Work or life ~~ Understand how incentives works ~~

"A dealership client was calling the Account Receivable person in the group...", I got this message from the reception lady. Alright, I talked to myself,  I got to answer the questions since I am the A/R in the group. Just cross fingers that this was not an extremely difficult question.

I was wrong, the dealer complains that they sold the car and why the incentive was reversed by the group and gave to another dealer. This was new to me. Although at each month end, I validate the total incentive paid out against the Finance SAP record, all the data are input by the marketing department, be honest, I don't have an idea how it is triggered and calculated.

I asked for help from Sandy, she helped me to communicate with the dealer and got the vehicle number to research further. Through Sandy's VIN system, I had a rough picture that the VIN had been switched owners several times, and we need the confirmation to proof our thoughts.

We asked around our team and nobody knows about.....a little upset already. Suddenly, a friend who works as a contractor past by and said hi to me, and Sandy thought of something and told me that maybe she knows about, I realized her desk is located at marketing team, could that be...

I ran over and caught Diane at the door, nicely asked her for a short conversation. " Would you possibly involve with dealer incentive?" I asked, " Yes, I am" she answered.

Sandy then showed her what we saw about VIN on the screen, Diane then told us that the information was correct, but not a full picture. If we can go over to her desk, she would like to show us the whole thing.

What a nice experience. Diane had shown what had happened to this dealer and another dealer, as well as the ownership of this car, every detail including how the incentive been calculated and canceled afterward. Thanks to her information sharing, and I learned a lot.

Finally, with Sandy's help, she explained in detail, and very gentle tune to the dealer. At first, the accountant from the dealer did not trust what we said, until she asked someone at the there side to check the inventory record, and realized something wrong with their bookings. We ended the conversation nicely.

I also learned another thing from today's thing, be honest if something really not known, there must be an expert somewhere, they would like to share with you...

EXCEL EXCEL ~~ Use hyperlink to set up quick access from multiple tabs to summary tab

This feature helped me a lot. Now one click I can get back to summary tab from multiple tabs, with only one set up formula~

Work or life ~~ to improve my efficiency ~~ work with other dummies

It's extremely high pressure for me during the month of May.

• I realized that the Dealer Statement (Accounts Receivable) was not only a hard bone but a rocky bone. It was not difficult to follow instructions to format the Excel data from various departments and upload this data to SAP.  The most uncomfortable part was,  most of the templates are very outdated and the responsible personnel actually do not have the full picture, they are very incapable of inputting billing data into this worksheet. That means I had to work a lot to fix the numbers from raw data.

• The result of the above is I spend valuable time fixing the broken data link and recovering the crashed formulas,  plus I already have enough on my plate. 

• To immediately improve my efficiency, I made the decision. I went to the responsible personnel and walked them through, spend at least 5 to 10 minutes to let them understand how the formula works. Also updated the hyperlink in the file.

• There was small progress in June and a bigger improvement for July. I even ahead of schedule nearly half-day, and completed other month-end tasks. All these make my day!

Life ~~ a bridge and the movie ~~

This is a beautiful place, I asked " is it as beautiful as seen in the movie? ", the answer is " en~ not quite as I imaged~"

Maybe about more than 10 years ago, this movie was so heated in my home city, people loved to talk about it, they would love to see such scenery when they have given the chance. 

So we were here that day, as the other visitors, we took two quick photos to prove that we were been here. 

What would you say about if you were here too?

Work or Life ~~ why exchange rate will not affect these accounts ~~

I learned another big trick via the MAY month-end reconciliations.

First of all, of course, it wasn't balance, so I need to work out the variance. By digging enough, I realized that funding moving was booked into error accounts. At first glance, several payments in a different date should be withdrawn from a minor CAD account, but the entries showing that they were moved out from a major USD account in error. That means the adjusting entry needs to consider the exchange rate variance! That could be a very complicated re class booking for me. What a ****!

When I discussed the adjusting entry with my mentor, Mr. Smith, he suddenly realized something, and we went into the lines to check the original error bookings. Lucky enough, whoever booked the error entry, the currency that she applied was CAD! Even the funding was from a USD account, but since she booked them under CAD, that means aligning with SAP local currency, the currency exchange rate issue was avoided. Per my mentor, our SAP is set up in CAD as document currency, so whenever there is USD booking entry, it will automatically transfer the USD amount into CAD amount and show two different amounts for the same line item. That means if any amount booking as CAD, the system just showing the same amount, will not auto transferring. 

Thanks so much for the brainstorming, we resolved the error by just one re class entry in CAD. 

Work or Life ~~ a software called Quadrate - Workbench ~~ Tricks that I learned

When there are more than 50 records in a single invoice or payment need to be processed via SAP, it is a headache to input them one by one manually.

That's why a software called Quadrate were exist to solve this problem as a data porter. I am one of the few guys in the team were given this access right to process those invoice batch uploading for payment.

Since this was not my first time in handling this tool, after a few minutes of refreshment, I had to hands on the real tasks. It's almost month end, I must ensure that all the billing files are uploaded before the 1st day of the month.

Well, never assume some thing is easy or very hard, I forgot to remind myself. The situation looked good at first several files. The tool transferred the data into SAP smoothly, and turn into real lines of billing for statement. When I began to relax, suddenly a file was stuck, no matter how I format the numbers into the required length and number format, Workbench never take the order, and showed error in uploading.

After consulting my mentor, Mr. Smith, I came to know that Quadrate is not straight forward as I thought, there are certain "rules" that I need to know before running the tool.

For example, with the same batch, if any two lines, are pointing to the same dealer code (invoice#) and the $amounts are opposite each other, means for the same dealer code, the billing amount is actually returned as 0, Quadrate then can not identify both line item, and showed error. Then I need to manually change split the invoice into two different invoices, change the invoice number is the way to make Quadrate understand that I am uploading two different invoices, instead of one.

Another trick was, when the first line item in the invoices is a negative amount, Quadrate will not take in either. I need to manually moved the item to next line.

Maybe there are more tricks hidden somewhere just I never met yet. Hopefully, Mr. Smith still remember how to handle those and share with me.

Work or life ~~ Taxation Season ~~ busy busy

For most of the people in my current field, I think you will also agree that April is the most busy month during the whole year.

I think most of my peers not only busy at work, but also help with Tax filing. Sometimes not limited to only family members, that could include close friends and referrals.

My partner Cecilia and me also experienced the same situation. Tax filing is already her full time job and most of time she works from home. Whenever there is a potential client for us to work together, such as a basic calculation of expenses and revenue, basic financial statement analysis needed etc. I would probably step in to do this part. It's time consuming but I practiced a lot from these activities. Such as how to complete the schedule of CCA, line up the expenses in a table, and link the expenses and income data to my income statement and balance sheet. These stuff are never new to me, just the actual cases make most the points senses now to me. Then my friend will work on the data and draft her tax filling plan for the client.

In the whole month, Monday to Friday, I worked 8 am to 5 pm for my own full time job, and then after work. I immediate throw myself into the tax preparation calculation. And in the weekend, we meet each other to exchange the data and deal with inquiries.

I did not recall how's summer comes to the town, how's the weather suddenly changed to warm and nice season. For me, my mind are full of numbers and formulators.