Fixed Assets: Appreciate your time, don't Depreciate it...

Maintaining a Fixed Assets Register can be a tedious task especially if the register is held externally to the main accounts system. This typically involves the following: building lists of assets, ensuring the asset is depreciated over the correct number of periods and with the correct depreciation method, ensuring all new assets are included and all disposed-of assets are excluded, tracking serial numbers and warranties and finally, posting a manual journal every period for the depreciation value.

The main problem with keeping a manual register is that all information might not be included and therefore mis-calculations can happen. This becomes particularly relevant at year-end when pressure arises from the demands of month end. The last thing you need is to be trawling through a manual register when there are plenty of other tasks to be done at the year-end.

The solution for this is to have a Fixed Assets Register that is fully integrated with your Sage 200 software. The Fixed asset Register sits on your menu with the other Sage 200 standard modules. It is fully and seamlessly integrated with the nominal, sales and purchase ledger and is suitable for organisations with a large volume of low value assets or a small quantity of high valued items or a mixture of both.

The Fixed Assets module comes with the following features:

• Caters for the most recognised Depreciation Methods: straight line, reducing balance and sum of the digits.
• Expected life of the asset.
• The ability to categorise assets to enable effective reporting.
• Automatic posting of depreciation to the nominal ledger on a periodic basis.
• It holds the original cost value, accumulated depreciation, period depreciation and net book value.
• Forecast depreciation over the life of the asset.
• Integrated with purchase ledger when assets are purchased. It is possible to post the assets purchase invoice and create the asset record at the same time.
• It is also possible to dispose of an asset and enter the sales ledger transaction all in the one transaction.
• Easy asset tracking. Maintenance, warranty, insurance and serial number details can be maintained on the asset record.
• Attach all relevant documentation to the asset.
• Enquire on the history of transactions on the asset.
• Attach the location of the asset and the person responsible.
• Flexible and complete reporting on asset transactions and details.
• Revalue and re-life existing assets.
• Import asset details from a spreadsheet to build your asset register.

Nowadays, where time is very valuable and at a premium, the Fixed Asset register will give the Finance team back some of that valuable time. It will also increase efficiency and accuracy. So, my question is why keep manual spreadsheets when there is a much better way of doing things? We call it joined up thinking...........

Why not join one of our webinars to find out more......

16th of November @ 9.30am
23rd of November @ 9.30am
30th of November @ 9.30am
5th of December @ 9.30am

The webinar should not take more than half an hour. To confirm your place, please email sales@advent.ie and let us know which date suits you. We hope you can join us.....






 

Sage 200 - Square Pegs and Round Holes...

At some time or other we all experience pain – whether it is a tooth that needs to be filled or a tablet that needs to be taken.

Many businesses often experience pain, but sometimes it is not so obvious how to go about fixing a problem. Sometimes a problem may not even look fixable so we tend to muddle on and make do with a situation that is less than perfect. Sometimes we can’t even put our finger on what the actual problem is, but we just know that something is not quite right.

Sometimes though a fresh perspective is all is needed; somebody to take a look at what is happening, what is causing the pain and what the impact of the pain is on the people working in the business and on the business performance.

Maybe that’s where we can help. This is what we are good at!

We take complex business processes (or just painful time consuming tasks) and look at ways of simplifying the tasks using a combination of software technology and our skills. We join the dots, plug the holes and bring smiles to the many customers who have come to us for help.



Happy to help – call us for a no obligation chat and we can hopefully offer some guidance.

Welcoming Sage 50 Version 2013

Sage Ireland has announced the 2013 version of their flagship product, Sage 50. Following extensive research and feedback, Sage has created the most comprehensive package, as a direct result of customer requests. Packed with new and exciting features and benefits, Sage 50 accounts 2013 has been created with one thing in mind – to improve the customer experience. It will allow new customers to keep their finger on the pulse of their business right away and existing customers to make quicker decisions with simple intuitive reports.

