting features, being the industry standard for SMEs. Challenges in Generating Financial Reports However, when it comes to basic financial reports like income statements, balance sheets, and statements of cash flows, SAP B1 falls short. The system’s reports require numerous ad hoc adjustments for items like consolidating multiple GL accounts, presenting columnar data that differs from Crystal’s strengths in tabular-style reports. Issues with SAP B1 Financial Reports The financial reports in SAP B1 might look fine in demos but prove lacking in real-world applications. These reports are inflexible, particularly in generating reports in transaction currencies, hindering reconciliations for multi-currency businesses. #1: B1’s Financial Report Formats are Too Rigid Initially, creating a chart of accounts aligns the structure with the desired income statement and balance sheet output, grouping similar accounts for easy summarization. However, changes or new account additions can disrupt this alignment, requiring adjustments to income statement rows. Tabular reporting tools, like SAP Business One, offer limited flexibility in handling these modifications. Purpose-built financial reporting tools, supported by a strong accounting hub capable of storing subledger detail and unlimited multicurrency data, provide complete flexibility without extra effort or specialized technical skills. #2: Multicurrency Reporting Options are Limited SAP Business One effectively handles multicurrency transactions, allowing setups with various currencies. However, its limitations become apparent in financial reporting. Native reports don’t facilitate reporting in transaction currencies, causing reconciliation difficulties and slowing down period-end closings. A more flexible approach, allowing unlimited currencies per transaction and reports in any currency, is crucial for global companies complying with multiple jurisdictional requirements. #3: B1 Doesn’t Allow Reporting in both GAAP and IFRS (or other standards) Global organizations often require financial statements complying with various standards like US-GAAP, IFRS, and others. The challenge arises in ERP systems like SAP Business One, which assume a single financial reporting standard for each managed company. This poses issues when reporting to a local agency in IFRS while consolidating reports for a parent company under US-GAAP. Making adjustments during consolidation or manually changing numbers, both error-prone and slow, doesn’t provide an efficient method for automated, accurate financial reporting based on current system data. #4: B1 Doesn’t Handle Statutory Reporting Formats Well Meeting statutory reporting requirements across various regulatory jurisdictions is a common challenge for global companies. Beyond differentiating US-GAAP from country-specific GAAP or IFRS, handling complex mappings from the ERP system’s chart of accounts to statutory reports for multiple countries presents another layer of complexity. While SAP Business One allows the assignment of an “External Code” for each General Ledger account, it doesn’t adequately cater to companies dealing with multiple country-specific reports. There’s a lack of direct mapping for GL accounts to multiple alternate charts, no functionality to run essential financial statements using these alternate charts, and an inability to access transaction details linked to these statutory balances. This inadequacy complicates and prolongs the process of meeting the reporting needs of various local authorities, leading to potential errors. #5: B1 Doesn’t Do Consolidations Consolidated financial reporting has been persistently challenging for users managing multiple companies in SAP Business One, a difficulty increasingly impacting a growing number of B1 customers in today’s globalized economy. A common yet complex method involves exporting financial reports from individual companies and consolidating them in Excel. However, during crucial periods such as month-end closings, this process becomes laborious and prone to manual errors. SAP Business One’s inability to effectively manage consolidated reporting poses a significant obstacle. Adjusting entries during month-end closings often result in repeated reruns of financial reports, showcasing the inefficiencies of manual workarounds. Mondial Software’s CRx Solution Mondial Software’s CRx presents an alternative. CRx serves as a centralized accounting hub compatible with any ERP, offering real-time integration and automated processing. It streamlines financial reporting and compliance, allowing adjustments and generating reports adhering to various standards from a single dataset. CRx also manages companies with different accounting periods or fiscal year-ends within the same group. Efficiency with Mondial CRx Mondial CRx effectively addresses the outlined issues in SAP Business One financial reporting. It provides a robust, streamlined, and advanced financial compliance reporting solution for any ERP system. Contact us today to learn more!
