If your organization is using a SaaS
I'm looking to validate capabilities of solutions like Workday Financials, NetSuite, IntAcct, FinanceForce to support multi-org/currency/language as well as their consolidation and reporting.
Who is using a SaaS Accounting system for an international organization?
Answers
We have been using NetSuite for over 2.5 years. Our company is not as big as yours but that should not matter that much because we have noted that NetSuite is highly scalable. We also have been able to arrange any data that we ever need through their simple and flexible reporting tools.
NetSuite, SAP BusinessOne, and Intacct all support those requirements *generally*, though I would recommend listing out your detailed requirements (check/signature printing, line-item veto abilities, XBRL support (for listed companies or subsidiaries) and including them all in a comparison to ensure that all of your needs are met and, if they are, whether met natively, with customization, or through third-party ISV product integration. I am happy to discuss further or offer some additional considerations for your selection process.
1
Use Intacct
...but had to dispense with that due to European (specifically, Swedish) regulations that required physical presence of the books in Sweden for the Swedish entity. You can fake this (quasi-legally) by doing data dumps, but it can cause
So; check to see what is required by your foreign entities before you go SaaS. You may not be allowed to go as deep as you want.
Cheers
KP
Keith-that's an interesting issue. If a Swedish company runs its ERP system from a data center located in another Swedish city, I wonder how that differs in practice from SaaS based processing? I appreciate your insights.
1
Len,
If the data center is located in Sweden, it isn't a problem.
The only problems arise when you have an actual sub incorp'd in Sweden and either you know your software is outside of the country or, with SaaS, you can't really say where it is with a straight face.
Most larger companies run afoul of this problem.
The worst solution (which we pursued initially) is to have a full set of sub-books which was then uploaded periodically for consolidation.
The second solution was to simply put the licenses in Sweden, as the US doesn't care where your books are, nor did any of the other locations where we had incorporated.
Feedback I've gotten is that long-term, the data-dump (or a data-warehouse application) is the way to go. You need to have it structured in the Swedish-audit-format*, but other than that you're OK. It's just something to negotiate with the auditors up front.
*Technically, you don't. If your ERP will export SIE/XRBL (most will), you simply do your audits off the ERP system, and sign off that the in-country copy is identical, even though it is just a unusable flat file.
What we never discussed (and is now moot as we sold the company to Intel this year), is what the Swedish roadmap to the cloud in general will be. Even if you don't SaaS, it is making less and less sense to own physical assets below a certain scale. Anachronistic rules like this are on their way out, but some localities really like to drag their feet...
Keith
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