Centralized Accounting

ALyczkowski

We are currently Implementing NAV Financials (NAV2009 SP1 Classic Client) in a large manufacturing company. We have 25 Manufacturing plants (Each of the plants act as a separate NAV Company) that Input AP Invoices into their legacy system. These Invoices are combined into a centralized location where checks are generated. The G/L Entries generated from the payments (Cash and Discounts) are then recorded back to the individual plants.

Has anyone seen similar functionality or ISV Developed and solutions that will assist in this process?

Additionally can we centralize some of the more setup features of NAV like Accounting calendars, Payment terms, G/L Account creation, Posting Groups, etc.?
I will listen to anyone that may have any suggestions regarding this.

Thanks,
Alan

ara3n

May I ask why you have separate company for each Plant?

Chinmoy

Exactly as ara3n had asked, is it possible to have a single company and define the plants as different responsibility centers?

jglathe

Hi Alan,

my first impulse on this was "wrong product"... because "Company" in NAV is "separate legal entity", and you have 25 of them, doing the same business (?). I would presume they all have the same chart of accounts, posting group setup, items, and so on. This is the usual master data problem evolving from this requirement: You need a reporting function by plant, but everything else should be synchronized or global - except sometimes, when (for example) a special payment term is negotiated for one vendor on one plant. This is a problem we're also fighting with.
In short: I don't know of an ISV solution that does this out of the box. My employer has several companies in different countries with local charts of accounts, but global customers/vendors. There is a lot of customization like this example. This works pretty nicely, except sometimes Currently we are implementing code for permanent establishments which enables a separate balance sheet for every permanent establishment in one company -throughout the whole application, including reporting.
The whole solution is pretty complex in the end. And it is bespoke programming, not part of the core product.

with best regards

Jens

ALyczkowski

Ara3n and Chimnoy

Thanks for your input. Each of our plants act as separate entities. We need to segregate the Products that we sell as well as the Customers that each plant sells too. (i know... but this IS a business requirement). We implemented Most of NAV over 5 years ago, defining each plant as a separate company.

Our Payables and General Ledger functions have been done primarily in Dynamics GP. (again... Business requirement). In GP we have each of our plant users log into different databases, One (the centralized database) for processing payables, and another (local) for all other transactions. These are then combined using a reporting tool.

We are engaged in Implementing AP and GL in NAV, and doing away with GP, But the largest obstacle is centralizing our payment opereations. Our requirement is to have each plant act as a separate company, to enter ap transactions in the local company, but to pay the invoices from a centralized location. (control payments to suppliers, Insure tiemly payments, aggressively pursue discounts, reducing check printing costs etc.) The centralizing of Payments makes sense, and could be a really neat add-on if no one has already done it, but I am looking to see if anyone has already done it. (or even has any thoughts on how they would do it.)

Thanks,

Alan