We decided to put our webinar in text form because we don’t want you to miss a thing! Here is the full transcription of our LatamReady Webinar.
‘NetSuite FInancials – Everything You Need To Know’ (12.21.18)
Watch the full webinar at http://www.latamzone.info
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Hello everybody good afternoon. Welcome again to your monthly webinar. This is LatamReady and today is a special day because it’s our last and 10th webinar for this year. The year 2018 marks a spot for a great year. Today, first of all, let me introduce our guests as usual, well not guests just our regular hosts. You have me, Baz, we have Glenn, sales manager and we have Carlos Z the CEO and president of LatamReady. Gentlemen, Hello!
Carlos: Hello Baz.
Baz: How is everybody doing?
Carlos: Great! It’s our last webinar and it’s our 10th webinar
Baz: Our tenth webinar! It’s something to celebrate because it’s something like a milestone
Carlos: Where are the coronas?!
Baz: Next year! New Year, we will have it for our new years’ party guys.
Baz: Ok, today we are going to discuss thinking globally and acting locally in Latin America of course. It’s a concept that all companies, whatever size, small, big need to think about and need to focus on.
Today’s topic for the webinar was greatly suggested by Glenn of course, NetSuite Financial for multi latin companies. Everything you need to know. This is a big deal because a lot of people need to know this really important information about NetSuite Financials. A lot of people have so many questions about this.
Carlos: Obviously it’s our (…) it’s what we do, why we breathe. Why we dream of (…) is NetSuite financials especially in the Latin American space. What we always also find is a thing no Glenn? Control and agility right? Those are the main challenges, no?
Glenn: Exactly. What we try to really do at this company, at LatamReady, is provide people with business management software, an ERP that is able to grow along with the company. A lot of the companies that we work with, they are still smaller they are not doing billions of dollars in revenue but they are looking for a system that can grow along with them. Specifically today we are going to talk about the accounting software part of the ERP, but obviously, NetSuite has a lot of more things to offer. But the financial part of it, the accounting part of it is very interesting. NetSuite was originally an accounting software and it used to be such an elaborate ERP.
Carlos: Just for you to know, the original name was NetLedger.
Glenn: Exactly. So that core functionality NetSuite is still king in that, they are still very good at that. They’ve been growing quickly this year with the acquisition of Oracle a few years back NetSuite really blew up. They are working with 40 thousand organizations throughout the world. They use NetSuite themselves right? For their financial software, so it’s an interesting product and we are excited to talk about it more.
Baz: Yes, you know, as NetSuite partners we also use NetSuite ourselves.
Glenn: Exactly.
Carlos: Exactly.
Baz: Control is one of the things you mentioned, and what else is one of our challenges? We have control and there’s one more challenge I believe is something…
Carlos: Agility
Baz: Agility, right? Oh, you did mention agility, yes! So, talking about control, right? What is that? What is ‘Control’ for multi latin companies?
Carlos: What we always find when we offer NetSuite financials to multi latin companies based in Miami is that those companies are having multiple subsidiaries all across the region, and those subsidiaries are trying to get in control with local software, we also always find a very local software that is worked by the local team without any connection with the subsidiary, or the connection is performed at the end of the month with maybe an excel.
Glenn: Exactly, that is important right? Because when we talk about control, yes, generally people in Latin America use local software so the problem is that often systems don’t communicate with each other. Having an accounting software in the U.S. with the headquarters of most of these companies, and them being able to communicate in the right way technologically with the system that they use locally, is often very difficult. So for those companies to have data at the right time to make decisions based on numbers instead of a gut feeling, that’s what we call control. I mean full control of your revenue, being in full control of your expenses with real-time data and don’t be so dependent on what you are going to get from your Latin American subsidiaries maybe at the end of the month, after two months time right? Real-time visibility for all of your subsidiaries.
Carlos: Some of these new customers that we are going to have today right? We are going to receive a contract today from a customer, and what are they doing? They implemented NetSuite in Miami, and also opened a subsidiary inside of NetSuite for let’s say, Peru and Ecuador. They were not operating in real time with NetSuite in the subsidiaries, that is also a situation that we find. A headquarter using NetSuite and subsidiaries not fully using NetSuite but controlling the tax compliance side of the business with local software. And to be honest that is exactly what NetSuite is supporting. And what we offer as a company and as a solution for our customers.