Features include:

New – User Interface and Language

• Over 1,000 function/feature labels have been updated and improved to ensure users know what they’re doing without the need to know accounting terminology or abbreviations.

New – Company Configuration

• A new optional process to help guide users through the setup of their software

New – Help Centre



• New search engine providing up-to-date help topics and information

New – Quick Tasks

• Quickly create invoices, quotes, sales and purchase orders from the product list

Simplified month end, year end and VAT return tasks

• Step-by-step guides through tasks, including confirmation when the tasks are complete

ROI VIES Return and Intrasate XML format introduced for ROS e-submission

• XML format outputs are now available for VIES Return and Intrastat Arrivals and Dispatches e-submission on the ROS website.

  Email defaults

• New email default settings have been introduced in the software to provide you with the ability to define your email program common settings.

  Cheque layout security enhancements

• The Sage Cheque layouts have been reviewed and enhanced so that they to conform to the industry standard in terms of layout.

Drill down improvements with the software

• Drill down link buttons have been introduced to the Product Record details tab and other areas of the software.

Comparative profit and loss management reporting improved in Financials and Departments.

• Generate a Comparative Profit and Loss report, whereby you can compare actual profit and loss values for a period with the budget and/or prior year values.

Improved Reporting

• New user interface with an updated look and feel
• Excel improvements allow users to get financial information without spending hours manipulating the data (Improved export visibility to Microsoft Excel)
• Accurate report descriptions, previews filters and action buttons
• Send invoices by email is now accessible without having to go into Report Designer
• Customised reporting function allows users to create professional looking reports to match their business.

Android, tablet and Smartphone capability

• Live access to Sage 50 accounts information on iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Android devices.

For detailed information on new features and functionalities in Sage 50 Accounts 2013, please CLICK HERE to download new features datasheet and features comparison datasheet.

Interested in seeing the benefits of Sage 50 Accounts 2013 for your business? 

Please call 01 8223200 to speak to one of our team or email sales@advent.ie.

Coming soon - Webinar on Sage 50 New Features......

Why won’t my Sage software work?

Fred is having a bad day. He left work on Friday with a check list of all the things he needed to do in his Sage software on Monday morning.

When he arrived in to work on Monday morning bright and early, he discovered that their IT system had been upgraded over the weekend.

At first, Fred was all excited when he noticed that he had a brand new PC – he had been complaining about his 6 year old PC for ages.

Fred’s excitement turned to horror when he noticed that he couldn’t access his Sage system. What on earth could be the problem?


The moral of the story – check with us BEFORE you upgrade your IT systems. Buying a new PC with Windows 7 may seem harmless, but unless your Sage software supports Windows 7, then you will experience problems.


Quick Checklist of Windows 7 compatibility:

Sage 50 Version 2010 or later
Sage 200 Version 2009 Service Pack 3 or later

Please note that Sage Line 100 and MMS are NOT Windows 7 Compatible.
For more information on Microsoft Operating System Life Cycle, please click here:


http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/lifecycle

Contact us if you have any queries in relation to Sage and IT compatibility:

Telephone: 01 8223200
Email: support@advent.ie

Gold all the way......

Advent and Sage on track as Liam Mullaney (MD, Sage Ireland) and Ray Ryan (MD, Advent) pass the Olympic Torch (replica!). Now all they need is a good pair of runners and some proper gear and they will be all set for Rio 2016!

Advent/Sage Golf Day Out

All of our prayers were answered when we arrived in Rathsallagh Country House Hotel and Golf Club to see a beautiful blue sky and warm sunshine –  perfect conditions for our customer Golf Day.

After a lovely breakfast in Rathsallagh House followed by a presentation on Sage CRM, we headed off to the tee box. The course was fantastic – challenging but very enjoyable. After a long first nine holes, we were glad of the pit stop on the 10^th hole where we had some refreshments - giving us the chance to work on our strategy for the back nine!

