Growing from IFS Applications 8 to 10

Now an integrated part of IFS Applications, Group Consolidation enables you to consolidate balances from any number of companies at any number of levels, regardless of charts of accounts and reporting currencies used. The consolidation can be done in multiple corporate structures for operational and managerial purposes.

• Execute the consolidation process for a single structure node or the complete structure at once, including automated support for ownership and intercompany elimination.
• Simplify basic data consistency, reporting and drill-down.
• Each company can report balances individually (push) or balances can be fetched for one or more reporting companies from the master company (pull). In addition, you can fetch subsidiary balances at any time and directly drill down to underlying subsidiaries.
  balances can be fetched for one or more reporting companies from the master company (pull)
• It provides the freedom to have individual Charts of Accounts in the reporting companies, as well as to report in any currency, still being able to consolidate reported balances into a common Chart of Accounts and structure node specific currency
• Support for different ownership levels, different consolidation methods and changes related to the consolidation structure over time
• High traceability both for changes in the set-up and when analyzing reported and consolidated balances

Transfer between cash accounts from one company to another, with two methods of transfer: cash transaction with an interim posting and three-way transaction with mixed payments, cash box and external payments.

• Set the transfer method that will be used with new posting control—interim posting PP77—so you can see transaction type per cash account and set the default transaction type
• Complete mixed payments transactions between affiliated companies, easily see different transaction codes and where the debits and credits are taking place
• Choose cash transfer methods for cash box

Business Planning is a new module that supports the process of creating budgets, forecasts and other financial plans, both for individual companies and on a consolidated level.

• Integrated and centrally controlled planning engine that supports demand driven planning, based on customer defined planning models
• Purpose built planning formats to handle different needs, all the way from personnel planning, revenue and cost planning to the balance sheet and cash flow
• Manage and compare different scenarios based on different assumptions

Enhanced multi-company processes and functionality for managing complex financial structures

• Multi-Company Allocation: Allocate costs or revenues from one company to other company or companies
• Multi-Company Balance Analysis: Quickly analyze the ledger balances for multiple companies using this simple snapshot
• Multi-Company Voucher Entry: Automate creation of intercompany transactions and simplify Multi-Company voucher creation using the same functionality that exists for Voucher entry including tax handling, voucher templates and interim vouchers
• Overview Window for Accounts and Account Group: View accounts and account groups for several companies at the same time, and easily compare data for different companies
• Drill Down for Multi-Company Voucher: Drill down and see the source of the original transaction that created the Multi-Company Voucher Entry so you can easily follow up
• Multi-Company Depreciation Handling: Simplify the work with multiple depreciation proposals. Order, authorize and post multiple depreciation proposals at the same time when running a month-end process for multiple companies or books
• Multi-Company Fixed Assets Transfer: Automate the transfer of fixed assets within complex group structures; transactions are generated automatically for sending Company
• Multi-Company Basic Data: Companies are grouped together to synchronize the data set up e.g. accounts, code parts, accounting calendar, posting controls

Flexibility in revenue recognition and project completion to support compliance

Periodical Capitalization and Revenue Recognition by Project

• Complete capitalization and revenue recognition on a project by project basis
• Rollback capitalization and revenue recognition for selected projects due to voucher creation per project
• See all projects that qualify for capitalization and revenue recognition in a single view

‘Event based’ Revenue Recognition Method

• Define costs and revenue for different milestones of a project
• Post the difference between actual and recognized revenue and present the difference separately in the Balance Sheet

Enhanced Revenue Recognition for Project Inventory

• Apply different treatments for general inventory and project inventory; connect general inventory to an asset account and connect project inventory to a cost account
• Capitalize project inventory as a cost
• Correct cost identification in revenue recognition

Multiple Revenue Recognition Rules

• Define percentage of completion (POC) level until which zero margin should be applied for a selected project
• Assign different POC levels for each ledger
• General company policy for zero margin rule can be defined based on estimated revenue level of the project

Enhanced Revenue Recognition Forecasts

• Create any number of forecasts either for a single project or set of projects
• Select projects based on project ID/project group/project manager
• Create a new forecast as a copy of an existing forecast
• Create forecasts for different ledgers
• Add new projects to an existing forecast
• Check whether all projects are included in the forecast
• Display both accumulated amounts and period amounts
• Use graphical analysis
• View all forecasts connected to a single project

• Simplified Invoicing: Select contract items using a billing sequence when processing application for payments or valuations
  

New tax control concept in Sales Contract with common tax calculations, validations, tax storage and clients

• Fetch tax codes to Sales Contract and Applications for Payments, as well as tax validations throughout the contract lifecycle
• View the tax code and value earlier in the sales contract advance payment flow, even before the invoice is created

Create multi-company project reporting using the new company setting for faster, more accurate time and cost reporting

