Good evening,
I currently work for a software company as the financial controller (I have worked in various industries in the past after moving out of practice 13 years ago. However, software is new to me). The company want to change accounting systems this year and I will be managing the transition as well as providing recommendations on which system to move to. We currently use SAP B1 however we do not currently use or need much of the functionality and we are looking to move to a cheaper option. As we have to spread the maintenance contract revenue over the term of the contract our external accountants have suggested Xero with the add in FlowRev. After looking into this I have one issue (so far) - one of the companies in the group is Japanese and we need to be able to issue invoices in Japanese. Xero won't allow this.
So my questions are: are there any decent, lower cost accounting packages that will allow invoices to be issued in Japanese? If not, are there any add ons that could work with Xero to allow this?
If am allowed an addtional question: is anyone aware of any package or combination of packages that could meet the needs of spreading of revenue and Japanese invoicing?
One final point, the main accounting package must be cloud based.
Many thanks for taking the time to read and apologies if I have asked too many questions.
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Replies (9)
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https://www.xero.com/uk/accounting-software/multi-currency/
They appear to allow invoices issued in Japanese yen
Hi Peter,
Yes the currency can be in Yen but I need all the writing on the invoice to be in Japanese language also.
Thanks for replying
Can't you send a Xero invoice with an attachment with a translation? It would only have to be a translation of the field headings such as "Invoice number" because the text could be in Japanese.
Hi Peter,
Thanks - I was thinking I would have to go down the translation road. I think the whole invoice would have have to be translated though because the customer name, address, products and banking info would all need to be in Japanese too. Unless, I am missing your point?
There are a few cloud packages that offer multi-currency and multi-language, however these tend to stick to latin characters - I don't know any that also offer Japanese.
There is a Japanese cloud accounting package called Freee (https://www.freee.co.jp/) which you could use to raise the Japanese invoices and then repost in English in your main package. Obviously if the volume is large this may not be practical.
You may find that you need to stay with a large ERP solution to keep everything in one place and there are many alternatives to SAP.
Please contact me on 07974 717713 or [email protected] if you would like further assistance.
Hi Andy,
Many thanks for your suggestion. I'll have a look at Freee.
Do you have any suggestions for alternatives to SAP?
Thanks for your contact details too.
I would need to know a little more about your business to make a specific recommendation, however the main competitors to SAP are Oracle, NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics.
Others that cater for specific niches or slightly smaller companies who have outgrown Xero, QB etc. include Unit4, QAD, Epicor, Financial Force, Exact and Sage X3. These are likely to be much cheaper than SAP B1, and could be a good option as you're looking to cut costs and you don't need the full functionality of SAP.
You know your clients better than we do, but we issue English language invoices to Japanese clients all the time without problem. So you may be looking for a unicorn that is not actually needed...
One other approach though: Ask your japanese collegues what cloud based japanese accounting software is available as this is probably going to be cheaper to set up that implementing a bilingual SAP/Oracle solution. You will have to do the consolidation in the group accounts, but bringing in a TB is pretty routine compared to squuezing Xero into a kimono
Thanks
I've just asked both of those questions to the Japan team :)
I've no problem with consolidating in excel - after 3 years of SAP B1 we've never managed to get a consolidated TB out of it anyway!