Tailor WorkBook's Financial Configurations to Suit Your Agency's Needs

It’s a strange quirk of finance and accounting that a discipline that is so rigidly controlled by regulation, framework and standard has so much variability with regard local practices and workflows within individual companies. Though you may think that most finance teams work in a singular, common manner, workflows generally differ between companies and very often are dictated by the preferences of senior finance management. ERP and Finance systems need to find the balance between supporting international standards and principles of finance reporting, and local preference for work practices. Fortunately WorkBook’s posting configuration can do just that.

What is Posting Configuration?

It may be easy to consider the Posting Configuration limited to just the actual settings menu located in general Settings. But “Posting Configuration” should be considered the framework within which finance transactions flow from initial document entry, through the various WorkBook modules and finally how they post to the general ledger. This means that a much larger workflow must be considered when determining what a company’s specific posting configuration should be, and Posting Configuration should not simply be a decision for the finance team in isolation.

In general, the determination of correct posting configuration would be something that was a key milestone in the implementation of WorkBook as a new ERP system. However, that doesn’t mean that it cannot be changed at a later time, and so what follows can be as relevant to existing users as it is to new users. Like any other key finance change, if you are undertaking a posting configuration review with the intention of altering what you have, this should always be done with the participation of senior finance management and applied at the start of a new financial year.

What are the key considerations of Posting Configuration?

Posting configuration applies to every entry that is processed via the Project posting screen. How you consider setting up your Posting Configuration though, should start at the creation of those transactions, at the point a time entry is created, a purchase invoice generated or an employee raises an expense entry. How these source documents are to be treated and how the ensuing finance transaction is to be calculated is a key outcome of the Posting Configuration.

It is also vital to look at your finance transaction flow at a very high level and consider not just the posting of the transaction itself, for example a time sheet entry, but how that time sheet entry will be handled when it comes to revenue recognition, and whether you are even using a revenue recognition process within your finance department’s workflow. Setting your system to support when and how you want to recognize revenue, to accommodate the workflows of your finance and job management teams, can save you time and manual effort too. Perhaps your intention is try to automate the process and have as much of the revenue recognition taken care of at source – recognizing revenue on your P&L statement at the point the underlying time sheet, sales invoice or personal expense item is posted to the ledger. This is possible through WorkBook’s Posting Configuration, allowing your job teams to simply review at month end and compare actual revenue in the period to what you are entitled to report. 

Are you managing Revenue Recognition based on the financial performance of a job, or the balance of Work in Progress you’re holding on your balance sheet? Both are possible, but have you make the conscious decision of which way you wish to recognize your revenue, and why you’re doing that?

Even once you have your primary workflow supported in the system, there are inevitably going to be exceptions to the norm. You can cater for those exceptions too. There is no limit to the number of configurations you can create in the system, and these can be applied in a multitude of ways to allow specific handling of different internal or external client type scenarios. WorkBook will even support specific configurations linked to particular dimensions, for example Job Type, allowing your system to handle the out of the ordinary circumstances your business will face at the specific job level.

Finance is a discipline governed by frameworks and standards, but the businesses that are generating those financially governed numbers are diverse and changing. WorkBook’s Posting Configurations ensure that there is support for the various processes and circumstances your business may face.