We arrived back into the club house to a lovely dinner. We presented the prize to the winning team captained by our own Bill Moran – well done to Bill, Gay Byrne, Ed O’Doherty and Larry Kiernan.

Thanks to Sage Ireland who co-sponsored this event and thanks also to Ryan Reid, Frank Kelly and Joe Hurley for joining us on the day.

Ah, that's better!!

 

Can I borrow your buggy??!!

That food smells great!

18 holes later and still smiling!

Right guys, what’s our strategy for back 9?

The winning team - no wonder they are smiling!

Well done Ryan, Al and Gerry

Nearly there.....

Project Data Everywhere.............

Does this sound familiar?...........

Project Manager: Hi Mary. Have you all the project related purchase invoices entered into the accounts system yet?

Mary: Nearly finished. I should have them entered by the end of the day.

Project Manager: Have you got the list with the new project codes? Can you try to remember to put the new codes on the invoices? I got a mixture of old and new codes last month and it took ages to sort it out.

Mary: No problem. I will make sure to use the new list.

Project Manager: Hi Mick. Have the guys on site submitted their timesheets for last month yet?

Mick: I haven't got them all yet. I am waiting on some of the guys on site to email them in. The usual culprits are late again. I'll chase them up. I have most of the spreadsheet complete for the ones I got.

Project Manager: Make sure to use the new job codes I sent you. I spent ages last month re-assigning job numbers.

Mick: I never got that email.

Project Manager: I'll sent it again.

Mick: I'll try and have the timesheets entered on the spreadsheet by tomorrow evening. It might be a good idea to look for timesheet entry system where the lads can enter them over the internet. It would save a lot of time.

Project Manager: Hi Kate. Have all the expense claims been submitted by the guys on site yet?

Kate: Almost, they are due to be paid at the end of the week so we should have them all by today or tomorrow. I'll code them and put them on my spreadsheet and email it to you.

Project Manager: I have a project status meeting on Friday afternoon. I have to gather all the info together and let Mary know what to bill and then calculate the profitability of each project by then. I think I will be staying late on Thursday night. Whats new?????

Kate: Good luck with that. Rather you than me.............

Has your organisation got project related information in many disparate places that need to be pulled together periodically in order to report on the progress of these projects? Is there timesheet data in one system, cost information in an accounts system, budget information in a spreadsheet, expense information in another? How long does it take to pull this information together and analyse it in a meaningful way? Are your projects profitable or is spend exceeding budget?

Sage 200 Project Accounting allows you to centralise this information. The advantages of this are:

• Project accounting is fully integrated with sales ledger, purchase ledger, nominal ledger, sales order processing, purchases order processing and stock control.
• Employees can be setup and their timesheets and expenses can be entered directly into Sage, with the cost of their time assigned to each project and cost code.
• An organisation specific project structure can be designed.
• Template projects can be set up to reduce the time spent in creating new projects.
• Projects can include sub-projects and the information can be combined.
• Phases can be built into the project structure.
• Budgets can be assigned at project, phase and cost code level.
• Projects can be have analysis codes assisgned to enable analysis of revenue, costs, profitability and variances in a meaningful way.
• A suite of reports and enquiries exist to allow the organisation to report on costs, revenue, profitability and variances from budget.
• Phased billing.
• Time and Materials and Fixed Price billing.
• Centralised data entry, reducing the chance of duplication and mis-posting, thus improving accuracy.

 It is also possible to have your employees enter timesheets and expenses over the web using the Sicon WAP modules. This information is updated to Sage 200 Project Accounting on a realtime basis.

Sage 200 Project accounting could greatly benefit your organisation if the company operates internal or external projects. Why do things the hard way?

 

When does pruning stop and growth begin?

Some wise person once said that a business is a bit like a tree. If you are not growing, then you are dying.

When you think about it, it’s true. It is difficult to stand still in the one spot and keep holding on to what you’ve got. Before long, we will begin to notice competitors passing us by and we may then wonder what we could have done better.
 

