I know Phocas has always been sold as a Sales tool but any Finance people here with Finance specific databases?
I have a GL Database that is set up as “Non-Financial”. I’ve used it to monitor postings to specific codes and built a customs P&L (albeit no subtotals) using a mapping file.
Otherwise I get Debtor information and we now have a detailed stock database that is helping me keep track of stock write offs and unusally large transactions.
We have a GL (Finance) database and the Financial Statements database. We also have an FX database to go with our Purchasing and Sales databases. Our sales database contains stock and debtor snapshots which have been sufficient for the couple of years we have been with Phocas, I have tried to get a stock database in the past but no one supported me and now we are going with a stock optimisation program outside of Phocas. Still interested in potentially getting a debtors database, I feel I might be the only one that uses it though, I am the Management Accountant for my business and the principal Phocas user (in house expert.)
FX database is interesting, how does that work? I have a large requirement USD but generally manage that in Excel.
For the Stock database we started with snapshots but they were run at a specific time (11pm) and as there are adjustments 24 hours a day the were only a guide - not sufficient for month end accounts.
Before Sync my database was not able to be made, but now it’s not too bad - having to look at summarising data for older periods to keep the record level under control but don’t need transaction level back further than a few years tops.
I have a subscription running that emails me last nights stock movements, the Warehouse Manager and I can then investigate any large values rather than leaving it until month end.
The next project will be a quality database so we can drill down into complaints / returns etc to drive the KPI’s and any correcting action.
Our FX Database combines streams from Purchase Orders, Sales Orders, Debtors and Creditors to forecast our upcoming foreign currency exposures. At the moment we have fairly limited use for it, but it is still good information to have and I am sure it can be improved upon.
A quality database sounds intriguing. We currently use DIFOT (in both purchases and sales databases) as well as Customer Credit Notes for our quality measures but this is only a temporary measure I feel as our quality manager is interested in a better system.
Ah I see, all our exposure is one way - buy in USD sell in GBP.
On the Quality database my plan is to have a base stream of what we call Collection Notes - these are essentially complaints which can result in a credit or a refute.
The plan is by pulling in Sales, Warehouse, Distribution and any other relevant data we can easily analyse who is responsible for a given error and respond with training or corrective action to reduce the risk of the error in future.
I did build a demo in Excel to prove the concept, using VBA to mirror the dimension buttons etc - it’s quite a big file though and there is pretty much only machine that will run it.