Adecco, the largest recruitment company worldwide with 15 offices throughout South Africa, and its head office in Johannesburg, has standardised on ACCPAC to integrate its accounting and payroll functions. According to Financial Director, Warrin Rautenbach, the motivation behind the decision to acquire a new accounting package was two-fold: "We were confronting the Y2k issue and we wanted to put the company in a better position to link the accounting department with the company's payroll in respect of the temporary staff placements."
He explains that Adecco undertook an extensive selection process locally to find a supplier who would enable them to link both their payroll and their debtors' functions together. "Initially, we went to the recognised payroll companies, but fell short because they couldn't meet our accounting requirements," Rautenbach says.
"We selected ACCPAC because Lorge & Associates were prepared to develop an ACCPAC solution to meet our payroll requirements. Lorge & Associates were imaginative in finding us a solution. They offered to write us some software in an ACCPAC module to allow us to incorporate our payroll and debtors," he says.
The physical implementation of ACCPAC on a SQL database running on a Windows NT platform across Adecco's wide area network began in April 1999 after being piloted for several months. The system will go live this month. Approximately 70 users will access the system across the WAN.
Adecco's primary focus is the placement of temps and contractors in the industrial, commercial (administration, secretarial) and technical fields.
According to Rautenbach, the company has several internal controls that are applied to ensure that when a particular temp is paid for a job, the relevant charge is raised against the appropriate customer's file in the debtors' book. The hours worked are entered on a time sheet which is simultaneously routed to the debtors and the payroll department simultaneously. Lorge & Associates developed a Time Sheet Processing module in ACCPAC to facilitate this process. An existing ACCPAC module handles the debtors, while VIP Payroll draws on the same module to process the time sheets for salary purposes.
Rautenbach says that the new system has brought several business advantages to Adecco: "Previously, our system would allow us to enter time sheets outside a contract period. The new system kicks us out, which enables us to keep a tighter control on our contract maintenance with clients. This makes Adecco's job easier in the light of the new Labour Relations Act requisites. We have also achieved tighter controls of our entire administration process," he explains. "The greatest benefit, though, is the flexibility that we've found in ACCPAC. In the past, my experience has been that what you buy is what you get and there's not much flexibility in the package. With ACCPAC and the agreement we have with Lorge & Associates, we have the ability to mould the package to our specific requirements and there is still an extensive amount of customisation ability to meet our future requirements, as and when that becomes a necessity."
He concludes, "We were unable to find our ideal turnkey solution from one supplier, but instead, through Lorge & Associates, we worked with a group of specialist organisations to develop our ideal system. ACCPAC fits into this approach very easily."
"The success of ACCPAC in the South African market has meant that a depth of development skills has been established. Solutions combining the core ACCPAC modules with customisation specific to a client's requirements are available from respected developers such as Lorge & Associates," said Jeremy Waterman, MD of LA Technology, the sole distributors for ACCPAC International in Africa.
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