By Nick Maiden
Director of Operations & Systems Education
You’d be hard pressed to find a business software developer or consultancy out there that doesn’t emphasise the importance of keeping critical systems up to date. And it’s a valid message…
The latest versions of software deliver new functionalities, integrations, legislation updates, security patches and support arrangements. These are all designed to keep businesses like yours running more efficiently than ever by making sure your people have the tools at their disposal to maximise effectiveness in their roles and current business environments.
Most businesses and system administrators understand this truth. What they also understand is the need for solid and tangible justifications for embarking on a software upgrade project.
Put simply… Show us what’s new and the return on our investment in an upgrade or we’ll take the path of least resistance ie. Sticking with what we’ve got!
Fair enough we say. You wouldn’t upgrade your car without knowing why your new motor is just that, an upgrade. So, with Version 15 (V15) of Unit4 Financials now available, we thought we’d provide an overview of exactly what’s new.
Taken from a recent presentation I gave to the Unit4 Financials User Group, you’ll find these headline updates below.
As we have done for many attendees within the User Group, we’re then more than happy to pick up your specific requirements and Unit4 Financials V15 upgrade plans on a dedicated consultancy call. For now, though, let’s jump right in.
Introducing Provisional Year Ends
You can now choose to run a Year End in two modes within Unit4 financials V15: Provisional or Full.
Provisional Year End will perform all the retained earnings calculation and posting of a full Year End, but will not actually close the year in question, allowing you to continue posting to that year in Financials. Documents included in and used to run a provisional Year End will be selected based on document input date.
It’s a great comfort to know that you can process a year end, check the profit figure and be able to post any additional adjustments required.
Subsequent Year End processing – be it provisional or full – will perform incremental postings to the retained earnings account for any transactions applicable to the year being ended that have an input date greater than the date specified for the latest provisional Year End.
Undo Year End Functionality
Another big functionality advance around Year Ends in V15 is that you can now undo both provisional and full Year Ends.
This undo function will cancel all Year End journals posted to the final period for the latest year in which a Year End has been run and to the opening period of the next year. If a full Year End is undone, then the minimum year will be reset to the previous year.
It is worth remembering that the Undo Year End process undoes all the Year Ends that have been run in the selected year, not just the last Year End process itself.
Reconciliation
Reconciliation in V15 will now record the date of reconciliation:
- This will default to today’s date unless a date is set via the Reconciliation Master or at run time.
- The Finance user that ran the reconciliation process will be recorded as the Reconciliation user
- The Reconciliation date and user are also available as vocabularies for use in Selector and Presenter masters.
This functionality has great potential for use in tracking transactions included in a quarterly VAT return and processing via MTD
Payments & Collections
The payment period and/or date can now be changed on a payment proposal after it has been generated via a new option ‘Change payment period’ on the Pay/Collect actions menu.
Customiser Enhancements
Customisations to the software are now stored in a new database table – com_screencus.
In addition to the administrative benefits around customisation managements that this delivers, V15 also introduces the ability to import and export Customisations to and from the system.
Intercompany Updates
Intercompany control accounts in V15 can now contain a customer and/or supplier element.
This applies to elements explicitly specified in the control accounts on destination and receiver masters, and to elements inserted when those accounts contain wildcards.
So, there are some of the headline features which make Unit4 Financials V15 another significant evolution in the application. For many users the potential business benefits of these will represent a compelling case for upgrade, especially when considered in conjunction with issues of support and business resilience related to keeping critical software up to date.
Stay tuned to our blog because we’ll soon be providing the opportunity to download an exclusive video demonstration of some of these key new features. AND don’t forget, we’re always happy to arrange upgrade consultancy calls focused on your specific business requirements and your Unit4 Financials implementation.
Simply click here to visit our contact page, complete your details in the form and we’ll get back to you as quickly as possible!
