# Why is Akaunt the best for basic Financial Management?
Akaunt provides you the capability to generate various financial statements and Management Information system reports, thereby facilitating better management, effective control and well- informed decisions. Following are the some of salient features, which makes Akaunt best for basic financial management.
- Fund Flows
- Receivables Turnover (Payment performance of debtors)
- Branch Accounting
- Flexible Period Accounting
- Budgeting and Control
- Cost centers / Profit centers with multiple Cost Categories
- Ratio Analysis
- Scenario Management
# Fund Flows
A Fund Flow statement reflects the movement in sources and application of funds which impacts the business's working capital and cash position. It includes operational funds, increase and decrease in inventories, creditors/debtors. This statement reveals the sources of the Funds and their applications. Akaunt tracks automatically all transactions entered and readily provides a Funds Flow Statement
# Payment performance of Debtors (Receivables Turnover)
Akaunt tracks the payment performance of all debtors and generates report containing infor- mation in respect of average time taken by the debtors to pay back their debts. The payment per- formance of debtors is calculated in two ways.
Using Receivables formula (calculates the payment performance of your debtors):
Payment performance by formula: (closing balance / total sales) * nos of days
# Branch Accounting
Akaunt provides you a seamless way of handling branch accounts. Transactions between branches or offices are accounted by debiting the receiving branches accounts and crediting the branches providing the service/products. These accounting entries result in a nil effect on the HO's account books when the branch accounts are consolidated. If there is a difference in the account, it is reconciled through a process of branch reconciliation.
For example, create two branch ledgers, Branch A and Branch B. You may account the transfer of funds from Branch A to Branch B in the books of accounts, by debiting Branch B which in turn, credits Branch A in its books. There is no net effect on the combined books, when the accounts of the two branches are consolidated.
# Flexible Period Accounting
Akaunt is one of the most flexible accounting packages available and this can be illustrated by the fact that it can handle multiple periods in a single company. Once a company is created you can specify any range of dates and obtain reports for that period. These date range can also be across multiple financial years. i.e. you can get a report for monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or annually or for 18 months or 24 months and so on.
# Budgeting and Control
Businesses need to control their expenses based on income levels and monitor variances. Budgets in Akaunt helps you compare the actual financial performance versus budgeted figures and obtain variance reports. You can define multiple budgets (e.g. Optimistic Budget, Realistic Budget) or even create budgets for different periods. The budget values can be defined for each Group as well as for all Ledgers.
# Variance Analysis
Once you have created Budgets, you can view the Variance Analysis Report which provides infor- mation on the difference between the actual versus the budgeted figures. This report helps man- agement to figure out variances and work to remedy the situation with the ability to drill down to the voucher level the user is able to understand which particular transaction or group of transac- tion brought about the variation.
# Cost centers / Profit centers with multiple Cost Categories
In Akaunt you can allocate transactions (especially those which are revenue in nature) to par- ticular Cost Centres, which will help you in extracting reports for that Cost Centre (Profit Centre). Cost Centers could generally be a Unit / Division / Department / Function / Activity etc in the organization or even Sales Executives, to which transactions (generally transactions which are revenue in nature) are allocated.
You can also compare one cost centre with the other. Hence cost centers will provide the man- agement with information regarding their performance. With cost categories enabled, parallel allo- cation of the same expense is possible between different cost centres.
# Cost Category
In many cases, you would like to allocate a transaction to more than one cost centres. Especially, if you want to track revenue either based on location and person or brand and type of product, Akaunt provides you a facility called Cost Categories. This facility enables you to allocate costs to parallel sets of cost centres i.e., the same amount can be allocated to more than one cost centre. For example., Create two categories, one by the name of Administration and another by the name Accounts under Primary Cost Category. Create Employees or persons under the respective cost categories and enter a payment transaction for a ledger account for which cost centres are applicable.
# Ratio Analysis
Ratio Analysis is an indicator on the operating performance of your business and provides infor- mation on critical ratios in a single report. You can analyze the ratios and the business perform- ance using this information, viz., operating cost percentage, return on working capital and so on, to aid critical decisions making. Not only does the internal management find the information useful, but also external agencies like banks, financial institutions etc.
# Scenario Management
Scenario Management is the management tool provided in Akaunt with the help of which you can create multiple scenarios for the purpose of forecasting or to view provisional reports. This can be done by selectively including certain types of vouchers, which will in no way affect the regular books. The vouchers that are used in scenario management are
- Optional Vouchers
- Memorandum Vouchers
- Reversing Journals