Finance & Accounting

Every corporation in every industry needs financial planning and reporting, with supporting operational systems to manage accounts receivable, accounts payable, fixed assets and payroll. D. Lawton Associates has many years of experience in financial applications and financial controls. We have a CPA on staff to ensure all our work meets appropriate accounting practices. With our expertise, we will help you get value out of (and data into) your existing financial systems. We can also upgrade some or all of those systems. It is challenging and exacting work. We enjoy getting things right down to the last penny while making it easier and more informative for accounting and end users in the process.

Our expertise in financial reporting includes web-based budgeting applications for the front-end, customized billing applications, data interfaces and data warehouses. We have worked with companies of all sizes, and with small to large financial packages such as:

  • Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains)
  • Lawson
  • SAP
  • PeopleSoft
  • Sage
  • AdaptAccounts (includes customizable source code)
  • Paragon
  • Quickbooks

Call us to schedule an initial appointment – free of charge – to discuss your requirements and start getting more from your financial packages.

Read More below about General Ledger/Enterprise Accounting, Source Systems and Budgeting.

General Ledger/Enterprise Accounting

The General Ledger application is the primary repository of an organization’s financial data. DLA has experience in implementing or supporting general ledgers and enterprise accounting systems, including Lawson, Banner, Solomon, SAP and AdaptAccounts. We have extensive experience in creating custom reports from your financial data, including presentation-ready financial statements. Also, we can use database tools to examine your data and assist in recovering from system problems.

Source Systems

In addition to performing specific business functions, any program which generates General Ledger transactions is effectively a sub-ledger. As such, it needs to have accounting integrity, including appropriate security, period cutoff, and an audit trail supporting all accounting entries. DLA has experience in implementing and supporting custom, semi-custom, and packaged accounting applications, including Billing, Accounts Receivable, Inventory, Accounts Payable, and Payroll. We have interfaced all of these source systems as feeds to packaged General Ledger Systems, including Lawson, SAP, Solomon, and AdaptAccounts. Billing, in particular, is often a candidate for a custom development; we have developed custom billing applications for clients in industries as diverse as software (Dun & Bradstreet), catalog sales (SunSetter Products L.P.), securities (ACS Unclaimed Property Clearinghouse), medical testing (State Laboratory Institute) and technology licensing (MIT Technology Licensing Office).

Budgeting

For most organizations, detailed budgeting by cost center and profit center is a key part of financial planning and control. We have built distributed web-based and centralized budgeting systems for MIT, Harvard University, and Boston Medical Center. Features in one or more of these budgeting systems include: an audit trail of budget transactions, position control, automatic calculation of secondary costs, budget versions, global budgeting adjustments, and feeds to General Ledger.