• Link employee and customer company employees, activities and report codes so data only is only entered once in the employee’s own company
• Easily reconcile inter-company payables and receivables by matching multi-company project transactions with supply invoice and through multi-company vouchers
• Create employee record in the customer company automatically by duplicating existing records, therefore reducing data entry
• Synchronize customer company transactions with project transactions in the employee’s company, and connect cost in customer company to revenue in the employee company
• Benefit from improved controls when invoicing for employees’ time as transactions will only complete once they are confirmed and approved by both parties, and choose from either project invoices or vouchers when reporting revenue

New role delegation feature so supervisors can easily delegate access rights to a substitute for authorization

• Supervisors can delegate tasks to balance workload within the team
• If a team member is absent, easily delegate their access rights to another team member and avoid delays in decision making

New Team Calendar to provide visibility of upcoming team attendance and plan effectively

• Improve visibility of Time and Attendance information among the team, shared and presented in a calendar  
• Reduce the risk of incorrect schedules by using color coding within the calendar to highlight types, shifts and week types
• Plan effectively for upcoming team absences and reduce the risk of your team becoming shorthanded, by having one overview of registered absences and inspect absence plans of people with a certain position or job crucial for the team
• Configure what is displayed in the calendar and highlight what is most important to you
• Identify employee behaviour patterns—spot who constantly works overtime or always comes late

Redesigned Employee & Manager Self-Service ensuring high data quality and employee involvement in reporting time & attendance, expenses and employee development.

• Easy to use with mobile self-service and the ability to visualize and access all process from a suite of self-defined lobbies and dashboards
• Manage resources more effectively by enabling employees to self-service and allocate themselves to work assignments or specific project activities using a calendar, which is then automatically updated within the resource planning information
• Enable individuals to monitor their own employee allocations
• Improve planning and quickly allocate assignments, without having to first plan the resource demand on the activity

New complete Headcount Planning and Vacancies management process, for employee and organization management. The vacancies management workflow from Headcount Plan, through Recruitment to Employment enables you to:

• Support business strategy by managing headcount budgets and vacancies
• Clearly identify vacant positions and manage those to fulfilment  
• Quickly view progress on ongoing vacancies with one overall workflow from headcount plan through recruitment to final employment
• Easily pull reports on the current state of the workforce and plan headcount budgets

New Personal File window provides a central organization overview of personal data, qualifications and employments from all assignments one place with the employee record showing the relevant company related information

Aurena Bot enables employees to perform self-service tasks using simple natural language without having to navigate the application

• Aurena Bot is accessible via the IFS Aurena Client and popular collaboration tools like Skype, Facebook Messenger, Slack & Microsoft Teams

New onboarding process

• Quickly create onboarding programs using templates
• Customize onboarding programs according to specific needs
• Maintain checklists for employees, supervisors, other responsible parties and HR professionals
• At-a-glance overview of onboarding progress

New performance and potential matrix

• Position employees within the N-box matrix using performance scores and career potentiality levels
• The number of boxes displayed in the matrix varies based on the performance appraisal indexes and career potentiality levels used by the organization

Decide who can work with different customers and related activities and objects, within the sales organization due to improved access control

• Limit a user’s right to read and modify data
• Define access settings for groups of users
• Enable representatives to access to their work automatically
• Users can share their data with other users without changing the access settings
• Easily switch access control on/off for specific objects or users
• Assign sales reps as a representative on CRM objects so can filter data and quickly find their work

New CRM panel for Outlook enables sales to manage daily tasks directly within Outlook

• Perform tasks directly within Outlook including call logging, managing opportunities and activities
• Outlook plugin pulls content from IFS Applications and presents it in a panel, making it easier to compose and save emails, create appointments and view attendee lists
• Context driven navigation to direct the sales representative straight from Outlook into the right contact, activity or opportunity within Aurena
• Sync calendar events

Build a multi-level marketing campaign and identify targets, distribute information and manage responses.

• Easily select campaign targets and add lead contacts as campaign targets
• Use mail merge to create documents directly from the campaign
• Register different responses and generate campaign activities based on the target response

Improved usability to help drive efficiency within the sales cycle and give sales reps the insights they need

• Improved search capabilities with new windows for representative 360 view, CRM search domains, customer contact overview, business lead contacts overview and business opportunity lines overview
• Improved navigation and efficiency through multi-edit capabilities, hyperlinks in CRM and additional RMBs
• Open a new customer order directly from the sales quotation and create a customer from prospect and minimize data entry

Improve visibility of the pipeline to confidently make decisions, identify opportunities and drive revenue

• Create business opportunity snapshots and analyse the evolution of the pipeline to identify trends and patterns
• Manage related opportunities so sales can see how opportunities relate to one another and create a more accurate view of pipeline
• Define sales processes for business opportunities that guide a sales rep through each stage of the opportunity, helping them take the right actions and capture the right data so others can easily see the opportunity status.

Fully embedded CRM for seamless, fast integration to the rest of the application suite

• Consistent user experience across CRM and the rest of the application suite