BY Mark Polino, Principal Consultant, I.B.I.S., Inc.
PUBLISHED: July 7, 2010
- Accounting
- Data Management
- Dynamics GP
- Tax Management
- Workflow Management
Executive coach and blogger Michael Wade recently made the important point that a base camp in the jungle requires regularly chopping back the jungle to keep from overwhelming the camp.
His key points were that:
1. You can’t chop back the entire jungle.
2. It makes no sense to chop back more than is operationally required because you’d be wasting energy and time.
3. Daily chopping is easier than chopping every two or three days but it may provide a sense of less accomplishment since the growth would be smaller.
The illustration resonated with me because almost every time I walk into a client that is having ongoing difficulties with Dynamics GP, I see it is doing a poor job of chopping back the jungle. Some companies are unwilling to do the hard work. Others can’ t bring themselves to change their routine. Like creeping jungles, maintaining Dynamics GP is simpler and easier with small processes done daily.
An awful lot of accountants are still stuck in a routine that is focused on a monthly time frame, even as the volume of transactions grows exponentially around them. You can’t cut back the jungle once a month. In a month, the camp will be overgrown. If you’re behind, you may have to take some drastic steps to get caught up-for example, using temporary workers, delegating work and focusing on fixing a specific process.
Now is the time to hack away at the jungle. The closer we get to year-end, the faster the jungle seems to grow. Grab your machete and tame the Dynamics GP jungle on a much more frequent basis via such steps as:
- Backing up daily
- Balancing the bank account daily
- Balancing subledgers to the GL daily
- Reviewing cash daily
- Using cycle counts to manage inventory
- Gathering vendor 1099 and W-9 information at vendor creation, not year end
- Moving items like depreciation out of month end
- Invoicing more often
- Proactively collecting from customers
- Leveraging time savers like correcting and copying transactions
- Forcing transactions through subledgers to minimize journal entries
- Implementing other modules to save time
- Adjusting processes to quit making more work for yourself
Learn more about Microsoft Dynamics GP on the Kraft Enterprise Systems site.
Tags: Microsoft Dynamics GP