For many businesses their life-blood is their customer base. It makes sense to look after your existing customers as there is no substitute for bad customer service. Providing great customer service results in happy customers who in turn are more likely to refer your business to other potential customers. Happy customers also buy more products and services.


In a recent survey by IDC commissioned by Vodafone, “80% of SME’s stated that improving customer relationships was one of the key challenges, with 81% of workers stating that customer service is a top priority”. Now more than ever, SME’s are looking to differentiate their businesses on customer service.


I would highly recommend reading Raving Fans if this topic is of interest to you.

Providing excellent customer service is one great way of growing your business. But the key to providing excellent customer service is having the right systems in-house to manage it.

Let me explain using a simple example:

Let’s just say that you sell food products to supermarkets……

You receive a call from your biggest customer to complain about a problem with a delivery, which never arrived but which was nevertheless invoiced to them. What’s more, the prices on the invoice were all incorrect and not as agreed. This customer has only been with us a few months and this is the second time that there has been a problem with the delivery.



Where do we start? We have a problem with despatch, accounts and sales (pricing). Here are a few quick suggestions…


1. Record the details of the issue so that you can acknowledge receipt of the query back to the customer.


2. Ensure that the call is allocated to the appropriate person/team/people within the company to deal with the customer query.


3. Record and track all communications around this call, so that at any stage, you can see what’s been happening with the query and you can re-assure the customer that their query is being addressed.


4. Have easy access the Sales Order, Despatch, Invoice and Pricing details to see where the problems lie.




In this scenario, there was a lack of “joined up thinking”.
Accounts, Sales & Despatch were not aware of what each other was doing. They may also not have been aware of the issue with a previous delivery.


Using software such as Sage 200 with a fully integrated Customer Care module will help you to log, track and monitor customer service queries, response times, type of queries etc. You will know which accounts are on-hold, what the despatch status is, what prices were quoted, what the balance on the account is and what the query/issue history is for a particular customer. You can also see a full communications history against the customer’s record.


If we find out that our quest to achieve excellence in customer service is being hindered by internal processes, specific departments or people, or communications not being shared throughout the company, then we can address the problem and monitor the results as we continue to strive for excellent customer service and ultimately business growth…..

Month End's made easy, by Brian Doherty

Do you have to produce management accounts quickly and for various stakeholders in various formats? Are you transcribing data from your accounts package to other systems or into excel spreadsheets? How long are you spending doing this task? Are you concerned that that the links in your spreadsheets may not be 100%?

Software systems such as Sage 200 offer a number of options to alleviate the pressure at Month End time. Sage 200 for example, uses a report category, attached to the nominal code, to build the Financial Statements. The Sage 200 Financial statements begin as a blank canvas and through an intelligent use of the report category, various Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet layouts can be produced.
It’s so easy to do and saves lots of time messing about with spreadsheets. You can produce reports such as:

1. month actual versus budget with a variance column.
2. Year actual versus budget with a variance column.
3. month on month analysis and comparisons.
4. prior year month/year to date versus current year month/year to date.
5. quarterly results can also be reported.
6. or any combination of the above.


The flexibility of Sage 200 means that you can either build your multiple financial layouts within Sage 200 or you can use the Business Intelligence module, which comes as standard with the software. This is a great tool which allows you to drag and drop the data into the format you require – similar to using a Pivot Table in Excel ®.

Why add extra pressure at month end time? Your financial software system should be there to make your life easier – not to add to your workload. You may find that the tools are already there, but maybe you haven’t asked “is there a better way?". It is worth looking into as it could save you a lot of valuable time.

The Importance of backing-up your data...

A nightmare scenario for an organisation is to realise in a disaster recovery situation that they have not been backing up their databases or that the data they are backing up is corrupt in some way.