Glenn: An important point and part of the control and part of the visibility that we talk about our financial statements. The whole goal of getting a financial system in place and the whole goal of implementing that in a global scale, and getting the same software throughout the whole organization is to get consolidated financial statements, as easy as possible and as quick as possible. Those financial statements are key for organizations and that is something that NetSuite does very well.
Carlos: And for that, you will find inside of NetSuite finance, a lot of tools. For example, business intelligence is built inside of NetSuite. That is very important because usually you will find an ERP and a business intelligence module, and that is not the case in NetSuite. NetSuite offers business intelligence as part of the platform. To be honest, we don’t find a BI module in the pricing list from NetSuite, its built inside its part of the business offering and it includes not only reports but also financial reports, also dashboards for business intelligence, word flows for you to configure alerts and so on.
Baz: That’s talking about control. You know, actually we did have a recent blog post I think last week and we actually talked about this. Check it out guys at latamready.com, you are going to see in our little blog post area you will see something we have written about global visibility, about using multiple systems.
Glenn: One other aspect about control Baz, and it’s something important because we talk about the financial statement and we talk about tax compliance which is obviously important. But another advantage of having a global ERP system deployed across the whole organization is controlling processes. Streamline processes, having the same business processes defined throughout the whole organization.
Carlos: Consistency no?
Glenn: Consistency! While you will often find is companies operating differently in other countries, while they do not have a different business model. This is very inconsistent and can come with many challenges. There are a lot of advantages attached to getting a streamlined process throughout the whole organization.
Carlos: And that gives us too, not only having consistency throughout all the subsidiaries but also to have the opportunity to consolidate processes in one single location. That is something that happens with our biggest customers. They consolidate, for example, billing registration, electronic invoice.
Glen: Things that are impossible if you don’t streamline. You have different processes for each country, those things are impossible.
Baz: It could be very inefficient.
Carlos: Exactly, for example, ESA Latin America, one of our Miami based customers, they consolidate everything, all of the accounting processes in Sao Paulo, for eight Latin American countries.
Baz: What happened after that?
Carlos: They consolidated the processes, I mean the accountants are there, in Sao Paulo. They are not in Peru, in Colombia, in Chile, they are in a single location, controlling everything from a single point.
Glenn: Which is another form of control. Control over your organization throughout streamline processes. Important to know that as well.
Baz: Control is a big issue, not a big issue but I would say control is a big thing people need to consider I suppose. Yes, for their company. We mentioned agility at one point as well, just earlier today. What is agility? Agility to support the expansion for Latin American companies. What can we say about that?
Carlos: My favorite topic when we talk about NetSuite is that. Because what we see with our customers is that to open a new subsidiary is not any more challenging, it’s not a challenge anymore. Talking about NetSuite or the ERP cycle, the business because it’s like this (snaps fingers), we can set-up a new subsidiary in a matter of hours.
Glenn: Seconds
Carlos: Seconds! And our customers can start growing their corporation all across Latin America, very very very fast.
Glenn: The fact that NetSuite is a cloud-based software; cloud-based infrastructure comes with advantages. The very classic thing in the ERP world was to do a new configuration or set up a new subsidiary would take weeks or months if not half a year of time. Today the kind of infrastructure that NetSuite has, the kind of platform that it has is very different. It is specifically created for companies that are growing and that need to adapt to new requirements. We are not only talking about opening up new subsidiaries but also changing your business models, new building structures. With NetSuite, those things go very very quickly which is more than important for growing companies. If not, you can be limited to your business decisions by, if your software can handle it or not.
Carlos: That is very important because what we are finding now in our space in the Miami based multi latin space of companies, smaller companies they are deciding that like NetSuite, they are willing to go to NetSuite and they start with the CRM side of NetSuite. Controlling in a first step, controlling sales opportunity, estimates, databases and then jump to the financial step of the modules of NetSuite. They start controlling something and instead of migrating to a different ERP, to different software for controlling the financial side of their business, they just upgrade NetSuite CRM to the next step. It is not a migration, it’s just an upgrade. That is very important, it’s part of agility.
Baz: Upgrading, adding the modules you need to like expand your company as well. The things that you need.
Glenn: In the simplest way possible you can look at NetSuite and NetSuite financials is as a Lego right? You can build one block and then you can just build on it. It’s very very easy.
Baz: It’s like NetSuite is one building block, to grow your company you just add more, you do more models more functionalities.
Glenn: The advantage is that it’s the same instance, the same product. It goes a lot faster in any department inside of the company can definitely speak technologically with each other.
