4 ms·
Sort of. The challenge is that no two businesses are really alike, so it's difficult to create a standard that can capture all the nuance of running a business
by tomnipotent 5y ago
Sort of.
The challenge is that no two businesses are really alike, so it's difficult to create a standard that can capture all the nuance of running a business. GAAP/IFRS-compliant accounting requires double-entry accounting, so many ERP systems share a lot of the same things (account, debit/credit, accruals, receipt of goods, month-end close) that are needed to spit out the three sheets and other artifacts for financial reporting.
A running joke in the industry is that you don't customize your ERP for your business, but customize your business for your ERP. You end up with a lot of "middleware" that essentially adapts your operational systems into the format needed by the ERP to do its job, and your staff will design workflow processes specifically centered around how the ERP works for things like closing the books or managing inventory.
- smichael 5y agohttp://xbrl.squarespace.com http://xbrl.squarespace.com aims at this problem, I think ?
- tomnipotent 5y agoThis is for exchanging reporting data, not all the things that lead up to that. It can't tell you how to structure sales to account for taxes across multiple countries, or how to accrue for gift cards/liabilities, or recognizing revenue from annual subscriptions, or deprecating assets, or amortizing expenses. Each ERP and business will do this in slightly different ways. But what it can tell you is how to represent those results when everything else is said-and-done.