March 2008

Due to fluctuations in market prices, purchase cost of goods may vary from one purchase to another. Also, you rarely just purchase goods and immediately sell them in the same quantity. What you usually do is that you purchase the goods, then let them sit in the inventory for a while, then you may…

When you buy a sheep, how much is it worth to you, what is its value? For starters, its value is at least what you paid for it, but that’s not quite it. Say you paid a hundred dollars for it. If you want to sell it now, how do you determine your selling price? A hundred-twenty? A hundred-fifty?

Unless you are a non-profit, the point of the business is making money. It is surprising how many different ways of making money there are out there, but if you are in business, it is extremely likely that you make the money the easiest and the most common way around: by selling goods.

There is really nothing special with this post. I just wanted to let you know that I updated my About page, and I added some more information to the sidebar to the right. Nothing spectacular, but I hope all of this would both help you know me better, and also help you get in touch with me otherwise than posting comments here.

I decided to upgrade the look and feel of this blog, so I start with the new header picture. I am not a designer, and I don’t have a clue about why graphics are good or bad, I just have a gut feeling which tells me what is nice, and what is not. This one looks nicer to me, and leaves some room at the bottom to implement page navigation later on.

Last time, I gave you a recipe on how to do a bad thing. If you really need to do something bad, I figure it’s better to do it the way that would hurt the least, or the way that isn’t so bad after all. I wouldn’t have dreamt of a comment on that blog post, but Ian came, and gave the perfect example which really explains why things like that *ARE* bad.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV has a very consistent user interface, that helps user get used to it pretty fast. Yet it has its own ways, that aren’t so intuitive to most of typical business application users. There is one specific feature which causes a lot of confusion, especially with those users only starting to use NAV.

Running a business using only accounting data can be pretty much the same as driving a car using rear-view mirror only. The purpose of accounting is to provide accurate and reliable overview of financial situation to interested parties. What this financial overview consists of is the stuff that has happened in the past, in other words: history.

When referring to their ERP systems, it is pretty common that customers refer to it as accounting software . While it is true that every ERP system embeds some accounting functionality, there is a major difference between these two categories of software.