Exploring Gravity - Part Two

Last week we began our exploration of Gravity, ‘the software’ (not space and time) by developing an understanding that this unique general ledger is built upon Microsoft Dynamics 365. This provides a power platform whereby it can connect with multiple 365 based applications like Office 365, Outlook, Windows Server, Exchange Server, Skype for Business, SharePoint, Power BI and PowerApps, as well as many other products developed for MS 365 by 3rd-party developers.

If you are interested in learning more about Gravity, register for their educational webinar with Insightful Accountant on Dec. 10 with Amy Vetter. Register here.

We then looked at key features of Gravity like:

  • ‘True’ multi-entity capabilities - no more switching company files to post to different companies,
  • Dimensionality – Gravity’s unique tagging process that gives you almost limitless definition and reporting capabilities,
  • Advanced Find Query – simplified searching that lets you slice and dice your data to easily identify the information that ‘matters most to you’ no matter how deeply integrated it is within the database,
  • Dashboards – that give you the ability to actually customize the view so that the information you want and need, that’s ‘most import to you’ is displayed where and how you want it, without the clutter of junk you don’t want, and
  • Role-based Security Controls – that actually provide control access to company data to ensure that users cannot see information or create documents or data that they should not have access to.

Since we will be referring to some of these features within today’s article here is a handy link to Part 1.  But the primary focus of this article will be to look at some of the other functionality that Gravity offers users who might be ready to move up from either the ‘Green Ball’ (QuickBooks1) or the ‘Blue Ball’ (Xero2) but who are not ready to take on the challenges of migrating to really huge software like Sage Intacct3 or Oracle NetSuite4.

Inventory & Much More

When it comes to inventory there is a lot to talk about for any accounting system and you either offer it, or you don’t. We all know that many of the smaller systems are ‘weak at best’ when it comes to inventory and the big boys have such a demanding inventory system that it is difficult to work with. Gravity offers an inventory feature set that fits the needs of a lot of users and includes features that you won’t find even in some larger systems.

Vendors

Let’s start this discussion by looking at ‘vendors’, you aren’t going to have inventory if you don’t buy at least components from vendors. One of the best aspects of being ‘Dynamics 365’ based is the ease by which almost any data can be easily customized. Above just happens to be the first vendor selected from our vendor list, and true they aren’t a ‘parts vendor’, but they could just as easily be one. But the point here is that if you need to change a field or want to add a field you don’t need a programmer to do that, with a few clicks you can make it happen.

And those changes won’t impact the ability of Gravity to receive product updates, run routine reports, or perform searches. In fact, your new or edited field is immediately available to you for searching and reporting as though it had been there all along. So, if you want to call ‘your special vendor price’, just that, just change the name to ‘your special vendor price’.

This same concept applies to your other lists as well, so add fields to your parts for additional descriptions, or special identifications, or hazard flags or safety requirements, etc.

Purchase Orders Plus

The 'Plus' comes from the extras you get when purchasing time comes around and you can issue purchase orders with ease, capture the information you need in the header and then specify the details for both non-inventory and inventory items as well as services in the same purchase order. And the PO can contain both your description (and part #) as well as the vendor’s description (and part #).

Immediately access any vendor’s specific details related to their parts and preferred pricing. Review their terms of service including promised delivery dates you may have established under any special agreement, it’s all right there at the click of your mouse.

Gravity’s workflow engine allows you to create customized approval processes to route purchase orders via email to the appropriate personnel anywhere, anytime. Transmit and exchange purchase order confirmation with your vendor via email based upon your approvals.

Multi-location Inventory

Now we already talked about multi-entity support in Part 1 of our exploration, but Gravity has one of the best product tracking feature sets around because it lets you not only track quantity of items at each location where parts maybe kept, but each location can control its own pricing, reordering ad stocking characteristics.

Think about it, just because you purchase items on the east coast and receive them in Miami at one price and store them at your warehouse in say Orlando, doesn’t mean that they cost you the same thing when you have to ship a third of those products on to a warehouse in Kansas City, and the remaining third on to a warehouse in Portland. The further the shipping the higher your cost for the same item. Even if you sell the item for the same cost, your margins are different at each location but with the green and blue ball software solutions you don’t have a way of tracking that without setting up each location with totally different ‘ghost items’ for the exact same item. 

Gravity overcomes the limitation of the green and blue ball solutions, and even many ‘bigger software products’ and gives you the ability to track price and cost for each item at each unique location so you can analyze your inventory and maximize your profitability.

Cost Alternatives

You’re not stuck with one or another cost options when it comes to inventory valuation with Gravity. With FIFO, LIFO, Weighted Average, Standard and even specific item costing options you get an accurate profit analysis for every item, you determine the cost methodology that is most advantageous to your financial situation, not the one method that your software vendor has chosen to ‘right their code for.’

Traceability/Trackability

During the numerous hours of working demo I spent with this product one of the things that impressed me most significantly was the ability to trace items from the time of purchase to the time of sale, even when those items were used in manufacturing.

Now Gravity offers serial, lot, expiration and other specialized forms of tracking, but traceability is always a key when it comes to things like the ability to track which vendors’ part was used in your delivered product, or exactly what refurbished component was used in your manufactured item.  You won’t be seeing that kind of detail with those little plug-in products for your blue and green ball software.

Light Manufacturing/Fabrication

Gravity offers what I view as light manufacturing/fabrication capabilities including multi-layered Bill of Material fabrication. Are they a full featured Material Resource Planner system for industrial grade manufacturing?  The answer is simple, no they are not, and I serious doubt that they ever will be.

