ALBANY, N.Y. -

Auto/Mate Dealership Systems rolled out four new features for its dealership management system (DMS) accounting suite on Monday. The company said the updates are designed to streamline processes that typically involve “countless” hours of labor by accounting personnel.

The company lists the new features as:

— Inquiry screen data entry
— Automated inter-company accounts payable
— Automated inter-company general journal postings
— Cash receipt templates

“A common problem with DMS accounting suites is that the end user is required to navigate through many screens in order to access, enter and change information,” Auto/Mate president and chief executive officer Mike Esposito said. “Our updates make it possible for a user to access everything from a single menu, which greatly reduces the amount of time it takes to accomplish certain tasks.”

The company then went into detail about each of the new updates:

Inquiry screen data entry

Auto/Mate said the inquiry screen is an often-used feature in dealership accounting systems. Personnel use the inquiry screen to research and drill down into cash accounts, expenses and more, as well as to view schedule details and specific transactions.

Now users have the ability to make data adjustments right from the inquiry screen. No longer do they have to back out of the screen and perform a separate function to enter or change data.

Users can also do multi-general ledger inquires within one company or multiple ones as well as build accounting set-ups that allow the user to have predefined sets of accounts they look up regularly. 

"The feedback from our customers who have tested this feature is that it's a huge time-saver and they absolutely love it,” Esposito said. “Now they can live and work within that one screen instead of having to navigate back and forth between different parts of the system.”

Automated inter-company accounts payable

This new feature can give users the ability to automatically post expenses across multiple companies or accounts, eliminating the need to manually divide and post individual expenses.

For example, Auto/Mate explained a dealer group with multiple locations might have each store pay a percentage of the monthly electric bill. Previously, accounting personnel would have to manually figure the percentage amount, then log into each company's account to enter the amount due in accounts payable.

“A staff member in an eight-store auto group told us that to reconcile all the inter-company accounts took her an average of two to three days every month,” Esposito said. “Once we set up the system to figure and post all these expenses automatically, her time spent reconciling inter-company accounts was reduced from three days to under two hours every month.”

Automated inter-company general journal postings

This new feature can allow inventory to be moved between companies without having to transfer the inventory manually.

For example, Auto/Mate proposed that if Store A wants to sell a vehicle in Store B’s inventory, previously Store B would have to first “sell” the vehicle to Store A. This process would require a salesperson to generate a deal and the accounting personnel to manually enter several transactions.

Now, this type of inventory transfer can be completed with a simple journal entry.

“It’s not uncommon for an auto group to have an 800-line journal entry to reconcile at the end of every month, which can take hours if not days to complete,” Esposito said. “Automating journal entries virtually eliminates the need to create dozens of manual transactions along with the need to reconcile them.”

Cash-receipt templates

For non-accounting personnel, Auto/Mate acknowledged that entering cash receipts into the accounting system can be challenging if they don't know how or where to post everything. This situation can create extra work for accounting personnel because they must double-check all cash receipts, spend time correcting errors and assign receipts to the correct accounts.

Auto/Mate now allows the accounting office to create user-defined cash receipt templates for each individual or role in the dealership.

For example, a salesperson typically receives payments for a pre-defined list of circumstances, such as a down payment for a vehicle. Accounting personnel can create a cash receipt template for a salesperson that gives them one or two options for how they can post that type of receipt into the system. Every staff member in the dealership can have their own specific template that defines where and how they can post receipts, virtually eliminating posting errors.

The updates also allow accounting personnel to automatically generate a deposit slip based on cash receipts just added to the system.

“On a Monday morning or after a holiday, this can save a significant amount of time compared with having to manually write all cash receipts onto a deposit slip before heading to the bank,” Auto/Mate said.

To see a demo of Auto/Mate's accounting suite, stop by booth No. 1853C at the 2016 NADA Convention & Expo in Las Vegas. Dealers can make an appointment at http://www.automate.com/nada

For more information on Auto/Mate's accounting suite, visit http://www.automate.com/DMS or call (518) 371-4331.