A prospect heard that line from a competing ERP firm. They called us the next day.
Phase two. Which means go live with your new ERP, keep running your old accounting system on the side, and figure out how to reconcile two sets of books until someone has the bandwidth to deal with it. Which never happens.
Why Accounting Can’t Wait
The chart of accounts migration alone is one of the most complex parts of any ERP implementation. Entry A in your old system is not automatically entry B in the new one. Someone has to map every account, decide what happens to historical data, build airlocks for records that don’t exist in both systems, and test the reconciliation before a single transaction goes live.
That’s before you get to landed cost configuration, retained earnings structure, adjusting journal entries, or intercompany accounting if you’ve got multiple entities.
None of that is phase two work. All of it is day one work.
How We Won the Room
We put our CPA Chris on the phone. He started talking. Retained earnings, landed cost, chart of accounts migration, journal entry testing. Real accounting, in real time, with the prospect’s controller in the room.
The other firm had said phase two. Chris started solving the problem right there on the call.
We got the project.
The VTE Story
We did a project for a company moving their accounting from a dealer management system into a new platform with combined financial reporting across entities. Chris mapped every account across both systems, built the reconciliation structure, and planned for every vendor and transaction type that existed in one system but not the other.
It was one of the more frustrating builds I’ve been part of. And when we went live, their controller cried. Everything reconciled. First time.
That’s what accounting on day one looks like.
If your implementation partner can’t talk debits and credits with your controller before the project starts, you are going to be living in two systems longer than you planned. Watch the clip above, then reach us at blackirongroup.com/contact.