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Data Accuracy

Ultima ERP controls the double recording on the nucleus level. Even the program designer will not be able to go around this rule. If your company works with millions of documents on monthly bases, your assets always tally with your liabilities. Professionals know that in 1C when the number of transactions exceeds certain level; this rule is deliberately ignored to avoid system glitch.
Which is not the case with Ultima ERP; and it has been tested by 2,000 users.

"Modules"

Traditionally, the ERP systems have the following "modules": Goods Module, Financial Module, and so on (in post-soviet union schemes this corresponds to "Warehouse Workstation", "Manager Workstation" and so on).

First of all, in marketing purposes, this is used to work the clients for more money; for example, to be able to ensure the new client to buy the warehouse module only at 70 grand Euro, and then to purchase financial module, ‘when the time comes’. As the result, the client swallows the bait and has to buy module after module, while the initial budget did not look so scary.

Such approach has the following impact on system architecture: the money-men may simple change the cost balance of the goods at warehouses WITHOUT ANY GOODS TURNAROUND. No income, no expenditures, and the total magically changes.
We believe it unnecessary to describe the results of such policies in actual data and record accuracy.

Such tricks are not possible in Ultima ERP by definition. The entire system is built around the concept of data integration and consistency, which is controlled by the nucleus of the platform; any modifications of the logs (‘accounts’ in bookkeeping terms) may only be created by the documents of real turnover of values: goods or money.

No "Modules"
The client receives fully functioning system at once when purchasing standard licenses in conformity with transparent licensing policy. In addition, the functionality is constantly improved via free updates.

Management Reporting Forms are Generated by Pressing Single Button

You may generate the company balance or income and loss statement as of any date at any time. IT specialists servicing large and very large databases might be interested in that fact that Ultima ERP calculation service post-processing DBMS arrays, may be moved to separate server(s) to allow load distribution and scaling. The data may be received from reserve standby server, which sets the main DB server free to perform real-time transactions.

By the way, how long does it take your company to prepare the simplest monthly report after the month is over? If only a week, you are doing great!

HR-accounting is based on the company organization structure and is displayed in the system as a tree. This tree determines the scheme of interaction and subordination of branches, departments and individual employees.

Different versions of matrix structures are fully supported. In particular, the most frequent is two-dimensional matrix is used if there are two subordinate lines in the company: administrative (by territory) and functional (by competences). For instance, the head of sales managers of a branch reports to the branch director and in terms of competences — to the commercial director of the headquarters (this includes the methods of work with clients, commercial terms and conditions and so on).

What is it good for? For example:
1.Smoothly running payroll with minimal work time loss. All the payroll invoices are signed off through automatic organization structure. Was your money-man or branch director substituted? — A couple of mouse clicks in HR department and the payroll invoices are signed off by the new money man or branch director. No single breach of operation. The new employee is automatically assigned his/her rights of access to the system according to his/her function, and the old employee has these rights removed (or changes, if functions changed).
Are they two-penny savings? Just try and calculate the cost of internal mess for the entire company.

Of course, it’s not only payroll invoices. We are speaking here about any document within the system (contract, payroll, hiring request, budget, etc).

2.Strict costs control. Each department is allowed to spend shareholders’ money only within the defined budget and closed list of costs accounts, both of which may be set up separately for each subdivision/territorial unit.

3.Immediate announcement on staff changes.

4.Payroll calculations formulas on the basis of KPI are determined for each position (cleaning lady salary is the case of dwindled KPI). Payroll is calculated and credited by pressing single button.
How many accountants and work hours are lost monthly for such banal procedure in your company?

Is payroll schedule prepared by those girls from the accounting department in Excel? Introduction of Ultima ERP will be too unfortunate for those girls, as the system aims at reducing this exactly type of staff in your company.

Ultima ERP payroll schedule is built automatically on the basis of current cash balance and accounts, purchasing and operational payments schedule (which includes monthly payroll payments), and projected money income that is generated by the system itself.

Budgeting

Budgeting is a very sensitive topic at our home companies. To say the least, this process is highly bureaucratized, too long and contains little common sense for the company’s efficient operations. In most cases the budget is done post factum, same as plans in soviet economy. So, let’s have the budget for the sake of budget to make us feel cool.

This is what budgeting process looks like in Ultima ERP.

When calculating overall company expense budget, payroll budget is automatically calculated on the basis of formulas of staff structure and planned changes therein.

Other expenses in the department are planned by the head of the department in accordance with his/her own list of expenses.

Budgeting is performed "bottom-to-top". Expense planning starts from the smallest units of the budget which are then included into aggregated budgets of bigger subdivisions together with their own expense items.
And so on to the top.

After the first version of the budget has been formed, it is submitted for approval. The route of the budget approval is directly related with the subordination matrix, which determines which managers sign off on the budget and in which order.

When matrix organization structure is used, the budget is approved in two dimensions: first of all the branch directors approve the budgets of their branches; this is followed by functional coordination: for example, logistics director approves aggregate budget for all the warehouses and logistics departments of all the branches, or sales director approves the aggregated budget of all sales departments of al branches, and so on.

Finally, the company’s CEO approves the expenses budget.

The task of the IT system in such case is:
1. To minimize the work content of budgeting: the system may prepare the first version itself, basing on the statistics and projected staff changes, while the manager will have to introduce only minor manual corrections.
2. To facilitate the process of approving the budget and to make it transparent and QUICK. It will be always obvious which manager stalls the coordination.

Any manager at any level involved in budgeting has an option to recall the approval and to manually fix the numbers in the respective items. The aggregated budget of such hierarchic level will shift to decomposing of the corporate tree in opposite "top-to-bottom" direction.

Finally, when the company’s aggregated expenses budget is approved, control mechanisms will be launched. Not a single payment invoice may be issued if a corresponding budget item shows excess. In this case the budget will need additional adjustment. Problematic? Yes it is. But this is the only way to teach your managers to be responsible for planning company’s resources.

However, if the client wants, the control may be less strict: in case of exceeding the limit, the system allows generating the documents, but also creates list of alerts via SMS/e-mail according to the business logic.

A few words on accounting

In a rationally organized Russian business the accounting department is a servicing subdivision generating reports for fiscal bodies.

The Ultima ERP block of official reporting is created according to this paradigm and in close collaboration with 1C: Accounting.

This is, generally speaking, what our accounting looks like.