Workflow Sample: September 2016

"Fluctuation" occurs frequently to corporate name!

Destination data in a Quotation or an Invoice differs like "Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation" or "Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp." or "NTT Corporation" ... Yet, the SELECT method must be adopted for an input form in Quote creation flow or Billing flow (instead of TEXT form). Otherwise, data that are not worthy to be aggregated would be accumulated, on and on.

Even though we manage so-called "Customer Master" in a Spreadsheet...

In the following Workflow, it is devised that a "Customer Master for Workflow platform" to be updated automatically with data in a Google Spreadsheet. The "Customer Master" will be maintained to be always up-to-date.

* The Auto-step (Service Task) referred to [Sheet reference] which is utilized here, will become available by feature expansion with [Addon XML] beforehand. (v11.1: 2016-09-05)

[Customer Master Synchronization]

"How much money did we spend on Entertainment expense, this period?"

Serving as a Sales Manager, one should precisely know "Current total amount of external expenses that have approved". If possible, a Manager should recognize "Spending that not needed to be approved" as well. (In plain words, to keep tracking on "pocket money book" of Sales Department diligently... Formally speaking, it is "Budget management".)

In the following Workflow, "Total expenditure until then" will be indicated on the side at the time Approval request coming around. Specifically, spendings recorded in "Budget consumption logs", which is a Google Sheet (commonly called Pocket Money book), will be summed automatically. Moreover, at the moment of approving newly on a spending, the approved expenditure will be appended automatically to "Budget consumption log".

If you want the Budget consumption log to be more accurate, you will be required operational devising such as,

to remove the approval log that has not been consumed actually
to append manually for irregular small expenses

or improvement of Business Process such as

to create a mechanism of automatic appending from "Advertising flow" which approval is not required
to create a mechanism of automatic appending the items of expenditure corresponding to the budget consumption from Expense reimbursement flow

However, it is a great progress that knowing just the approximation of the total amount.

Incidentally, you will be able to build "dedicated Cloud-approval" in half a day, using this sample. You may use that system at your own home, assigning the husband as the applicant and the wife as the approver.

[Approval Request flow]

A Wave of Cloud computing is surging over Accounting systems, last few years.

In Japan, the start out of "Cloud service" by a long-established software company was a major impact. Specifically, "Yayoi online" entered into a marketplace formed by "MF Cloud" and "freee" in July, 2015. In these systems, functions that are oriented to medium or large enterprises have been enhanced, and these are tools not only for "Startup companies" or for "Sole proprietorship".

The most advantage of these systems is their capability of retrieving "detail data" of "bank statement" and "credit card" collectively. That is, All of the detail records are automatically fetched as sales slip and payment slip. Moreover, accounting titles that should have been entered manually by accounting staffs have been set beforehand by "automatic journal entry function". (Improvement on performance of automatic Journal entry is discernibly.)

However, it will not be so easy for such Cloud accounting systems to automate generating slips which according to human judgment.

* Indeed, regarding "not allocate to sales deeming as advance received" or "allocate to sales as account receivable", who made the judgment and when should be recorded precisely. (Deterrence of accounting fraud, internal control)

The following Business Process is an accounting Workflow related to advance received. It is a mechanism that automatically generates twelve "transfer slip data", for example, upon receiving "service fee of twelve months" in advance.

It is a flow of;

Accounting staff determines as "advance received"
Supervisor approves on it
Bookkeeping staff registers "transfer slip data"

[Advance-received Registration]

"How much is the total of Quotations that have been submitted currently?"

Sales budget, which all the Sales managers care about. Even not being a Sales manager, there are many people who care about company's sales progress.

How many Quotations have been submitted?
How much is the total of those Quotations?
How many Orders will be reported among them?

As a matter of course, if you would like to forecast the "Sales", "Quotation tracking" is essential.

"How many of what Issues in which Step?" will be obvious if the progress of series of Quoting operations, such as "Drafting", "Approval" and "Win-loss Report", have been managed (in a Workflow). Even "Order rate" can be calculated easily by aggregating of past Issues that flowed through the Workflow. (Or rather, "Productivity of the Sales Department" should be questioned if they don't know the total price of submitted Quotations...)

The following Workflow is a "Quotation Creation flow" that begins with "1. Drafting Quotation" and ends at "4. Win-loss Report". (Want to connect to "Billing Process" in the future...)

Once a Quotation operation has started, things that must be done at the moment ("to approve on a draft of Quotation", "to submit the Quotation to the customer", etc.) will be clarified for both of Sales manager and salesperson. There will never be "Useless waiting time". And of course, never be omissions or oversights.

And the directors on board would make check for "Quotations that have been submitted and waiting for Win-loss report" (Quotations that staying at the 4th Step) in every quarterly results.

[Quotation Creation flow]