This could lead to re-entering weeks or months of transactions and reconciling the data retrospectively. This is a very time consuming, tedious and costly exercise and I am sure that nobody would like to be in this situation.

Here are a few tips that you may wish to consider…..

1. Ask your Hardware/IT provider to ensure that the relevant databases are being backed up correctly.

2. For Sage 200/CRM, the SQL databases should be backed up using a SQL agent. A SQL agent should back up the data in the correct manner.

3. If you create a new database, ensure that this database is included in the scheduled back-up routine.

4. For software that is not using a SQL database (e.g. Sage 50, Line 100 and earlier versions of Sage MMS), I would recommend that your database files are included in your scheduled back-up routine. For Sage 50 users, I would always recommend that you still run the Sage 50 back-up routine from within the software in addition to the scheduled back-up.

5. In a recovery situation, you will need to revert back to the last valid back-up. I can’t tell you how many times we have come across situations where back-ups are missing or the data is corrupt or incomplete. My best advice is to create a test database and periodically restore a back-up of the database to test that the back-up actually worked.


We can offer this service if you would like us to test your restored data for you.


The important point to consider is how much risk you are putting your business in by not having proper back-up and test restore procedures in place. What would be the cost to your business if you needed to manually back-date transactions for 1 month, 2 months, 6 months etc….

My advice is not to delay – make sure your back-ups are healthy and that you are not leaving your business exposed in any way. A little careful planning can save a lot of headaches.

Does your business suffer from any of these symptoms.....?

• Increasing Bad Debts?
• Slower Customer Payments?
• Increasing Excuses for non-payment and disputes?
• Slow and Time Consuming Credit Control Process?
• Poor Visibility of Credit Control Calls & Outcomes?
• Lack of Cash Availability?

If so, join our brief webinar and we can show you how Credit Hound for Sage 50 & Sage 200

can help speed up cash collection. Please email sales@advent.ie to register

TIME: 2.30PM
DATE: Tuesday 15th May 2012.

Customer Quotes….…..


“Within weeks of using Credit Hound, our overdue balances had reduced by over €100,000”

“Its positive impact on the efficiency of our business has been invaluable. We would happily recommend it to others”.

“Credit Hound has massively increased our efficiency. In less than three months, Credit Hound as reduced the time it takes to get paid by almost a third. We are now getting paid 21 days faster and our debtor days have reduced from 76 to 55”.

The Need for Stability by Ray Ryan

I was in conversation with some of our customers recently discussing business prospects for the future. One of the current major concerns voiced was our dependency as an economy on our export business. This concerned them even though these customers were not in the export business themselves.

As local businesses our customers serve the local Irish marketplace and they are fully dependent upon business generated in the local economy. But the catch is that we can only have this vibrant local economy if our export companies are performing well and maintaining employment.

Oops I thought, Advent is in exactly the same boat as our customers – during our conversations it became evident that one of the immediate concerns was the outcome of the coming referendum on “The Stability Treaty". As an economy being so heavily dependent upon exports we should be very concerned about the outcome. We need to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. It struck me that the risk of being on the outside, if we voted no would completely undermine the stability of our export business thus undermining our own businesses.

So what will saying YES mean for Irish SME's ?

1. External Investor Confidence in Ireland.  Investors will want to know that the Euro will still be around in a few years time.
2. Access to ESM funding – although it is not certain that we will need additional funding, saying Yes will ensure access to funds at a reasonable rate, if we need them.
3. We will need to get our own country finances in order – this is something that we need to do in any case but saying Yes will provide a framework for achieving this. It should guard against such an economic mess from re-occurring in the future.

The important thing to note is that we do know, for sure, what the outcome of saying yes will be, and it will provide stability. We are not sure at all what the outcome of saying no will be. So we can only speculate on the outcome and in my opinion this is not the time to be speculating. Look where speculation brought us to previously. Like all of our customers we desperately need a stable local market and not to gamble, for any reason whatsoever on the future employment prospects in the our economy. Me, I am a big yes for stability.

