Networking on Accounting through the WBS intranet

I just followed a discussion on WBS' intranet and wanted to share one piece of advice by my friend Singean. The intranet platform at WBS is, for some reason, the one which students use more effectively. The intranet at Queen's was high quality too and the one at MBS is very functional, although old fashioned (they are changing that, though). Maybe it is because of the big number of Distance Learning students who use the intranet as their main source of interaction. In any case, at WBS the contact between the different master courses is much stronger than at the other schools.
But back to accounting, I am publishing the question which started the discussion and one of the answers to it. I hope that the authors don't mind.

Greetings Everyone,

I was looking for a bit of advice and thought that I would try to reach out to the accountants out there ...

I am doing some consutancy for a small business that has a very healthy turnover and some fairly big clients - unfortunately they have no administration in place and there seems to be a fair amount of loss through the lack of control.

I was wondering if any of you can spare a moment to give some advice about what would be the best accounting package to put them on -

I have been looking at Peach Tree and Quick Books - as it turns out though quick books apparently fails to handle currencies ... has anyone got any suggestions? Please bear in mind I am not an accountant and I may end up having to set the whole thing on my own ..

The company has to :

1 Invoice Clients
2. Pay wages
3. Handle Multiple currencies as the TZ shilling is linked to the dollar and they are interchangeable -
4. Buy/sell inventory

- they are a services company

Thanks in advance

Gian

And my friend Singean's response:

Saw this thread and thought I would throw in my full penny worth too. It sounds to me like you are being pushed back on in a very classic way. Be very careful with any claims that "everything will be okay or nothing can be done until the new software comes". This is a very common excuse for poor performance which conveniently masks any need to improve things in the present. Software is just a tool not a panacea.

The start of controlling is to make sure you sit with people and make sure what they are doing actually makes sense, you don't need to be an accountant or have fancy software to do that. If you are reasonably bright and you still can't understand it then probably something is wrong. You can begin this process now without the software being in place.

Just go and sit at peoples desks and have people explain to you what they do, follow a couple of specific transactions all the way through the system. Tell tale things to look out for is if ever you hear the following: someone says they do something "because it's just like that", or "for historic reasons', or they do it "unofficially" then you need to circle back on the point later as there is a very good chance you have a financial leakage just at that point. I suggest you don't jump on the first instance of suspected leakage you see but instead quietly take a note of it because otherwise you will never get to see what is happening further downstream.

Don't expect to win many buddies doing this as unfortunately you may expect significant resistance and avoidance but if you are patient you will gradually regain control of the business. If you do not regain control first then you can buy the best software in the world and it still won't help you.

Good luck with it.

Singean
FTMBA 08