scott wrote:
>> 1. We had a different accounts package at all 5 sites. Obviously, this 
>> is highly suboptimal. So we decided to standardise. On Micro$oft 
>> Axapta. This cost us $1 million US. And yet it doesn't seem to 
>> "understand" about VAT.
> 
> Did you actually train any of your staff to use this $1m software 
> package?

What??

Don't be silly! ;-)

On 24 hours' notice, we found out that some guys were coming over from 
the USA. (Nice of you to give us some notice... We only found out when 
somebody asked "you have got accomodation for next week, right?" "Uh, 
next week??") They spent 5 days importing all the data from Sage into 
Axapta. Then they said "there you go, here's your new software", and 
left. That was "it". Initially, our accounts guys didn't even have 
passwords to get into the system.

>  I can assure you that MS Axapta can handle UK and EU VAT
> perfectly well, as well as printing VAT numbers on invoices and far more 
> complex things.  If you sent them on a training course then they could 
> just ask how to do this and they would be shown...

The last thing I heard on the matter was this:

"There's a UK add-on module that gives you support for VAT and a couple 
of other things. We won't be purchasing it. It's just too expensive."

In other words, "this is only a problem for the UK so we don't really 
care about it". Almost all problems that only affect the UK 
automatically get an extremely low priority.

In all honesty, it's really hard to determine whether Axapta is a bad 
product, or whether the guys who set it up just don't know how to work 
it properly. Nobody I have ever spoken to seems to have any great 
knowledge of how to work it.

Certainly the finance people in HQ like to invent needlessly elaborate 
ways of doing things to make themselves feel important. Hardly a week 
goes by without them issuing some decree that something we've been doing 
for years we now have to do in a completely different and much more 
convoluted way. (Usually so that the guys at HQ can be "in charge" of 
it, which seems to make them happier...)

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