Currently, finance is requesting for a 01/01/2015 date and OPS is requesting 12/01/2014. We in finance would like to have a completed quarter/year in one set of books. Would like to hear anyone's suggestions and/or experiences. Thanks.
What are the Pro's and Con's in regards to timing when changing accounting softwares?
Answers
I would have to side with finance. Who wants to have 11 months in one system and have one month in another (assuming your on a calendar year close)? Keep it clean for finance and
Marie
What are the reasons for each group wanting its go live date?
Why do finance really need it their way?
Why do Ops want it their way?
-What are each group's rational arguments and what are their real reasons?
Sometimes you can meet both groups' needs by:
-examining what transaction detail you really need to migrate over
-assessing if the effort to migrate transaction detail for one month can be achieved easily (i.e. mapping to new COA is not difficult) and with little additional cost
I have found the best practice (time-wise) to change over a system is at quarter-end. Then one can argue whether it makes sense to keep so many quarters in the old system vs the new system, similar to the logic Christie mentioned.
3
Excellent point Wayne. As a sales professional I have had countless conversations (and conversions) with clients who thought Jan 1st is the best time of the year for going live on their new system. Actually, from my vantage point, it's the worst. There are so many other business activities taking place at that time, I always suggested transferring balances and picking Q1 or Q2 for the cut over. Thx, GAP
Migrating + Year-end closing + Year end reporting = Hammer meet head!
Thanks Wayne, our Month-end and Year-end close goes pretty smoothly. Year-end is typical completed right after Month-end.
Month-end completion w/all Financial reports = 6th of each month
Year-end completion w/all Financial reports = between the 7th-15th of January
CPA requires reports by January 20th
Since OPS is running this Project there has been several delays due to the new system not built completely. They are trying to complete the project within 90 days and just did their first extension of another 30 days without all modules built or tested.
Our goal in finance is to end the year smoothly before we have to take on fixing errors in a new software.
Thanks for everyone's comments I really appreciate it.
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Accounting