DI Management Services is a database design and business systems consultant based in Sydney, Australia ...more...

Ganesha: a stock management and accounting system

The problem

Dorling Kindersley, a publisher of children's and adult's illustrated books and multimedia, had doubled its turnover every year since setting up in Australia. The firm had a publishing list of several thousand titles and imported millions of items each year from a variety of sources around the world. Its stock control system based on many very large inter-linked spreadsheets was feeling the pressure. The board decided to fix the problem while it was still manageable.

The solution

After a thorough review of existing systems and a full discussion with the Board, a customised system was devised by DI Management Systems to take control of the problem. The system was named "Ganesha" after the Hindu god known to remove obstacles and provide solutions to life's dilemmas.

Ganesha was written entirely in Microsoft Access 97 and the system developed after full consultation with the company's management at all stages. It was designed to be easily upgraded to work with SQL Server.

Ganesha Menu

Some of the main menu options are explained in the following table:

Purchase Orders:	Create and edit purchase orders to order stock; create and edit price requests; monitor order statuses
Shipments:	Shipment tracking and goods receipt
Stock:	Query stock levels; make transfers and other adjustments.
Sales:	Create and manage sales orders, invoices and credit notes; print picking slips; edit customer list.
Catalog:	Edit stock items; manage publishing list.
Accounts:	End of month processing; general ledger functions; foreign exchange rates; expense accounts; record and allocate stock purchase costs; accounting reports
Options:	Change user options; change your password; refresh links with back end database.
Administrator:	Add and edit users, edit master lookup tables, maintain back end database, log out all users.
Help:	Full help menu

Ganesha is a fully-integrated stock control system for the entire inventory of the company based in four warehouses in two countries. Purchases orders are managed by Ganesha from the first price request by the sales staff in Australia through purchase order, shipment, and receipt into warehouse.

The system provides a full sales order system handling actual and provisional sales to customers in Australia and New Zealand, packing slips, invoices, and credit notes.

Ganesha incorporates its own password and security system based on the MD5 algorithm.

It calculates the weighted average cost of all items of stock using a complex algorithm based on the latest cost information, foreign exchange rates, and invoices for goods received.

Ganesha produces automatic general journal entries for the accounting system for inventory movements, stock purchases and gross margin entries. It links directly to the accounts receivable module in the JD Edwards ERP system.

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