Distribution & Wholesale
CODA Financials has proven to be an excellent fit for distribution and wholesale companies.
UNIT4 has a wide variety of clients in this sector, with different customer focuses and with team sizes ranging from 10 users to several hundred but all sharing important similarities in what they need from a finance system.
Adding value for the distribution & wholesale sector
Through the implementation of CODA Financials and other CODA products and services – our customers’ finance departments have assisted their businesses in addressing the types of key sector-specific needs described below.
And, in doing so, they have transformed themselves from being merely providers of background processing and retrospective reporting to becoming high-profile and valued teams that deliver significant strategic advantage.
Key industry needs
Our experience with distribution and wholesale companies has shown that they have a great many characteristics in common, including:
- A high volume of transactions with low margins
This makes it very important to maximize efficiencies that can be gained from reducing days’ sales outstanding, cash-to-bank processes, reducing credit notes and analyzing customer profitability. - A number of distribution centers across the globe
Using the same instance of financial software greatly assists big-picture analysis of the business as a whole, while providing a certain level of autonomy to individual cost and profit centers. - Detailed and real-time reporting requirements
In-depth analysis of: sales; product movements; profitability by customer, by product, by location; and effectiveness of promotions (i.e. while they are happening, not after the event) are critical. Real-time information should be available at any time and not just at the end of the month. - The desire to have a “best-of-class” solution for the finance department
A recognition that a best of class application strategy provides greater flexibility to adapt to your processes and allows speedier implementation times to maximize the return on investment. This allows your company to take a “no compromise” approach by simultaneously benefiting from the best distribution and wholesale applications and the best financial package.
Capabilities for the distribution and wholesale sector
The following capabilities make CODA Financials particularly well suited for the distribution and wholesale sector:
- Single financial model
- Eliminates time lags, sub ledgers, reconciling and unnecessary integration
- Instantaneous or perpetual close
- Integral project accounting
- Allows for trade partner and agent netting
- Real-time reporting and visibility
- Up-to-the-second reporting of cash positions, profitability, costing, budget variances etc.
- Full range of reporting tools available from online browsing to multidimensional data marts
- Easy and secure Microsoft ®Excel® integration
- Multidimensional analysis
- Infinite ways to classify, measure, and analyze the business
- Flexible analysis of projects, products, line of business and suppliers
- Extensive customer and product profitability analysis
- Unparalleled currency management and exposure analysis
- Advanced allocations
- Flexible allocation rules to distribute costs and service fees across products, services and companies
- Real-time or batch integration– for “joined-up” working with your distribution and wholesale applications
- Exposes all accounting logic, security and financial validation to any other application
- Provide secure, real time accounting web services to other applications
- Automated processes and controls
- Extend and automate financial controls across operational processes, applications and people throughout the organization
- Continuous, visible and auditable compliance controls
- Self documenting processes and audit trail
- Global – Multi-everything
- Multi-company, Multi-currency, Multi-language, Inter-company
- Designed for diverse and global operations
- Independent close calendars by company
- Centralized or de-centralized financial operations
- Credit and collections management
- Full online view of customer history
- User-defined aging
- Visibility of customer activity across companies
- Prioritize and identify exception accounts
- User-defined credit manager and collection agent views
- Full diary of actions taken, reminders, conversations and follow up notes
- Unlimited action or reason codes
- Credit statistics include:
- Item count
- Average value
- Average days
- Weighted average days
- High value
- Low value
- Days sales outstanding
- Specify interest charges on overdue accounts and items
- Flexible reminder or dunning letters
- Spend Management
- Completely automated “req-to-check” process
- Online approval process and authorization workflow
- Three-way matching
- Reimbursable expenses – direct bill to customer from A/P
- Budget tracking and commitment accounting
- Consolidates buying activity with best suppliers
- Online and punch-out catalogs
- Spend visibility by project, item, manager, employee etc.
- Fixed Asset Management
- Integral to the CODA solution’s single financial model – no batch updates, always in balance
- Track assets across multiple companies, locations, currencies and “books”
- Flexible and standard depreciation rules
- Any number of user-defined depreciation rules
- User-defined tracking, categorization
- Disposals: full or partial
- Transfer assets – either between cost centers or to create a new asset
- Revaluate appreciating assets and post the financial transactions to separate revaluation accounts.
- Revalue by value, percentage or a customizable rule.
- Forecast future year depreciation charges
- Export forecasts to a spreadsheet or to CODA balance codes for further analysis or reporting.
- Supports all methods of asset creation, including bulk loading
- Direct cost transfers from G/L WIP to Assets
- Users can browse customized lists of assets, with comprehensive drill-down to view full asset details, associated transactions and financial postings
Contact us for more information about how we can help distribution and wholesale organizations to embrace change!
