Financial Reporting for Small Multidivision Company

Posted by unclemuffin on February 2, 2007, 9:57 am

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My company is a small company with three divisions. I am struggling
withour financial reporting (I am not an accountant and my financial
knowledge is pretty basic). Currently we have a transactional
computer system that creates a good working trial balance. The system
falls apart at the reporting level.

I am looking for a software package that can import the working trial
balance for each of our divisions from our exising system and then
create financial statements. The package needs to be able to handle
multiple divisions and combine them together (using eliminating
entries) for a total picture.

I am looking for any suggestions as to what software can import a
trial balance from Excel, CSV or text file and create multidivision
financial reporting.

Thanks,

Brent

Posted by Angrie.woman on February 2, 2007, 12:32 pm

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unclemuffin@gmail.com wrote:

> I am looking for any suggestions as to what software can import a

> trial balance from Excel, CSV or text file and create multidivision

> financial reporting.

> Thanks,

> Brent

If you're really small, you might try using Quickbooks or the new
Microsoft Office Accounting package. You can easily create departments
in either of those, by using the "class" field.

Mircosoft's package is built specically to integrate with the Office
products, like Excel and Word.

Can't do CSV files for much though.

Quickbooks has better class management, in that you can create
sub-classes, but it doesn't integrate with Excel very well at all.

You might want to hire a CPA, or at least a bookkeeper, even if it's
just as a consultant. This is pretty basic fare, really.

Breaking down companies into departments and / or divisions is pretty
routine fare.

The Microsoft basic package is free (www.ideawins.com) and there's a
free 120 day trial of their "Pro" package, which you'll need to handle
classes.

Peachtree is reportedly amazing, but I've never used it.

I'm old fashioned, in that I still prefer to do "simply" in in the chart
of accounts....sigh.

Posted by TKnTexas on February 2, 2007, 10:18 pm

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Peachtree is very easy to use and integrates well with Excel to
prepare reports. Peachtree also uses Crystal Reports. You could have
a consultant create exactly the reports you need routinely in
Crystal. It is also a good accounting application for exporting CSV
(although to go to Excel you don't need to do that). And it is good to
accept CSV files if you want to import journal entries vs keying
them. It was much easier to do this in Peachtree than it was to use
Great Plains Import Manager for Excel. It would bomb out more times
than it worked. Buying MS products DOES NOT assure smooth
interoperation between products as much as one would think. Great
Plains is a product that can run into the tens of thousands of
dollars. While it is a good product. For those dollars one would
expect more than say from MS's entry level program.

TK

> unclemuf...@gmail.com wrote:

> > I am looking for any suggestions as to what software can import a

> > trial balance from Excel, CSV or text file and create multidivision

> > financial reporting.

> > Thanks,

> > Brent

> If you're really small, you might try using Quickbooks or the new

> Microsoft Office Accounting package. You can easily create departments

> in either of those, by using the "class" field.

> Mircosoft's package is built specically to integrate with the Office

> products, like Excel and Word.

> Can't do CSV files for much though.

> Quickbooks has better class management, in that you can create

> sub-classes, but it doesn't integrate with Excel very well at all.

> You might want to hire a CPA, or at least a bookkeeper, even if it's

> just as a consultant. This is pretty basic fare, really.

> Breaking down companies into departments and / or divisions is pretty

> routine fare.

> The Microsoft basic package is free (www.ideawins.com) and there's a

> free 120 day trial of their "Pro" package, which you'll need to handle

> classes.

> Peachtree is reportedly amazing, but I've never used it.

> I'm old fashioned, in that I still prefer to do "simply" in in the chart

> of accounts....sigh.