Baz: What is NetSuite offering specifically to Latin America? What is Latin America receiving from NetSuite?
Carlos: I would mention a few modules that are very important from NetSuite to Latin America. The first, I’m going to start with the basics. NetSuite one World is the base of everything in the multi-country, multi-subsidiary module from NetSuite, it allows our companies to perform as corporations. Usually also includes electronic invoicing, because it is a module that NetSuite develops for Latin America and basically it is a platform for electronic invoicing, that NetSuite developed for Latin America and a few countries from Europe as well. And also electronic payments, OneWorld electronic payments. That is a module from NetSuite that works exactly the same as electronic payments for the U.S. that includes Bank of America or local American banks, but that specific module allows us to work with local banks in Latin America. I would mention those three modules.
Glen: It is important to understand that NetSuite, what they have been doing over the last years, is they’ve been providing the perfect platform for partners like LatamReady to build on top of that and adapt the system and make sure it meets legal requirements in Latin America. Since we are talking about the financials of NetSuite, that’s where NetSuite makes a difference, because there is very very little global ERPS that you can deploy throughout the whole corporation that meets legal requirements in Latin America and that point is key, because it cannot do that with your financial software, your financial software basically does not make sense, because you cannot transact inside of the system. You can use the system as a consolidation platform, but you cannot transact in it. Being able to do that with Netsuite is a huge advantage, and that is also why we are having so many successes in the Multi Latin Space, Miami – Latin America or here inside Latin America only because it is a great product, and it really fits requirements of local needs here.
Carlos: And also it’s getting better and more localized, for Latin America. Now it’s not only offered in English but also in Spanish and also Portuguese. I mean in Spanish for Latin America not for Spain and Portuguese, not for Portugal but for Brazil.
Baz: I was just going to ask about the languages, because I’m sure now having global offices in Latin America as well, how are people going to deal with the different languages?
Carlos: Exactly because one word in Spain, where they speak also Spanish does not the same meaning in Latin America. NetSuite is working on that, they have a special and specific team working on translations and that’s great.
Baz: What about tax compliance? You know in Latin America, there are always specific tax regulations in different in Latin American countries. How is NetSuite dealing with that? How do people overcome tax compliance in Latin America?
Carlos: Tax Compliance in Latin America includes many topics. Something that comes to my mind is electronic invoicing. For electronic invoices, NetSuite offers a platform for partners like LatamReady to develop inside of that ….and build a solution inside of electronic invoicing SuiteApp from NetSuite. In our case what we are doing is to connect NetSuite using that specific module to a third party that is certified by the local tax government, that tax agency in every single country that we are supporting. And we use that module and we also use that module with NetSuite’s own security levels, security platform, security protocols. That’s also a huge advance because everything is built, and we have to build on top of that, in order to get that specific document from that specific government in Latin America.
Baz: Just like Glenn said, let’s think about that as Lego blocks for electronic invoicing and we add those blocks.
Carlos: Exactly that’s the beauty of NetSuite.
Baz: What’s the word…agility I’d say, it’s part of agility.
Carlos: How many countries are we supporting electronic invoicing, ten?
Glenn: For electronic invoicing, it must be ten. For tax compliance, we support fourteen countries in Latin America
Carlos: When talking about electronic invoicing, every single country is different. Electronic invoicing requirements in Brazil are different than in Mexico, in Argentina, it’s different, in Ecuador is absolutely different. Technically speaking and also what the tax agency is asking for. For example, in Ecuador, they ask for electronic wavers, in Colombia, it’s not the case, in Mexico its not the case. In Mexico we find agendas, that is a specific customized electronic invoicing for a specific customer, so that’s the beauty of NetSuite.
Glenn: A great example is I just had a call with Edgar, one of our solution architects with a possible client, all Mexicans and the reason why we had that call is because they were worried about exactly what you were explaining. They were worried about ok…we’re going to get on NetSuite now, we’re going to be having NetSuite as an operational system does it comply with tax regulation, does it comply with things like comprobante de pago which are new in Mexico, those regions are very dynamic there’s no legal requirements every month every quarter so people obviously are worried about that and it’s very difficult for products like Oracle SAP to keep up with those requirements. They often have a solution in place for tax compliance but after three months the solution isn’t complete anymore because of the dynamic characteristics of the region. And that’s when NetSuite does that very well because instead of doing it themselves they leverage their knowledge and the agility of a partner like ourselves. We are here local 100% focused on only that, we have very good relationships with accounting offices in countries in Latin America. We are constantly updating our manuals and doing that NetSuite can really offer a 100% compliance with their clients even in a region like Latin America at all times.
