Internal and External Companies
There are two types of entity in Coins ERP+ that are sometimes confused: internal companies and external companies.
Internal companies are the accounting and business entities of your organisation. They are sometimes known as "Coins ERP+ companies" or "KCOs" (pronounced "kay-koe" and named after the Coins ERP+ database record that represents them). They are used to manage the legal, operating and financial structure of the business. Typically a legal entity which is also a significant operating business is set up as a separate Coins ERP+ company. Financial ledgers, such as the General Ledger and accounts payable, are managed separately by each Coins ERP+ company.
External companies are companies that you deal with outside your organisation, such as suppliers, subcontractors, and customers (but also companies such as solicitors, financial companies and utility companies). These are sometimes known as CIW companies (CIW is short for the Coins ERP+ Company Information Workbench).
The ways in which these relate can be quite complex:
If you are an organisation with many companies that manage their own supply chains, how do you manage the same supplier across the different companies?
If you are trading with a supplier that has many branches or depots, and several different payment processing centres, how do you record these different entities and how do you trade with them?
For example: XYZ Contractor, North Divison may place an Order with ABC Materials Bolton branch, but the Purchase Invoice is issued by the ABC Materials Manchester payment centre. The XYZ Contractor has a Shared service centre that matches the invoice to the order, and pays the invoice out of the Civils & Construction company (which has a North and a South division).
In Coins ERP+ we have the following entities to manage the above:
ABC Materials
ABC Materials is an example of a Coins ERP+CIW Company.
ABC Materials has many offices – Bolton Branch, Portsmouth Branch, Manchester Payment centre, Reading Payment centre, Northampton Head Office and potentially many others.
Each office has one or more addresses associated with it. Typically there will just be one address for each office, but the Bolton branch could have the Manchester Payment centre as a separate Payment address.
For more information, see Company Information Workbench.
XYZ Group
An internal Coins ERP+ company is created for XYZ Civils & Construction, and for XYZ Developments. These companies each have their own financial ledgers, including accounts payable. Coins ERP+ can be configured to set up an ABC Materials supplier account ABC001 in both Coins ERP+ companies, and these two PL accounts can both be linked to the ABC Materials CIW offices for Manchester and Reading.
Coins ERP+ can then create different views of suppliers (a view controls which suppliers are displayed in the browse screen). To manage the example above, two or three separate views could be created: A global database view and a Coins ERP+ company view are mandatory. An additional Divisional View is optional. Coins ERP+ Users are set up to have a default "User View". If XYZ Developments does not use ABC Materials, then ABC Materials would be excluded from the company View for XYZ Developments; the Procurement Manager for XYZ Developments would not see ABC Materials in his default View. If he amended his view to Global, he would see ABC Materials. He could then add ABC Materials to his Company view if XYZ Developments planned to purchase materials from ABC Materials. For more information.
In Coins ERP+, a Status Code is used to say whether the supplier is "approved". There can be different status codes; for example: Unapproved, Approved, Preferred, Partner. Different statuses can be applied to each “View”. So the North Division could say that ABC Materials is "Preferred" and the South Division could set the status as merely "Approved". The Status at comapny level (XYZ Civils & Construction) would be shown as "Approved", and the Group status would also be "Approved", because the lowest status level is propagated by Coins ERP+ up the hierarchy. For more information.
Company Information Workbench
The Company Information Workbench is a database of all the companies you deal with; for example: suppliers, subcontractors, clients, architects, solicitors, and so on. The Company Information Workbench is "global" - that is, it is not restricted to a single Coins ERP+ company (kco). You should only have one record in the Company Information Workbench for each company you deal with.
Although company records are not specific to any Coins ERP+ company, your user view restricts which companies you see from any one Coins ERP+ company.
Different modules have different versions of the CIW, which reflect the different needs. For example:
The Procurement version of the workbench shows company scores and status, and allows you to DIG DEEPER to information related to orders and accounts.
The Marketing version shows the contact and sales rep, and allows you to DIG DEEPER to information related to projects and contacts.
Company Types
Company types allow you to identify different types of company and your relationship with them. Each company in the Company Information Workbench belongs to one or more company type. For example, a company could be a supplier, subcontractor and plant hire company. Each company type belongs to a module, which determines the views in which the company is visible.
Offices
Each company in the Company Information Workbench has one or more offices (for example, head office, regional offices and so on). When you create a new company record, this automatically creates an office record:
When you add a company in Procurement, you specify the type of office you are entering.
When you add a company in Marketing, Coins ERP+ creates a head office record.
After that, you can add other offices that belong to the same company.
Office Types
Office types allow you to identify different types of office; for example: head office, regional office. Each office has one type only. You must also define which office type you are using as a head office, using the CI parameter HOTYPE.
Address Types
Each office can have many addresses - for example, a postal address, an address for deliveries, an address to which invoices should be sent, and so on. Address types identify the different types of address.
There are specific address types for accounts payable, Subcontract Ledger, accounts receivable invoices, and accounts receivable statements.
Account Numbering Policy
You can either allow users to allocate account codes (account numbers) to accounts manually, or you can have Coins ERP+ allocate them automatically from the information in the Company Information Workbench.
