Large construction projects require significant capital and inter-disciplinary skills and a convenient business structure for these developments are joint ventures where several parties are involved. Equally as common in construction is the use of independent business structures for separate projects for integrity and isolation from other projects.

Business can quite easily have tens of projects in progress simultaneously and reporting on in a consolidated manner over all projects is a necessary requirement.

Although medium sized ERP systems with their multi-division features which can cater for these complexities the issue is projects have finite lifespan and so it is difficult to justify a $50,000 to $100,000 implementation cost let alone ongoing training of operations staff.

For these reasons accounting systems like MYOB AccountRight are a compelling alternative as they have a feature set that caters for most needs, an inexpensive price point and most importantly many certified consultants and experienced MYOB people in the workforce.

However, delivering Consolidated Reports is the Achilles Heel of AccountRight. When Renae Petersen (@RenaePetersen) of 2 Peas Pty Ltd  was called in to help streamline the reporting of a large Melbourne Architectural firm and their 17 company files she was well aware of this and she knew stitching together AccountRight reports in spreadsheets was neither productive nor timely.

Renae reviewed the client’s immediate need for an Consolidated Aged Accounts Receivable report over the 17 entities. She accessed the MYOB Advanced Reporting Add-On page and selected the BI4Cloud – Business Intelligence for Cloud add-on

After signing up for the free trial Bi4Cloud addressed the client’s immediate needs for consolidated Aged Receivables

BI4Cloud is the only reporting add-on that captures and consolidates detail transactions from MYOB AccountRight and so was able to meet the client’s particular reporting needs out of the box. Other Add-on solutions do not extract detail information and can ONLY consolidate GL Accounts and Jobs.

With the client’s immediate needs delivered other important requirements for consolidated Profit & Loss and consolidated Balance sheets were addressed. This required Renae to design and set up a consistent Chart of Accounts over each of the company files. Although this took a little time and effort the end-result is that the reports are now set and forget.

Reports can be automatically emailed and are also available in one-click

“The client is really pleased that reporting can be accessed daily and on-demand” Renae said, adding “with BI4Cloud you can setup specific report needs, change columns displayed, setup group totals and filter particular activities and dates and save it as a favourite that can later be accessed in 1-click”

Myanmar Construction is exploding: read about Shwe Taung Group and Bi4Cloud

 

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