Does your Chart of Accounts still fit your Organisations Reporting Requirements?
Does your Chart of Accounts still fit your Organisations Reporting Requirements?
Are you able to generate the reports that your business requires straight from Unit4 Financials, without resorting to an end-user computing solution such as Excel? If not, then your current chart of accounts may no longer be fit for purpose.
The element structure within Financials allows for huge flexibility giving users the capability to produce any number of customised reports. However, to make the most of this level of flexibility it is vital that your element structure is optimised to allow the correct information with minimal manual intervention.
As your business grows, the nature of the reporting requirements changes, and so your original chart of accounts may no longer be suitable to support this. Whilst most small businesses initially set up their accounting to meet GAAP and FRS requirements, they can often overlook the importance of having a robust management accounting structure.
Management accounting allows you to create financial reporting that provides you with the information to manage your business. With a suitably designed chart of accounts, you can fulfill both your internal management accounting and statutory reporting.
Remodeling your chart of accounts can allow you to produce both your management and statutory reporting using standard Unit4 Financials functionality, such as generic browse. It will also allow you to use more powerful analytical tools like metadata queries to produce more value-added reporting.
A appropriately designed chart of accounts will enable you to meet the reporting needs of both Managerial and Financial Accounting.
Here at Millennium Consulting we can help you design a new chart of accounts and element structure within Unit4 Financials to reflect your current business needs. Our skilled staff can undertake workshops to understand your organisational reporting needs and create an element structure and chart of accounts that will drive your business.
Published October 23rd, 2020
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Discover the latest Unit4 Financials features in V14
February 2020
Discover the latest Unit4 Financials features in V14
This post shares all the functionality available on Unit4 Financials V14. If you are upgrading from an older version of Financials, you will get all of the below features plus all the very latest features from V13, V2020 and Continuous Release.
If you are on V14 remember that at end of 2022 it will fall outside the Unit4 supported software window. If you don’t upgrade before that date, you may incur extended support charges from Unit4.
Now may be an ideal time to look at the options that are available to you and the benefits you will gain from an upgrade.
Element Workflow
To ensure the accuracy of master data and minimise the risk of fraudulent creation or modification of key master data, capabilities have been added for creating and approving master data.
Flexi-Fields
The Flexi-field capability at element level has been extended to transaction level, which allows you to capture unlimited amounts of business-specific dimensions, perform more detailed analyses and calculate more detailed KPIs and intelligence, in order to support both strategic and operational decision making.
Billing
Replacing the legacy e-billing module, the new billing module is fully integrated with the core of the financials framework.
Financials new features:
- Element Authorisation
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- Element authorisation rule master
- Element authorisation workflow process
- Import/export of element authorisation rules
- Flexi-fields for finance transactions
- Transaction Flexi-fields in table link
- Browse ledger and aged analysis
- Multiple attachments for finance documents
- Assisted element template.
- Identification of cancelled transactions
- Input–derived fields
- Revaluation chain – dates
- Intercompany – copy attachments
- Reconciliation – scroll folders independently
- Currency write-offs
- Element finder – IBAN code now added
- Pay proposal codes – now display the full proposal code
- Payment reference number
- Unique payment reference generation
- Matching – write-off tolerances now defined in home, dual and matching currency
Administration New Features:
- Capability by company
- Inactivating users - active until date specified on master
- Change password and locked users
- Password parameters – specify number of uppercase and lowercase
- Diary notifications and scheduled task
- Scheduled Tasks: Allocation, allocation chain, balance audit, currency revaluation chain, currency revaluation rule, diary notifications, document audit, generate pay/collect proposal, generate reminder letters, intercompany processing, table link document load, table link element load and tax transfer
- E-mails subject and sender configuration in workflow
- Menu content provider - enables you to store defaults for selectors and presenters
- Downloads – downloads section on administration console, print formatter and workflow designer
- Application header text - define application header text in application parameters
A painless Unit4 Financials upgrade starts here
If you are on V14 remember that at end of 2022 it will fall outside the Unit4 supported software window. If you don’t upgrade before that date, you may incur extended support charges from Unit4.
Now may be an ideal time to look at the options that are available to you and the benefits you will gain from an upgrade.
Discover the latest Unit4 Financials features in V13
Discover the latest Unit4 Financials features in V13
This post shares all the functionality available on Unit4 Financials V13. If you are upgrading from an older version of Financials, you will get all of the below features plus all the very latest features from V14, V2020 and Continuous Release.
If you are on an older version of Financials (lower than V14) you have may have already fallen outside the Unit4 supported software window and maybe incurring extended support charges.
Now may be an ideal time to look at the options that are available to you and the benefits you will gain from an upgrade.
Element Workflow
To ensure the accuracy of master data and minimise the risk of fraudulent creation or modification of key master data, capabilities have been added for creating and approving master data.