Carlos: Do you remember the phrase this new customer Welding Alloys used in our last conversation. “Things here in Mexico change usually and dramatically” and I think that’s the correct description of what’s happening in Latin America.
Glenn: and it’s very important because a change like that affects your whole operation in regards to what kind of platform you are using because if the platform can’t adapt you are forced to get out of the platform, acquire something that offers you compliance and you have a Frankenstein again. You’re again working in separate systems, different processes, wasting time not focusing on doing business but focusing on getting the work done and that’s not the idea.
Carlos: and losing control, and losing agility
Baz: I understand that completely actually. Talking more about tax compliance, there’s also something else a lot of people ask about which is withholding tax certificates
Carlos: it’s a very interesting topic when doing business in Latin America because it’s not used in the rest of the world. In the rest of the world if a supplier sends you a bill you pay the bill and that’s it. In Latin America, it’s very different. In most of the countries and in most of the companies you receive a bill and you pay a certain percentage to the supplier and the rest is going to go to the government. It’s a good mechanism from the governments to collect taxes.
Baz: again to control from the governments
Carlos: and that’s the most simple example. There are a lot of cases all across Latin America, with minimums, with different rates depending on what I’m buying or selling, where am I
Baz: or going from one state to another
Carlos: exactly, that’s the case of Brazil. That’s a huge topic in Latin America. And for that NetSuite is offering a module and LatamReady is offering a complimentary module for complementing (…) that is called Latam Tax that is something that we developed specifically for managing withholding taxes all across Latin America in one simple solution.
Baz: yes there is a lot that we can say about that. So I just want to look at the viewers, look at the camera for a minute and just say, if you have any questions in regards to NetSuite financials for Latin American don’t forget to give us a call at 786 600 2641. The first person who’s going to answer is here Glenn, who is right there on the phones he has a vast knowledge and information on this. Or also don’t forget to email us at sales@latamready.com because of any one of who is going to check that out and reply right away. We have next E-payments is another thing on tax compliance in Latin America. Similar to E-invoicing is sort of accessing way is more or less the same structure.
Carlos: Once you are subscribed to NetSuite you will find their electronic payment files for Bank of America and all the list of international banks for the major economies from Europe and obviously for the U.S.A. But in the case of Latin America that is still not something that is standard from NetSuite. But what NetSuite is offering again is a platform for partners as LatamReady to develop. And now we are supporting more than twenty banks all across the region, and the list is growing.
Baz: Continuously growing. I think just this year we got a few more banks from different countries.
Carlos: and now we are focusing on Brazil. Brazilian banks are now our homework
Baz: I wanted to talk about legal ledgers as well
Glenn: Electronic accounting is important in Latin America it goes back to the point of control and compliance and requirements for local tax agencies. Today in Latin America legal ledgers are to be presented electronically. Actually files being able to be read by human beings that we have to submit to the tax agencies and that can be read by their software. These need to be submitted every month. Latin America is very different in that aspect than other countries around the world. You have to pay your taxes every month, do your declarations every month obviously and they need to be submitted in a specific format to the tax agencies. All of those formats are very different and have very different requirements in each country. So you can start understanding that its a company that does business throughout the whole region it comes with a lot of complexities.
Carlos: And you know that Argentina is also requiring legal ledgers twice a month. Not only every single month but also in some countries twice a month, every fifteenth of the month. And also you will find not only monthly ledgers but also annual ledgers that companies have to issue every end of the year. And also complementing what Glenn was describing, is that those books legal ledgers are presented in electronic formats, those electronic formats are … I mean a person is not able to read that information. You will find characters and letters and numbers for our users to be able to understand what they are sending to the tax agencies, we have developed our reports to review and to have the correct view of what you are sending before you send the information.
Glenn: so you can actually validate what you are sending to the tax agency
Carlos: and be sure you are paying the correct amount of taxes and make sure you are not going to receive a fine.
Baz: Speaking of global offices, having multiple offices as well what do they do with their accounting. I know that there is the feature for Multibook in NetSuite is quite important for multi latin companies as well.
