The PlanetOne ERP system and accounting work

Many people may wonder how an ERP differs from accounting software, or understand the everyday accounting software they use to be an ERP — because the programs look similar and the purpose is the same, to do accounting work. In reality, an ERP differs from accounting software in several respects, and can do much more than just accounting.

An accounting system is merely off-the-shelf software focused on storing every type of data related to a company’s financial activities. It mostly consists of money-transfer documents and disbursement documents, gathered into categories ordered by date so they are easy to search, convenient for knowing the company’s cost and profit, and so that data can be used as evidence for paying corporate income tax to the Revenue Department. However, this system does not cover or connect work to the other areas of the organisation.

In general, recording the books in accounting software is usually the final step, after various processes have already passed — such as sales, payments, purchasing, and money in and out — where each department records and sends data to the accounting department to enter the books again. This can cause data to be dropped, to deviate, or to be incomplete and inaccurate. Mostly the data is kept by the month before the accounts are summarised, so the data is out of date, profit and loss are unknown, and the business owner or management cannot see the organisation’s current status or which direction it is heading. The data is hard to look up, having to be chased from many departments, and can lead to wrong decisions based on inaccurate, out-of-date data.

PlanetOne ERP, on the other hand, is a system that combines many modules covering the organisation’s work — such as sales, warehouse, and production — and the accounting department is likewise one of PlanetOne ERP’s modules. The ERP connects the data of the other departments with accounting in real time, with no need to gather documents to send to the accounting department, reducing duplicate work, giving accurate data with nothing dropped, and summarising the books and financial transaction reports to deliver accurate, fast information. It helps analyse profit-and-loss reports and expense reports at any time, from data sent by every department or every branch of the company. It makes it easier to analyse the movement of trade payables and trade receivables, as well as analyse trade receivable and payable balances retrospectively. It also supports exporting/importing data and lets you choose to pay by cash, cheque, or bank transfer.

From all the information above, the comparison should not be hard, because PlanetOne ERP is an ERP system developed by Thai people, and the capability of PlanetOne ERP is to cover the work of every organisation and every type of business. That is to say, a general ERP may help connect work within the organisation across sales, warehouse, purchasing, accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger, and through to the production system — which may have several exceptions, especially the tax system, because PlanetOne ERP is a system that supports the Thai tax system, and it is also a large-scale system that has been continuously developed for more than 26 years.