Flexi-Fields
The Flexi-field capability at element level has been extended to transaction level, which allows you to capture unlimited amounts of business-specific dimensions, perform more detailed analyses and calculate more detailed KPIs and intelligence, in order to support both strategic and operational decision making.
General:
- New framework for user
- All applications accessed from one menu
- Save activities to a favourites list
- Retains history of recent activities
- Receive workflow messages as alerts
Financials:
- Enquiries
- New aged analysis
- Reference date on browse ledger
- Browse transactions (new) uses metadata
- Credit Management
- Diary uses metadata selectors & presenters
- Diary manager linked to user master
- Credit Manager maintenance
- Print statements – similar to sales invoicing
- New aged table object on Print Formatter to include ageing on customer statements
- Add elements directly to group masters
- Add attachments to elements
Administration Console:
- Workflow
- Housekeeping
- Financial attachments
- Tasklist
- Completion workflows
- New scheduled tasks
- Print invoices
- Print statements
- Ledger maintenance
- Populate link tables
- Customizer integrated into the application
- Metadata – add new joins and vocabulary to existing views
- Create and maintain repository folders
- Printing & emailing
- Email template master – subject body and signature for use in invoices etc.
- Print options master – links print formats, output device, and email templates
- Print format watermarks
- Export/import print format masters
- Filter element selection within generic browse by filter on user’s role
- Link table import routine from source files
A painless Unit4 Financials upgrade starts here
If you are on V14 remember that at end of 2022 it will fall outside the Unit4 supported software window. If you don’t upgrade before that date, you may incur extended support charges from Unit4.
Now may be an ideal time to look at the options that are available to you and the benefits you will gain from an upgrade.
Implementation methodology for new business requirement
Implementation methodology for new business requirement
Millennium Consulting follows the Unit4 Implementation Methodology (U4IM), which is used globally for all Unit4 software implementations.
The methodology encompasses all the activities that can take place throughout the implementation process and is supported by strong project management controls to ensure successful delivery.
The phases of U4IM are:
• Plan/Design
We agree on the contract with a client, then hand the project to our implementation team who set up the project organization. We perform a business requirement and process review, running workshops with the client to create the solution design.
• Test
We help you to perform Integrated System Testing and User Acceptance Testing on the elements built in the Build phase.
• Deploy
We deploy the different solution elements, taking care to advise you on and help coordinate every aspect from Data Migration to End User Testing.
• Close
Around three weeks after the solution goes live, we evaluate the project – assessing deliverables and future plans for development.
Note: Integration with third-party reporting software such as Cognos, Business Objects and Microsoft SSRS (as well as procurement, billing and payroll systems) is a key consideration of the upgrade process.
Is it time to upgrade?
Upgrading your finance software can provide new functionality, increased automation and more efficient processes.
About Millennium and Unit4
About Millennium Consulting
At Millennium Consulting we are experts in business transformation, accounting, software development, regulatory compliance, and the impact of business and technology change.
For 27 years, Millennium have provided global solutions and services across the world’s most demanding industries, with customers in finance, retail, logistics, construction, and manufacturing.
Millennium first partnered with Unit4 back in 2014 and have since become one of the leading global Unit4 partners for Unit4 Financials (previously known as Coda Financials) sales, services, and support.
Group Website: www.millenniumconsulting.com
Employees: 40 +
History: Established in 1995 Millennium was originally a specialist consultancy for organisations who used the Infor SunSystems or Coda Financials Finance Systems. Over time Millennium has become a system agnostic finance transformation consultancy and in 2010 launched a software development arm. In 2016 Millennium opened offices in the US and in 2018 in Milan, Italy, and 2020 Budapest Hungary. In 2020 Millennium achieved Elite Partner status from Unit4, one of only two Unit4 Financials Elite Partners globally. Millennium’s Elite Partner status has been reaffirmed by Unit4 in 2021 and 2022.
About Unit4
Unit4 is a leading provider of enterprise applications empowering people in service organisations including: financial services, professional services, retail, manufacturing, logistics, education, public services and not-for-profit.
Unit4 has operations, distributors and partners around the world for easy, local access to sales, service and support.
Unit4 Financials product suite: Unit4 Financials, Purchase Order Processing, Purchase Invoice Matching, Billing, Assets, FP&A, Analyser, Travel & Expenses and Unit4XL.
Group Website: www.unit4.com
Employees: 4,000+
History: Coda Plc was established in Leeds, Yorkshire in 1979 by Rodney Potts & Christopher Lennox. In 2008 following periods of ownership by Baan and Science Systems, it was acquired by the Dutch registered software vendor Unit4. In March 2014 Unit4 was acquired by international venture capital firm Advent International. In March 2021 Unit4 received a majority investment from TA Associates, a leading global private equity firm.