Glenn: it goes back to the point to what you’re trying to state. For example, in a country like Peru or Colombia, that aspect becomes important because those are countries where you have a statutory chart of accounts. A statutory chart of accounts means that we can not simply use the global chart of accounts that we have in our organization for the electronic reporting, we actually have a separate chart of accounts defined by the local tax agency that we have to use for reporting requirements. That also means that we are going to be operating in two separate books
Carlos: going back to control. If I want to control my subsidiary, let’s say I’m sitting in my office in Miami. If I want to control my subsidiary in Sao Paulo Brazil, I want to control that in my own language following my own way of understanding my subsidiary. That’s the beauty of Multi-book because Multibook works as a translator for me to understand what’s happening in Brazil in US dollars and following U.S gap rules. Then I’m able to control in a better way.
Glenn: Exactly it comes in the two aspects. Local compliance because of the statutory chart of accounts, but then if you go global obviously the consolidation becomes an important part as well. And multibook really is that kind of feature that can, in a very elegant and efficient way it can give us visibility over global results in a way that we really want to. Which is difficult especially in the Latin American region. Accounting books are complex, so it’s not that easy to translate. We say translate but we’re talking about the translation of accounting manuals.
Carlos: It’s actually mapping
Glenn: That’s actually very impressive, and most of the time when we show those functionalities to people in an actual demo of what NetSuite can do, it’s an amazing thing people get really excited
Carlos: because you could imagine having or controlling eight subsidiaries with different currencies, with different accounting rules because every country is following its own accounting gap…if you ask me it’s impossible to be able to control that because I’m not going to understand, who are selling more, who are spending more because it’s presented in different currencies in different languages. So for me to be able to control I’m going to translate that using Multibook to be able to understand, a whole region is in the same language, accounting language and in the same currency.
Glenn: And understand as well that this is all real time, this is not a process that takes a few hours, or weeks or months. This is real-time conversion.
Baz: You open your laptop, go on to NetSuite and it’s right there
Glenn: I can make one single transaction with multiple accounting (…) at the exact same moment, a few years back that was something unheard of and now it’s the most normal thing and it’s very very useful.
Baz: Because it’s a cloud-based software as well which makes it very easy for people to actually get on to check, to manage their companies. I love how it adapts to the region as well, languages, the accounting requirements. If I were a company that I didn’t know about this and I just heard about it would blow my mind because I would have been working with multiple systems and hearing about this one single system that does all of this in the different countries where tax regulations, accounting regulations are different…its a life saver!
Carlos: and it’s fast also. For example with IG Networks we are spending three months on implementing more than five countries, I’d say?
Glenn: Yes
Carlos: In three months, five countries. In the past, in the 90s when I was implementing a different brand of ERPs in my past life that was impossible. Now it’s possible and it’s something that we do very often here in LatamReady.
Baz: One of the few things I wanted to say was, these tax compliance requirements, of course, we did talk about why they are in place, basically control.
Carlos: Control from the government
Baz: we covered a lot of things today gentlemen, is there anything else that we’re missing? Before we say our goodbyes, before we actually leave everybody now, anything? NetSuite is great!
I want you guys to check out our blog where we are going to post every week about how NetSuite is great accounting software for your multi latin company.
Glenn: Yes people should get in touch with us, obviously we’ve been speaking here for half an hour about NetSuite but there are so many things that we can talk about, so much information that we can share. I’d recommend everyone to go to our web page latamready.com, go to our online university latamdojo.com. Get in touch with us with the salespeople and ask for a meeting it’s completely free, we could give you any information that you’d like.
Baz: and if you want to see our previous webinars, and webinars regarding our organization, but mostly on Netsuite, you can check that out at LatamZone.info, all our webinars are there.
Carlos: and what’s going to happen next year?
Baz: oh my goodness, a lot of things are happening next year!
Carlos: yes today we approved out road map for next year I’m very excited with that, we are almost doubling our workforce for developing for supporting new features here in LatamReady, and we are hitting very hard the Brazilian market. Brazil is going to be one of our main markets next year with new features, beautiful big features for our customers in Brazil and Mexico
Baz: I’d say that next year LatamReady is coming back at you guys full force. We are going to be stronger, better… we are going to start the new year with a bang! And I think that it’s a great time to end this webinar for the year, for the month. I’d love to wave goodbye to everybody.
Everybody thank you so much, Carlos, Glenn everybody for watching. Have a great holiday, have a great December, good afternoon. And don’t forget to give us a call or check our websites
Carlos: goodbye!
Glenn: Bye!
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