Auto-numbering
Auto-numbering ensures a consistent approach to account numbers across your business and allows you to see all accounts linked to an office across all your companies.
Coins ERP+ generates an account number automatically when a new account is set up in one of the ledgers; the same account number is then used in the other ledgers if needed.
In order to use auto-numbering, the company must first be set up in the Company Information Workbench.
Manual account numbering
Using manual account numbering, you allocate the account number when you create a new account in one of the financial ledgers.
If an account in the same ledger already exists for that office in another company, you must use the same account number.
To add a new ledger account:
In the ledger account maintenance screen, click Add.
Click Lookup to display the Company Information Workbench lookup.
If an account has already been set up for the office in a different company, the lookup will show the account number that has been allocated, and the Account Exists in this cocolumn will not have a tick.
Click Choose to select the office for which you want to create an account.
If you are using auto-numbering, when you select the office, Coins ERP+ populates the three account number fields on the office record.
If you are using manual numbering, you must enter the account number before you save the record. Coins ERP+ then records the account number for that ledger on the office record, but does not populate the account numbers for the other ledgers.
We strongly recommend that you use the same account numbers for the PL and SC accounts for an office. If a supplier might have to be paid through the SC ledger, the account numbers MUST be the same.
Auto-numbering configuration
To use auto-numbering, the USECIS parameter in all ledgers in all companies must be set to Y.
We recommend setting CI/AUTOBASE to Short (so that automatically-generated account numbers begin with the first few letters of the company's short name).
Ledger Accounts and Companies
Accounts in the financial ledgers (suppliers in accounts payable, subcontractors in Subcontractor Ledger and customers in accounts receivable) represent the financial relationship between an individual company (kco) and an office of a company in the Company Information Workbench. You can set up the ledgers so that they take information about suppliers, subcontractors and customers from the office information held in the Company Information System. In this way, information is kept consistent.
Ledger accounts are company-specific; that is, in any company (kco) you would only set up ledger accounts for the offices you deal with.
company 1 only deals with the Leeds office.
company 2 deals with both the Leeds and Reading offices.
company 3 only deals with the Reading office.
The ledger account number can be specified on the office record. If different companies deal with the same office, they must use the same ledger account number.
More than one office can relate to the same ledger account, so for example if you deal with more than one payment office, you would need to specify on the offices which account the payment should go to (see Account Numbering Policy). If someone raises an order against an office that does not have a specified ledger account, Coins ERP+ uses the account number from the head office of that company.
To link a ledger to the Company Information System:
Set the parameter USECIS in the ledger to Y.
Each ledger can be set up to use the Company Information Workbench individually, but if you are using auto-numbering, all ledgers MUST use the Company Information Workbench.
If you start using the Company Information Workbench after you have already entered accounts in the ledgers, and you need to transfer existing information to the Company Information System, contact The Access Group.
Office Addresses
Each office can have many addresses - for example, a postal address, an address for deliveries, an address to which invoices should be sent, and so on. Address types identify the different types of address.
There are specific address types for accounts payable, Subcontract Ledger, accounts receivable invoices, and accounts receivable statements. When you set up a new ledger account, Coins ERP+ creates the corresponding address record in the Company Information Workbench. When you set up a customer account, Coins ERP+ creates both invoice and statement addresses.
You can control whether the addresses can be updated centrally using the Company Information Workbench, or in the ledgers (note that the customer statement address can never be updated from the Company Information Workbench).
To add an office address:
In the Company Workbench, click the company name link.
Click the Offices tab.
Click the Name link for the office to which you want to add an address.
Click the Addresses tab.
Click Add.
Select the Address Type of the address you want to add.
Either:
If the address you want to add is the same as an address of another type that is already stored against the office, tick the Use Alternative Address box, and select the relevant address.
If the address is different from any existing address, enter the address details.
Click Save.
Address set up
Use Address Types to set up address types.
Centralised Addressing
Centralised addressing ensures that address information for ledger accounts is kept in sync across all companies in Coins ERP+.
For example, any change to the controlled fields on a supplier record in one Coins ERP+ company is replicated up to the CI Office Address record and also to the corresponding supplier record in all the other Coins ERP+ companies. Additionally, any change to the supplier name field is replicated across the supplier records in each company though not to the CI Office record.
As long as the ledgers are linked to the Company Information Workbench, this always happens. The CI parameter CENT-ADD allows you to choose whether the addresses can be updated on the ledger accounts or on the office record.
All other fields on the account record can be maintained separately in each Coins ERP+ company as required.
Technical Details
The following fields are controlled by centralised addressing:
Field | supplier | Customer | Subcontractor |
Address Line 1 | avm_add__1 | rcm_add__1 | sbm_add__1 |
Address Line 2 | avm_add__2 | rcm_add__2 | sbm_add__2 |
Address Line 3 | avm_add__3 | rcm_add__3 | sbm_add__3 |
Address Line 4 | avm_add__4 | rcm_add__4 | sbm_add__4 |
postcode | avm_pcode | rcm_pcode | sbm_pcode |
Telephone | avm_phone | rcm_phone | sbm_fone |
Fax | avm_fax | rcm_fax | sbm_fax |
avm_email | rcm_email | sbm_email | |
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Account name | avm_name | rcm_name | sbm_name |