How does Black Friday apply to Visual ERP?

It is that time of year.  The leaves are falling, the nights are cooler and there is the dreaded thought of snow. In Canada and the northern United States, we have our checklist to prepare for the winter season. 

1. Put on snow tires.
2. Cover air conditioner.
3. Get all your winter gear out of storage.  That’s coats, boots, scarves, gloves, skis, snowshoes and tuques.  “What is a tuque?” you might ask.  That is a knit hat.  It is what we call them in Canada.  My American husband calls them beanies. But I digress. I need to get back to the list.
4. Take down Hallowe’en or Thanksgiving decorations
5. Put up Christmas decorations
6. Start shopping for Christmas or your holiday of choice.  It is Black Friday, so you might get a deal.
7. Even start making New Year’s Eve plans. (I do have to confess I am a bit of a planner.)

But what does this have to do with Visual ERP? Well here’s the link.  Many companies have Dec. 31 year-ends.  I saw one survey that show over 90% of companies have it. Even if it is over 50%, then it might apply to you.

So what are things that you can do to get ready for year-end.  As with any month-end you want things reconciled.  Now if I can be bold, I would like to recommend you look at things like Inventory, WIP and PO accrual before year-end.  It is soooooo much easier to fix things, especially inventory, before year-end.  Just imagine – going into New Year’s eve with your inventory 100% reconciled.  You can just sit back, relax and have some champagne.

So you might not want to do this but what if I told you, it could be easy and so much fun.  I have been working with a tool called “Inventory Deep Dive Reconciliation Tool” and it has been so helpful finding problems.  Recently, I was working with a client whose inventory had gotten out of balance last month.  Within 1 hour we found some General Journal Entries, AP invoices posted to Inventory accounts and some cost layer issues.  It still amazes me how quickly this tool is able to dive deep within the Visual database to find the issues. 

With today being Black Friday, think of this as a reminder that the new year is coming.  It may be time to start your year-end clean-up.  I am not saying work today but you might want to make a note in your planner to start real soon. You can even check out our website to download the Year-End Checklist that has over 40 tasks.