Management consultancy seeks cost accounting software

We are a management consultancy and are looking for cost accounting software for an industrial and service company in the field of materials technology. The software will be used to create a business accounting sheet. The customer's business units each work with the AMS ERP system. There is a group-wide data warehouse that bundles the data from all business units and is used to generate group reporting. Currently, the business units create individual operating statement forms for each location in MS Excel and enter them into the data warehouse. The data from financial accounting in SAP/AMS serves as the data basis. Production data from AMS/ERP systems or internal reports is also used to calculate percentage distribution keys for the respective overhead cost centers. This current process for creating operating statement forms presents customers with a number of challenges: Collecting all the necessary data is complex, time-consuming, and prone to errors due to the large number of systems and data sources. Furthermore, the high level of manual effort and the long training period required to create the operating statement forms in MS Excel make the process inefficient and tie up enormous amounts of capacity. Due to the individual Excel templates for each location, there is also a lack of consistency in the final operating statement forms, meaning that group-wide KPI controlling based on the data warehouse is not possible. Against this background, the task is to identify a software solution that allows operating statement forms to be created systematically and in a standardized manner across the various locations. This should initially be implemented for one business unit and then applied to the other business units.

The software should meet the following requirements:

Required or should be included

• Classification of cost types
• Grouping of cost centers
• Adjustment of cost centers
• Special transfers between main cost centers
• Grouping of cost types
• Calculation of distribution keys
• Distribution of overhead costs using distribution keys
• Allocation of internal services
• Cost center and cost unit consolidation
• Consolidation of cost centers into cost groups
• Account and cost center assignment
• Cost allocation
• Allocation keys
• Calculation of KPIs (KPI = Key Performance Indicator)
• Visualized representation of KPIs
• Cost and quantity distribution
• Cost allocation
• Clientless solution - should be usable clientless via the browser - not a deal breaker
• Mobile access
• Access control - only authorized persons should have access to the software
• Access control - e.g., via an authorization concept
• Approval processes
• Audit
• Multilingual (German, English, French)
• Daily data updates
• Scalability
• GDPR
• Fast response time - should have a fast response time to enable efficient work
• Fast calculation time
• Financial accounting interfaces
• Interfaces to databases
• Customer support - customer support from the provider is required
• Transparent license costs
• Release per year (free of charge)
• Provider liability - in the event of errors on the part of the provider, the provider's company shall be liable. This must also be stipulated in the contract.
• Requirements for the user interface
• Lean interface (nice to have)
• Clarity (must have)
• Self-descriptive (must have)
• Compliance with expectations (nice to have)
• Explanations and operating aids (nice to have)
• Adaptability (nice to have)

Optional

• Cost analysis and budget control
• Costs and services
• Full and marginal costs
• Contribution margins, contribution margin accounting
• Step-by-step contribution margin accounting
• Contribution margin analysis
• Process costs of cost centers
• Monitoring functions
• Planning and control statements
• Cost center deviations
• Cost center evaluations
• Plausibility check
• Backup, data backup

The provision of a trial version would be desirable.

The target number of users in the introductory phase is approximately 20 users/licenses.

Note: A specification sheet can be requested from SoftGuide if necessary.