German Compliance in the international environment
Oracle NetSuite – the world’s No. 1 cloud-based enterprise software – continues to grow in popularity, especially since its acquisition by Oracle in 2016. The system offers enormous advantages, especially for small and medium-sized companies. Particularly the built-in internationality with the NetSuite OneWorld product is often a decision criterion for companies with major growth plans. Accordingly, it is not surprising that NetSuite has even secured the powerful slogan “ACT GLOBAL, BE LOCAL” as a trademark [1]. In some cases, however, doubts are being raised: Is an American system really suitable for the German market? However, for international organizations with offices in Germany, NetSuite has been in use for years and continues to make inroads to replace proven local solutions. This article will provide an insight into several such projects we have been a part of over the last few years.
It often starts with customers wishing to create their tax return from NetSuite or having heard about a German localization and the ominous multibook – which makes NetSuite “compliant”. In many cases, it is also the global management that cannot understand that a local solution is in use in Germany, while the rest of the corporate group is already happily working with NetSuite and the figures are thus always available for global evaluations – accurate to the day (nicely colored on the C-level dashboard) and traceable. But you soon discover that German compliance is not a component that is simply “switched on”. GoBD-compliant accounting (principles for the proper keeping and storage of books, records and documents in electronic form as well as for data access) requires that business transactions be recorded in a comprehensible, complete, correct, timely and orderly manner [2]. So it’s mainly about implementing business processes at the administrative level. In compliance projects, of course, the focus is often on the ERP system. But that is not normally sufficient. Topics that are reviewed in a system review at the beginning, in addition to the obvious factors such as taxes and reporting, include document numbering, the structure of the chart of accounts, the authorization concept, and the present installed components, also called bundles or SuiteApps. Overall, such an analysis leads to a customer-specific “Road to German Compliance”, i.e. a recommendation for the next steps.
System Compliance – the basis
To start with, it is important to know a few details about NetSuite that can have a big impact on a compliance project. In our experience, in multinationally used NetSuite systems, the global setup takes up a very large space. Settings made in the Features and Accounting Preferences have an impact on all country organizations using this system. There are also some branch-specific settings; however, the basic framework is used globally. For this reason, it is of high necessity to always involve an administrator with an overall view when planning and implementing national initiatives. Sure, any experienced consultant with admin rights can figure out almost anything, however, it is also a matter of properly understanding design decisions or reaching out to actual stakeholders.
Read the complete post in Business News 05/2022 (in German).
Author: Katharina Schraft
Image: © Boonyachoat / istockphoto.com