New year, new budget, but will your CFO really have the tools to ensure that employees and approvers adhere to that new budget? Maybe it’s time to research business software solutions that will help your employees and approvers to be more budget savvy. Ariett Cloud Purchase and Expense offers your CFO a solution with built-in cost-control features, such as pre-approval of purchases and employee expenses, contract management and calculated budget availability at the time of making a purchase. Ariett also provides you with the option to use an Automated Service for importing additional GL transactions from Dynamics GP into Ariett for an accurate and up-to-date budget calculation.
Sounds good so far? Then, let’s walk through how pre-approval and budget checking features combined can turn your New Year’s resolution of having a firm handle on your budget into a reality. For instance, if your marketing team needs to generate flyers, pop-ups and other materials for a marketing event, they can submit an Ariett Requisition with an attached price quote. If the vendor isn’t stored in Ariett – no problem, the employee can submit a new vendor request for approval. Once the purchase request has been submitted, the approver and other budget stakeholders (e.g. your CFO) can immediately have visibility to the request.
How exactly does Ariett’s budget checking come into play in this scenario? At the time of submitting a requisition, the employee can view the remaining budget amount. Approvers and other budget stakeholders can also review all pending requisitions and invoices from the search screen and can check indicator lights at each line item to determine whether each item is within, approaching or over budget. Similarly, when reviewing a pre-expense request, a department manager can see how the employee’s request for airfare and hotel for a conference stacks up with the department budget. In this way, your budget managers will have the right tools for enforcing employee compliance with the budget.
A new, Automated Service feature in Ariett will make your organization even more budget savvy. Ariett’s Budget Service automatically imports GL transactions posted in Dynamics GP directly into Ariett Cloud Purchase and Expense. How does a Service like this benefit your approvers and budget stakeholders? Quite simply, the feature allows them to have a view of the budget status and availability in Ariett for their budgeted general ledger accounts without having to log in to Dynamics GP. The information is available and displayed at the time of entering or approving a transaction.
For example, this Automated Service can update the budget to provide a department manager with an accurate picture of the departmental budget. He or she has the ability to review a complete list of requisitions, invoices and GP transactions (regardless of their status) and their impact on the current budget. With this information, the department manager can more readily predict whether the department will meet its budget goals and can decide whether to hold off on certain purchases. And, you know what the best part of this feature is? You have all the information you need from a Cloud solution without actually lifting a finger (or uploading an Excel spreadsheet) – Ariett’s Service does the work for you!
Want a fresh start on managing your budget in 2016? Then, it’s time to start evaluating solutions that provide pre-expense approval and budget management. To gain a complete picture the best practices for your accounts payable in 2016, please take a look at our recent white paper for CFOs: http://www.ariett.com/campaign/modern-ap
By Ariett