Can I use Jiwa for inventory and another system for my accounts?

Question

 Can I use Jiwa for my inventory management and warehouse management and use another system, like Xero or MYOB, for my banking, accounts and general ledger? 

Answer

Technically it's possible, but we don't recommend it for a number of reasons.

If you have your Accounts (i.e. that’s where your Creditors invoices go and where you pay them from, and where your Debtors receipts eventually end up) with one software and your Inventory/Sales with another, you have divorced your cash flow from your Inventory.

Problem One – you could receive your stock in for a different price in your Inventory software to what you actually end up paying for it in your Accounting software. The Goods Receipt value and the Accounts Payable invoice value could be different as they are in two different software packages. Net result – the Gross Profit you are showing for a sale in the Inventory software could be incorrect, causing you to make sub optimal investment decisions. Further, in the case of Importing, there is no way of tying up the true Landed Cost of the containers into your warehouse as you have that in two different systems.

Problem Two – you need to make Purchase Orders for stock replenishments in the Inventory software, however your ability to pay for them is in a completely different system as that is where the incoming cash is being recorded, plus your overhead running costs such as Electricity, Payroll, Rent etc. You therefore need to have two systems open whenever you are making a buying decision as your cashflow position is a critical part of the buying process. This gets magnified if there are delays on either side – suppliers may delay shipments and therefore expected sales (and cash) from Debtors become backorders.

Theoretically the two software packages should pass data between themselves to keep both systems ‘in -sync’, but in reality you are duplicating two sets of data as they are two separate pieces of software. That means before you can rely on a Figure / Report / KPI’s in either of them, you have to manually reconcile the two systems. More often than not they do not add up – transactions that failed to sync properly, timing differences – whatever. In effect you are adding another overhead to your day by needing to constantly make sure your two information systems are in lockstep.