Glacier Media GroupCase Study
Glacier Media Inc. is an information communications company focused on the provision of primary and essential information and related services through print, electronic and online media. Glacier is a leader in Western Canada focused on the business and professional information market and the newspaper and trade publication market.
Glacier Media has been working with Great Plains since 1999. The company has grown by acquisition and as Glacier grows, so too do the individual GP site databases for their various companies. Eventually there developed a need to consolidate and centralize payables and financials, but Glacier didn’t want to lose what they had invested in GP.
As they grew by acquisition they also inherited the bank accounts of their acquisitioned companies. In many cases each company had more than one bank account. At one point they had grown to manage over 50 accounts that needed to be reconciled every month. Bank recs were not getting done within the 5-day close that was needed. In some cases a month-end close would wait until the next month and then the next month and so on.
Glacier Media has been using Nolan’s Advanced Bank Reconciliation and InterCompany Postings modules for Microsoft Dynamics GP for 5 years.
“Nolan’s InterCompany Postings works like a charm, our finance staff loves ABR and support from Nolan is great. I would highly recommend them to anyone!”
Sherri Kisser, Manager of Finance & Accounting Systems at Glacier Media
Upon implementing Nolan’s InterCompany Postings and Advanced Bank Reconciliation Modules for Microsoft Dynamics GP, Glacier Media was able to achieve the following:
With InterCompany Postings:
- Glacier Media was able to consolidate and centralize payables
- They created higher level and more efficient control over payables
- They centralized and automated payroll while reducing management of payroll in over 100 databases down to just a few
- They no-longer have anyone creating both sides of their intercompany transactions
- Time typically required for keeping track of intercompany journal entries is now nonexistent
- They can post very large journal entries (over 10-15,000 lines) through a lot of triggers to 20 different databases and ICP’s Trigger Method handles it well
With Advanced Bank Reconciliation:
- Glacier sees huge time savings over manually maintaining Excel spreadsheet bank recs
- ABR has helped Glacier close most of their accounts within the 5-days
- Their large accounts are reconciled weekly because it’s easier with ABR
- They get all of their month end tasks done with no carry-over month after month
- Initiate transactions from any GP module with Trigger method
- Specify destination accounts with the Alternate method
- Transfer cash, including Checkbook ID, between GP companies
- Superior drill-back capability
- Automatically post and void transactions between GP companies
- Supports multi-currency
- View Dynamics GP GL and bank statement transactions side-by-side
- Easily configured for all international bank statement
- Comprehensive reporting
- Full historical overview
- The module helps to bring the time taken for the reconciliation process down from hours to minutes
Glacier Media began a search for enhancements or GP add-ons that would meet their needs. Increasing efficiency and control while reducing costs and maximizing their investment in GP were all big factors for trying to find the right solutions for their challenges.
They started their search at Convergence, where they were introduced to Nolan Business Solutions and Nolan’s InterCompany Postings and Advanced Bank Reconciliation add-on modules for Microsoft Dynamics GP. From there they got their VAR, Encore Business Solutions, Inc. involved who then connected them back to Kim Haythornthwaite, Nolan’s General Manager. Nolan’s team has years of ERP, specifically with Microsoft Dynamics GP, and accounting experience to help customers assess, validate, test and implement Nolan’s intercompany and bank reconciliation modules. Kim worked closely with Glacier and Nolan’s team, who were very helpful on this project.
After working with Encore to acquire the modules, Glacier worked directly with Nolan to implement them. InterCompany Postings was pretty straight forward and Advanced Bank Reconciliation was more involved.
Glacier converted some larger bank accounts initially as part of the ABR implementation process. Once this process was started, they couldn’t keep up with demand from their finance staff to convert the remaining accounts to the solution. Finance was excited about the time saved and how fast and easy reconciliation was using ABR. Advanced Bank Reconciliation remains one of the easiest roll-outs of a new technology at Glacier, because of the buy-in from finance staff once they experienced the initial results from the solution.
InterCompany Postings is a perfect fit for helping Glacier Media consolidate/centralize payables through their head office database. Payables are handled using the Alternate Method, taxes/payables and payroll are taken care of with the Trigger Method. There’s no longer a need to keep track of intercompany journal entries because InterCompany Postings takes care of it. At month end, finance does all of the reconciliation between all of the intercompany accounts and Glacier manages a 5-day close month after month with Advanced Bank Reconciliation.