Link™ Architecture
Delivering unrivalled software interoperability
Coda Financials was designed to serve as a financial information backbone for companies in fast-changing and mixed application environments. This is made possible by our Link™ architecture.
Link™ takes Coda Financials way beyond what you can achieve with ordinary accounting systems. The architecture provides real-time visibility and control across all the people, processes and systems related to the financial information in your organisation. This enables your financial software to take on a much more strategic role in managing your business. It also helps you adapt to constant business changes and mitigates the potential impact that change can have on your reports, processes, controls and systems.
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The Link™ architecture has three primary characteristics:
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The single financial model
No sub-systems or sub-ledgers
Unlike the batch or multi-module ERP designs prevalent in most accounting systems today, Coda Financials broke new ground as the first single ledger (or unified) accounting system. This unique single system design eliminates time lags, sub-ledgers, data fragmentation, reconciling and unnecessary integration between subsystems. In contrast to most batch or waterfall styled ERP systems, it ensures that your business data is consistent, always in balance, and always up to date. Changes can efficiently be made in ONE area without: losing control, creating reporting problems or increasing the risk of non-compliance. This is because data is held within one financial model – in one accounting application – not in multiple sub-modules and sub-systems.
Multidimensional
Infinite ways to classify, measure & analyse your business
Despite the bevy of IT reporting tools available today, most finance departments still struggle to keep up with reporting demands, often relying on spreadsheet gyrations to save the day. But the problem isn’t necessarily the tools; it is the inflexibility and inadequacy of the information model in the underlying financial system.
The Coda Link architecture provides exceptional ways to capture, store, and maintain financial data. The multidimensional financial model of Coda Financials is far superior to the typical “Code Block” approach and inflexible chart of accounts structures embedded in most accounting systems or in the General Ledger modules of most ERP systems. For example, the Coda chart of accounts offers unparalleled flexibility to measure profitability, accommodating different account coding schemes within the same company. This allows each line of business to measure profitability the way it needs to, yet provides a single reporting model or ledger – that is always in balance. Unlike “Code Blocks” that are flexible once, Coda Financials’ multidimensional model structure expects diversity and can be updated on the fly.
Multi-everything
The financial model includes dimensions to capture transactions in multiple currencies, account balances, budgets, forecasts, supplier activity, customer activity, and other business statistics. It is a multi-everything design (country, company, currency, tax, language), handling even the most complex corporate structures.
In short, the flexibility of the Coda financial model, combined with the real-time nature of the single-ledger system provides the deepest and most agile reporting system available on the market today.
Interoperability – accounting as a web service
UNIT4 embraces the notion that companies need to drive competitive differentiation through systems. Companies can no longer compromise – they need great operational applications and great financial systems. Therefore, organisations must have the ability to connect together their best-of-class applications, of all types, in a federated approach to running the business.
This type of integration has been a hallmark of Coda Financials from its very beginnings. The Link™ integration architecture is second to none, using modern techniques such as web services and XML to provide secure, real-time integration to your operational systems. In a best-of-class application ecosystem, the Link™ architecture exposes all business logic and financial validation to other applications, providing accounting functionality as an internal service or in an internal cloud as needed. Companies can build their own specialised applications and use Coda Financials as an accounting component or as a financial hub. This allows companies to concentrate on adding value to their specialised systems, while simultaneously benefiting from a great financial software package. To learn more about Coda Financials’ integration capabilities, download our Integration white paper.
A framework for controls
In today’s compliance-heavy environment, finance managers need visibility of financial controls that span many systems, people, and departments. This becomes increasingly unwieldy when there are manual tasks lying outside primary financial applications – in spreadsheets, email or operational feeder systems.
Our solution to this real-world problem was to build a control management framework, which ties other systems, manual processes, and authorisations into one visible and auditable process flow. Coda Link’s Control Manager framework simply “lays over” all the disparate processes, providing visibility of the control activities buried inside the business. It is particularly effective for period closes, where it can dramatically reduce the number of days and man-hours required to complete this major, recurring task.
Overall, the control framework makes processes more visible, repeatable, and auditable. The end result is lower audit fees, continual compliance and complete control.
