Multi-site and multi-territory businesses bring a range of extra intercompany complications that need managing efficiently.
Whatever your reason might be for setting up subsidiaries, you need a solution that can handle a complex business model.
Often in a multi-site business, each site operates as its own legal entity, perhaps specialising in a particular area of the business or local experts in a certain region/ country. Each site will run independently so rather than having to separately manage each site on a smaller Sage solution, Sage X3 will allow you to gain data analysis across your entire organisation from a single point of access. Sage X3 is multi-company, multi-location, multi-site, multi-currency and multi-language, all as standard. You can use the solution to create insightful intercompany reports as well as eliminating hours of number crunching through its intercompany transaction functionality, all of which will aid your company’s growth.
Find out the key differences between Sage 200 and Sage X3 here.
Intercompany Reports
Multi-company activity and reporting is a common requirement for companies looking at or using business management solutions. This is an area where Sage X3 excels. A truly global solution, Sage X3 not only features multi-company capabilities but it also handles multiple languages and legislations. All your data is held in one solution and can be reported on at multiple levels, so you not only gain an insight into how one business unit is performing, but insights into how your company as a whole could be working more efficiently.
The benefit of having complete visibility over your whole business is that you will be able to respond efficiently to changes from any part of the company and subsequently smooth out any arising problems.
Read more about how Sage X3 consolidates Intercompany accounts, and how it can produce company-wide reports in order to see where you could be working more productively here.
Intercompany Transactions
The term ‘intercompany’ in the context of transactions (and indeed Inter-Site, if referring to activity taking place within a single company) applies to a number of areas of Sage X3, including Sales, Purchasing, Inventory and Finance. In basic terms, Sage X3 will manage the process of an activity in one entity generating an activity in another.
You’ve got another company in your group that you need to transact with. The process of doing this means that the same numbers are entered and re-entered numerous times, with hours of unnecessary time wasted by keying and re-keying the same information in different systems to achieve the end result.
Sage X3 can manage this whole process in one place and eliminate the need for this duplication of workload as well as the inherent risk of human error when numbers are being repeatedly, manually entered into a system.
A key feature of Sage X3, in terms of intercompany accounting, is the flexibility and breadth of the general ledger set up. A single user has the ability to control financial processes throughout the entire business via one point of access, for example, you can set up a specific invoicing process at a global level and then apply it to all sites. The use of the general ledger in Sage X3 is particularly beneficial for multi-territory organisations due to X3’s capability to handle multi-currency environments.
This means that all of the data surrounding these processes can be analysed at a deeper level as it is all set up in the same way, controlled by the global entity. With Analytical Dimensions the user can drill down into the information and statistics from a global point of view or individually at each site, which allows full company visibility. As the dimensions on a journal can be checked and if necessary, amended before final posting, this does allow you to ensure that your postings have been accurately analysed before you run reports.
Security
As your business expands, the number of users expands and so does the range of internal roles. This is particularly true for companies with multiple sites. Different departments and/or subsidiaries need to use different parts of the solution. With Sage X3 it is possible to control access to information on the system for different users.
Set permissions or limit access to information for particular users to improve the security of data internally and tailor the experience. The fully configurable nature of the solution means that Sage X3 is a more sophisticated offering and has a higher level of control and accountability.