IFRS vs. GAAP: Key Differences
Two decades ago, international accounting standards for financial reporting were generally established on a country-by-country basis. In the US, they were and continue to be known as GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), while other regions often refer to their standards as “local-GAAP,” representing country-specific regulations. What is IFRS? In the late 1980s, a new global standard emerged from the UK, leading to the publication of the initial set of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). These aimed to establish a unified set of principles for global financial reporting. IFRS began in the UK, expanded to the EU, and gained traction due to China, Japan, Canada, Korea, and India’s intent to adopt it. Now, 120 countries prefer IFRS for financial reporting and compliance. GAAP vs. IFRS Differences exist in the philosophical approaches of GAAP and IFRS. GAAP tends toward conservatism, promoting careful interpretations, whereas IFRS emphasizes adaptability for precision. While this adaptability might raise worries about inflating earnings, supporters of IFRS contend that prioritizing “principles” over “rules” establishes more robust frameworks within international accounting standards. Face off: GAAP and IFRS GAAP provides specific rules for accounting transactions, whereas IFRS offers broadly defined guidelines to ensure consistency in recording transactions. The governing bodies administering these standards often publish examples illustrating their application. Specific Differences Inventory valuation: GAAP permits LIFO (last in, first out) inventory valuation to represent replacing costs, while IFRS prohibits LIFO. IFRS prioritizes depleting older inventory, potentially inflating reported income but providing a more accurate inventory value, notably in inflationary periods. Fixed assets: In line with its conservative approach, GAAP requires that fixed assets be carried on the balance sheet at their original cost, less depreciation, or at a reduced market value. This practice can result in an undervaluation of asset values. In contrast, IFRS allows for periodic revaluation of assets to account for significant changes in market value. Development costs: According to GAAP, development costs are immediately expensed upon their occurrence. Conversely, under IFRS, specific development costs can be capitalized, followed by subsequent amortization, to better match these expenses with the periods generating revenues. Other Differences Distinct treatment of transaction types is demanded due to notable differences among GAAP, IFRS, and country-specific variations. These differences underscore the philosophical variances between the approaches. The rise of competing standards, particularly IFRS, has added complexity for finance teams in global companies. It remains crucial to maintain consistent application, despite the interpretive flexibility allowed by these standards. Companies that report to diverse audiences using multiple standards may find it necessary to separate transaction postings to adhere to individual standards. Moving forwards with IFRS and GAAP Mondial Software, an advanced cloud-based accounting platform, enables distributed enterprises to create accurate, auditable financial statements complying with various GAAP and IFRS standards from a single dataset. If your company struggles to produce compliant financial reports swiftly, Mondial offers essential support. Your Next Steps 💡Click here to reduce time spent on period-end reporting 🔋Click here if you wish to solve 25+ Spreadsheet reporting issues 🔆 Click here to improve the accuracy and usability of generated reports 💯 Click here to decrease risk by providing on-demand access to the transaction detail behind every reported balance ☎️ Book a free, no-obligation walkthrough with Mondial to see how we can help you in financial reporting and consolidations just like one of our successful clients.
Why BI Tools Can’t Produce Good Financial Statements
Challenges in Financial Reporting for ERP Customers This is a prevalent complaint among ERP customers seeking a solution. They encounter difficulties with consolidations, eliminations, revaluations, and other statutory adjustments necessary to adhere to local-GAAP, IFRS, and other global financial reporting standards. If they manage multiple companies with distinct ERP systems and charts of accounts, the challenge becomes even more complex. Introduce multiple currencies into the equation, and financial reporting becomes exceedingly complicated. Reasons General BI Tools Fall Short for Financial Reporting Several reasons exist as to why general-purpose BI tools are not the ideal choice for swiftly and efficiently producing accurate, adaptable financial statements. Here are the top four: #1: Financial Reports are Fundamentally Different General-purpose report writing tools, like BI products, struggle to manage irregularities in financial reports, such as irregular account sequencing. A robust financial report writer allows users to define custom row definitions that align precisely with their specific requirements, providing flexibility and ease in the process. #2: Multi-ERP Reporting Requires a Lot of Heavy Lifting ERP vendors typically lack tools for reporting across different systems. In a scenario where a company uses multiple ERPs like SAP S4/HANA, SAP Business One, Plex, and a locally developed ERP, data normalization is necessary due to varying charts of accounts and accounting periods. To create unified financial reports, a robust financial consolidation tool is essential, automating the harmonization of data by mapping accounts to a standard and accommodating different calendars without additional user input. #3: Multiple Reporting Standards Require Manual Effort Global companies often face challenges when needing to produce varied financial reports for subsidiaries adhering to different reporting standards. Existing ERP systems usually lack the capability to distinguish between accounts and transactions under multiple standards. BI tools also fall short without expanding the data model and creating custom interfaces, turning financial reporting into a significant software project. A robust financial report writer, however, enables flexible chart of accounts mapping for diverse regulatory layouts or standards. #4: Proper Currency Revaluation Can be Tricky Currency revaluation can pose particularly challenging issues that many companies prefer to postpone until absolutely necessary. Although the existing ERP systems might manage multicurrency locally, aligning subsequent revaluations with previously exported data to a data warehouse can be tricky. To learn more, read our free White Paper or contact us to schedule a free consultation and demo.
