The ERP finance module plays a crucial role in managing various financial aspects of your business, covering accounting procedures, profit tracking, and financial reporting. While it’s expected that your ERP financial module should handle features such as accounts payable (AP) and general ledger (GL) requirements, there are various functionalities available in today’s ERP apps market. ERP systems have an extensive variety of proficiencies, and finance is not exceptional in that different systems support different requirements.
When validating ERP financial modules for your enterprise, it’s crucial to investigate and understand these capabilities to meet specific functional requirements. Enterprise resource planning systems operate on a modular format, allowing the addition or removal of components from your configuration. While it’s unlikely to remove financial features, adding components like payroll and reporting requires ensuring compatibility with your ERP.
The ERP finance module gathers fiscal data, creating reports like quarterly financial statements, ledgers, profit tracking, and balance sheets. It serves as a central component, handling transactions, and invoices, and offering reporting and revenue management across all business departments.
Key features to include in your ERP finance requirements:
- General Ledger
- Accounts Payable
- Accounts Receivable
- Asset Management
- Cash Management
- Customer Management
- Vendor Management
- Banking Management
- Profit Tracking
- Multi-currency Capabilities
- Reporting
Your ERP financial module provides a unique oversight of spend and financial reporting across all business areas. Ensuring effective utilization is essential.
A typical full-featured ERP finance module, modeled after Oracle’s ERP finance module, includes functional tiers:
- General Ledger (GL)
- Accounts Payable (AP)
- Accounts Receivable (AR)
- Asset Management (FA)
- Cash Management (CM)
These tiers have necessary data dependencies involving customer management (AR tier), vendor management (AP tier), and bank management (CM tier).
Consider breaking down your business needs for each feature, such as automating transactions in the General Ledger or accepting invoices in multiple currencies in Accounts Payable. Ensure your ERP finance module requirements are well-documented in your ERP requirements document.
At an enterprise-wide finance level, necessary data integrations involve accounting management (associated with the GL tier) and soft and hard assets management (associated with the FA tier). These integrations interact with form generators, distributed databases, and report generators.
ERP finance modules manage processes such as interactions with vendors and service providers, handling customer-driven revenue data, reconciling bank-related records, and actively managing assets. The five key features establish the ability to produce a comprehensive, real-time understanding of the enterprise’s financial situation.
While this description represents a full-featured model, smaller ERP platforms may vary. Therefore, establishing comprehensive requirements is crucial to avoid missing important information or making incorrect system purchases.