Now where did I put that piece of paper?

By Sinéad Hayes, Sales & Marketing Manager

How many times have you said this in the past day, week or month? Be honest!

Despite being surrounded by tablets, desktops, laptops, mobile devices, most of us still can’t seem to confront the inevitable break-up with the piece of paper. Let’s face it, we love scribbling on a piece of paper.

Then when we decide what we have written really doesn’t make much sense, we scrunch up the paper and toss it in the bin. Or if we decide that it will be useful at some future point, we stick it onto the wall or into a drawer or somewhere where we know it definitely won’t move from – that is until we go to find it again.

When the phone rings, we scramble around looking for a pen that works so that we can scribble down the sales enquiry that we have been waiting for. All the important information is captured on that scrap of paper.

Now, back to an earlier point, what happens when we go to find that piece of paper tomorrow, next week or even next month?? Where did I put it?????

I am going to offer you some advice – for starters a good sales & marketing database will definitely help you. Capture the information onto a proper system such as Sage CRM. No matter if the sales enquiry leads to something or not, it’s always useful for future reference to know who called, their contact number, what they were looking for and how they heard about us.

Now, just imagine all of the scraps of paper nicely organised and sorted logically into the correct place but instead of being stuck somewhere with a thumb tack, you now have what you need right in front of you – with just a couple of mouse clicks.

Here’s how to send Sage 200 Invoices in a Jiffy…….

If I told you that I have the secret formula to sending Sage 200 invoices by email with

Just One Click……..would you believe me?

It’s true – your days of sending invoices the slow way could soon be behind you.

Believe me, there are lots of savings to be made, so why don’t you join us for a quick webinar on 23^rd of April @ 2pm and all will be revealed……..

PS - Don’t tell anybody else, it’s a secret!

Imagine and Advent

We featured in The Sunday Business Post last weekend (25th of March) with an article describing how Imagine has benefited from upgrading their software to Sage 200, along with some customised integrations designed by Advent.

Picture features L-R
Claire Mooney (Imagine);Sinéad Hayes (Advent);Eimear Lawler (Imagine)

Meningitis Research Foundation and Advent

On March 3rd, Advent staff got all dressed up to attend the Meningitis Research Foundation's First Annual Gala Ball, held in the Radisson Blu St Helen's Hotel Stillorgan.

The Ball was an effort by the Meningitis Research Foundation to raise both funding for the charity and also to raise awareness of this deadly disease. It was a chance for Advent, as a supporter of the foundation and its work, to enjoy a wonderful evening as well as having the opportunity to network with other corporate partners, members and supporters.

The evening began with a champagne reception and some Irish music, giving everyone the chance to mingle. There was then a 4-course dinner, catered for by the top chefs at the Radisson Blu and hosted by both the staff of the Meninigitis Reseach Foundations and RTE's Claire Byrne who is a patron of this charity and really speaks out of the wonderful work they do.
The evening was finished off by two raffles where some of the Advent staff came out winners! This was followed by dancing until the early hours.........

All in all, a great night was had by everyone there and as all proceeds from this event went to support the Meningitis Research Foundation, Advent were delighted to be invited along and to be given the opportunity to show their support for this worthy cause.

Brand New Advent by Sinéad Hayes

Over the past number of years, we have changed. We have become more focused on what we do best and what we know brings real value to our clients. The only problem was that our image did not reflect who we are now or what we do now.

New Advent Brand

We realised that to move forward, we needed to take a step back to really understand what we do, how we do it and what all this means to our clients and prospective clients.

We embarked on a journey of self discovery, which has resulted in a new brand identity for Advent. We hope you like it.... 
  
"our unique approach uses software to connect every part of your business like never before. We call it joined up thinking because it will bring out the best in your business and your people, every day".

We welcome any feedback or suggestions you may have. We also have a suggestions email address if you would prefer to send suggestions to us this way..
suggestions@advent.ie