Background
Many companies established their procedures for managing the costs of their products, using the functionality available within their ERP software, several years ago. In most cases, these procedures were established during the initial implementation of their ERP software.
After a period of time, many of these companies find themselves in a position where their current costing procedures no longer accurately reflect their current methods of manufacturing, or their current methods of purchasing, and consequently their current costing procedures produce erroneous product cost information. This erroneous product cost information is, in turn, used to erroneously update the selling prices of their products, which, in turn, can cause serious customer relationship problems, or even worse, can create lost sales opportunities.
This cost management issue can occur, many times without the customer's knowledge, because over time the customer experiences an erosion of product cost knowledge, relative to the ERP functionality and the related product costing procedures it has established to support its use of ERP software. This erosion of knowledge can be caused by turnover or re-assignments of its staff that manages product costing information.
Normally, most companies have assigned only one or possibly two accounting resources that fully understand how the ERP software is used to properly manage product cost information. When these resources change, the companies involved are at a serious risk for the introduction of material errors in their product costing procedures because of the extensive amount of integration that is built within the ERP software's costing applications.
Overview
Our TCM/SyteLine Cost Accounting Services are designed to:
1) Offer the companies using TCM, or SyteLine, the opportunity to conduct a formal review of their current product costs, and related procedures, to insure that their current costing procedures are producing currently accurate product costs. This review includes validating the use of all cost components, including material costs, labor costs, and all burden calculations. This review can apply to companies using either product's Standard Product Costing, Job Costing, or Estimating applications
2) Help companies update their current, standard, or actual costing procedures during their annual review process, to reflect changes that they have made or plan to make in their manufacturing or purchasing processes
3) Help companies implement changes required to their core product costing procedures, which should be reviewed and updated, if required, at least quarterly, semi-annually, or annually
4) Train in-house accounting staff on the proper use of the TCM's, or SyteLine's, product costing functionality, and TCM's, or SyteLine's, General Ledger functionality, as it relates to managing product costs.
5) Augment the internal management team with experienced external financial management resources that are very knowledgeable about the effective management of product costs, and the effective use of the ERP costing functionality.
6) Implement support for activity based costing