Finance is the cardiac monitor of a company’s health. It can reveal the early warning signs of potential disaster or reinforce healthy behaviors. How effectively that monitor works, then, is crucial. Can you agree with the following statements about your company’s financial health monitor with confidence?
- Our financial management and accounting systems are easy to use, accurate and enable us to close our financial reporting quickly at the beginning of each month for the previous month.
- We are confident that our financial systems contain accurate data.
- We are confident in our accounts payable process and closely monitor our performance to assure that we are availing ourselves of offered discount terms.
- We have an accurate and timely invoicing process. We track our receivables closely to assure our overdue payments remain insignificant.
Or is the opposite true?
- We require too many independent spreadsheets to close out our books each month.
- We are uncertain about our inventory levels and they are difficult to track.
- Each month it seems to take longer and longer to reconcile our financials.
If the latter set of statements sound familiar, it may be time to consider an ERP system.