In talking with John Silvani [Gravity’s founder] he told me he isn’t really trying to compete with those types of solutions, although his software roadmap does include several enhancements in this area.

Still growing feature set

As I just mentioned there are several features related to inventory-centric businesses that are on the horizon for Gravity, the exact distance of that horizon is beyond the scope of this article, but certainly if you are considering a migration and looking for a specific feature you will want to visit with your representative at Gravity about features like ‘mobile warehouse receiving’ or ‘landed costs’ may be finalized.

Sales and Billing

Some people would say that this has no business being lumped under the category of inventory, but this is where you hopefully ‘get rid’ of your inventory, right?  I mean the entire purpose of the inventory in the first place is to sell it, and so are going to end up billing your customers for it.

We started off in Part 1 talking about the ease with which you could create estimates and quotes because you could also associate Gravity with Microsoft 365 CRM if you wanted. It’s with the same ease that you can turn those quotes into the sales orders that either generate direct sales of inventory or services or result in manufacturing orders for products.

Either way you are going to end up invoicing your customer just as easily since you can turn your quote, estimate or sales order into the invoice with any changes appropriate to the situation.  Believe it or not I have gone all this way in both articles, almost 5,000 words without any mention of multi-currency but now is as good a time as any.

You see if we are going to discuss billing we need to think about the fact that it is not uncommon any more for companies to deal with customers (and vendors) who are doing business in other parts of the world and that means in foreign currencies. Those small green and blue ball systems are notorious for their nightmares in accounting for exchange rate hiccups, but Gravity was designed with an international flavor because of Microsoft Dynamics 365 at it’s core to despite having multi-entity support it also supports multi-currency even within the multi-entities at the transactional level. That means that those transactions impacting more than one entity can have different currencies for each entity all within the same transaction as can be seen in the illustration below.

And where there is billing there is ‘tax’.  Gravity currently supports both Sales Tax and VAT (value-added) tax. While the United States has hundreds of jurisdictions at the state and local level assessing sales tax, there are more than 160 countries around the world using VAT so you need software that offers both taxation methodologies. Gravity has you covered. And because Gravity recognizes the complexity of maintaining manual tax tables, especially with so many U.S. jurisdictions, they are presently finalizing a partnership with a major ‘sales tax partner’ to provide an integrated sales-tax automation feature (I will let you guess just who that might be…cause I’m not telling).

Optional Add-on Features

The modular nature of the platform means that you can choose to add some optional features as you determine appropriate for your specific needs. Not every user will require these.

Job Costing

I really hate to call it this, but that’s what Gravity calls it. You can really do fundamental cost tracking of jobs with the basic functionalities of Gravity using many of the specific features we have already discussed, but this feature set is really geared toward what I would term ‘construction administration.’ 

Gravity offers an integration with a job costing solution called CumulusApps that was designed for contractors (as well as subcontractors and specialty contractors) allowing for easy comparison of estimated values like hours, costs and revenues with hours, costs and revenues in progress as well as upon completion of a specific job. At any point along the line users can also look at committed  values based upon the various job tracking classifications they establish.

Users can also generate a Schedule of Values from the Job Estimate and then create your Progress Billing invoices. Simply enter the percentage or amount to bill and the Gravity does all the work including withholding the retainage, generating the invoice and producing the G702 and G703 AIA documents.  So, if you are a contractor that is currently using the Green or Blue ball software and you are wanting to ‘move on up’ then be sure to take a look at what Gravity has the way to offer with this advanced job costing functionality.

Revenue Recognition

So you are going, “wait one minute Murph, we have to be able to recognize revenue if we are invoicing our customers, that’s what A/R is all about…” and you would be right. But, when it comes to some forms of revenue the Financial Accounting Standards Board has a funny way of looking at revenue and just how they expect businesses to recognize it or when they expect them to recognize it regardless of when they receive it. 

For example, if your business engages in annual contracts, or bundles goods and services together, or sells or delivers products that include future releases of product updates, or delivers services over time, or provides software as a service then your revenues for any of those can only be recognized when control of those goods or services are actually transferred to your customer no matter when you are actually paid for those goods or services.

Revenue recognition for these businesses is one of the most complex forms of accounting, and there are highly complex and expensive accounting systems on the market that ONLY do this kind of accounting, but Gravity offers a ‘plug-in’ option that makes the process of revenue recognition for these kinds of business activities simple.  Gravity will provide reliable and accurate financials based upon deferral revenue schedules with automated monthly entries representing the true revenue associated with earnings according to the accounting standards. No more complex spreadsheets or third-party software plug-ins for Excel that then require you to post journal entries into your blue or green ball software packages in hopes of having the right revenue numbers.

Microsoft Power BI Visuals and Reporting

One of the best aspects of being Microsoft Dynamics 365 based is the ability to transform the Gravity data into the visuals and reporting options available with Microsoft Power BI. Talk about “the data that matters most to you”! No matter what it is, it will look better and be more meaningful when you see the stunning and interactive visualizations and reports that can be generated in seconds with this simple drag-and drop tool.

With MS Power BI you will see your financial, operational and activity-based metrics like you have never seen them before in near-real-time allowing you to respond immediately to any situation.

Conclusion

Well, my exploration has come to an end, but yours can just be starting. If the 'blue' or 'green' ball are just not doing it for you anymore, and you are frightened of those huge software giants, why not start your own Gravity exploration? You might just find it’s the perfect fit for your situation.