Balancing Accuracy and Immediacy in Financial Reporting
Background Today’s digital economy is characterized by a constant increase in demand for immediate access to accurate financial data. Internal management, parent companies, regulatory authorities, and other external stakeholders now expect almost real-time availability of accounting statements and management information. However, divergent accounting standards, currency complications, overseas jurisdiction needs, and even multiple accounting systems often hinder the effectiveness of many finance professionals. Constantly evolving global financial compliance requirements pose challenges for many ERP-products, which excel at line-of-business operations and have solid core accounting. They are increasingly seeking specialist partner solutions, particularly in areas such as tax and financial reporting, to provide local controllers with the tools needed to respond appropriately. Challenge In distributed corporations, global controllers regularly consolidate data from multiple ERP-systems, navigate different chart of accounts structures, and manage multiple currencies. Their responsibility involves supporting the decision-making needs of internal management while creating GAAP-* and IFRS-compliant** consolidated financial statements for external audiences such as auditors, banks, investors, and analysts. Individual company accountants also must balance internal management reporting formats with frequently conflicting disclosure requirements of local authorities. As national governments in a growing number of countries aim to protect revenue sources and expose fraudulent activity, they have created additional burdens by mandating electronic tracking of individual transactions and demanding almost real-time electronic report submission. Solution Mondial Software offers a web-based subscription service called Mondial CRx, which assists customers in transitioning from traditional reporting to meet the contemporary demands for immediacy and accuracy at all levels. Mondial CRx performs the consolidation of transaction-level data—General Ledger, Accounts Payable, and Accounts Receivable—from each ERP-system globally. It aggregates this information into its multi-ledger accounting repository, providing immediate access to data from every group operation in a consistent and easily understandable manner. The repository undergoes enhancements through transaction-level currency adjustments and the generation of final adjustment journals, such as revaluations, adjustments, and reallocations, particularly when achieving these tasks within the underlying systems is challenging. This characteristic enables Mondial CRx to function as a true system-of-record, reducing audit risk compared to ERP systems requiring supplementary spreadsheet adjustments or Business Intelligence products that rely solely on balance-level data for financial reports. Automated mapping of accounting data from diverse source charts of accounts to either common group standards or formats mandated by regulatory authorities ensures that the data is consistently prepared for easy and uniform reporting. Moreover, the entire accounting dataset serves broader decision support by integrating with industry-standard analytical and business intelligence tools. This integration ensures consistency in information used across the enterprise, establishing a single source-of-truth.
Enhanced Financial Reporting in Today’s Digital Economy
Background In today’s digital economy, enhanced financial reporting is critical for informed decision-making and sustainable business growth. The persistent demand for immediate access to precise financial data challenges finance professionals. The varying accounting standards, overseas jurisdiction needs, multiple currencies, and language barriers often hinder their instant responsiveness. ERP systems, despite strong accounting functionality, struggle with evolving global financial compliance, leading them to seek specialist solutions for tax and financial reporting. Challenge In distributed corporations, global controllers consolidate data from various ERPs, manage multiple currencies, and create compliant financial statements. Individual company accountants navigate corporate reporting standards amidst conflicting local regulations and government-mandated electronic transaction tracking. Solution Products like Mondial CRx bridge the gap from traditional reporting to today’s demand for flexibility and immediacy. Mondial CRx is a powerful online financial reporting solution that assists in creating required financial reports. Offered as a web-based subscription, Mondial CRx accepts transaction-level data from ERPs globally. Every transaction is stored in Mondial’s accounting hub, ensuring immediate access to consistent data. Mondial CRx reduces audit risk by holding every transaction and providing a true system-of-record. The intuitive report writer allows users to create and distribute high-quality reports for multiple companies. Summary The demand for improved flexibility, accuracy and timeliness in financial reporting is unlikely to abate. Businesses are increasingly embracing the opportunity to move away from rigid accounting and reporting systems that require frequent manual intervention, towards tools designed to meet the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s electronic reporting world more fully. Mondial CRx represents a new level of flexible financial report writing that ensures customer compliance with changing global reporting requirements, while protecting the broader investment they have made in their underlying ERP-system. More Find out more about Mondial CRx at https://www.https://mondialsoftware.com or email info@https://mondialsoftware.com. [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]
Financial Reporting Challenges When The Underlying Data Changes
Background Adapting to financial reporting challenges becomes crucial when the underlying data undergoes changes, demanding agile solutions. In the accounting software realm, companies commonly use third-party report writers to generate high-quality financial information. ERP systems primarily emphasize marketing, order processing, production, and customer service, often neglecting finance and accounting features. Native financial reporting tools within these systems are typically rudimentary. Specialist companies take advantage of this gap, enhancing the substantial investments businesses make in their core systems. However, a critical query arises: why aren’t external financial report writers universally accessible across all ERPs? Challenge One key issue is that some ERP systems hinder seamless integration of reporting tools. They permit alteration of transaction data after entry, causing complications for report writers. When discrepancies arise, often during critical period-end closures, the only recourse is to reimport from scratch. This results in reporting delays and reduced user confidence in the numbers. Many vendors opt for simpler ERP integrations or restrict reporting to basic General Ledger balances post closure. This limits reporting options for users whose ERP systems allow data adjustments. Solution Mondial CRx resolves this problem through Dynamic Integration, identifying and updating changes in underlying data. It not only corrects but replaces altered transactions, maintaining an audit trail from entry to finalization. Mondial CRx stands out for its design, built on an accounting platform with GL, AP, and AR modules. It stores transaction-level data uniformly from various ERP systems. It adds accurate reporting currencies for consolidation, supporting various group companies operating in different currencies. Additionally, it handles double-entry transactions like intercompany eliminations and statutory reallocations. Summary Mondial CRx supports high-quality financial reports in any currency or GAAP format. It ensures accurate, efficient financial reporting, reducing risk and enhancing organizational control and visibility. More Find out more about Mondial CRx at https://www.https://mondialsoftware.com or email info@https://mondialsoftware.com. [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]