ERPs, or Enterprise Reporting Planning systems, are divided into three categories or tiers. Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks and other cloud accounting software used by small businesses, sit at the low end of the scale; they’re tier three ERPs.

Xero is using it’s 3rd party app integrations and its API to climb up the ERP food chain and some good bookkeepers are being dragged up along with it.

Tier three ERPs for bigger businesses

Xero, recognising that the online software space is won by specialists, decided early on that it would allow other, specialist applications to integrate with its software by opening up its APIs to developers.

That’s resulted in Xero users being able to connects lots of third party platforms to their Xero accounts, to give them greater flexibility over how they run their business. And now Xero users can connect a number of different inventory and order management apps to their existing Xero accounts.  

• Read more about the best Xero integrated project-management apps
• Read more about the best Xero integrated time management apps
• Read more about the best Xero integrated document management platforms
• Read more about the best Xero integrated CRMs 

MYOB, as is commonplace, took the alternate route; it develops its own “specialist” applications and tags them onto its software for a fee. A few years ago, it developed an inventory management function (or add-on) as a component of MYOB’s Advanced Supply Chain Suite. Read more about the cloud accounting software “ecosystem”. 

What’s the supply chain?

For most businesses, the supply chain is fairly straightforward. The business owner (a builder, say), provides building services to a customer (a homeowner).

The builder uses staff or contractors, purchases products from Reece and Bunnings Etc and then invoices the customer for the products and services rendered, and the customer pays; that’s the supply chain.

The daily transactions module of our MYOB training courses will take you through each of the steps involved in this kind of business.

The more complex the business, the more complex the supply chain becomes. MYOB’s Exo, Advanced and Greentree plans provide businesses with features such as currency management, purchase order and requisition management, and supply chain and distribution tools.

Hire an ERP specialist

Businesses that need help implementing an ERP system should hire an ERP specialist who can determine their requirements, scope and budget.

At our online directory, National Bookkeeping, you can locate excellent local, and remote, bookkeepers, BAS agents, ERP specialists and finance managers who can help you with your business bookkeeping. For smaller businesses this may just include set up and ongoing maintenance of your books, or rescue bookkeeping work, or purely BAS-related tasks.

There is also training available on a one-to-one basis or to complement your own online study in Xero, Quickbooks or MYOB. Or if you’re unsure what level of finance expert your business requires, or you want someone capable of strategy planning, we have those professionals too.

“Small businesses just want to trade and so they let the paperwork catch up, which often leads to poor [business] outcomes,” comments Carmel Crane, one of the ERP specialists registered with National Bookkeeping. “Medium-sized businesses often want to incorporate processes and procedure with no relationship to the actual process on the shop floor. And that leads to even worse outcomes!”

Carmel also points out that while small and medium businesses have “generally opposite attitudes” in relation to implementing an ERP, “the outcome is often the same, which means not great results, because they don’t approach it with a holistic approach to their business.” Read more about Carmel Crane and ERP how to select the right ERP for your business.

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