Potawatomi Nation Powers Up With Sage PFW
Potawatomis have been an influential Indian tribe for centuries. Historically they controlled about 30 million acres of land in the Great Lakes area. Woodrow Wilson Crumbo, whose murals grace the walls of the Department of the Interior Building in Washington, D.C., is one of the best-known tribal members.
Today the Citizen Potawatomi Nation is an important economic and cultural presence in central Oklahoma. Its 15 enterprises include a bingo hall, bowling center, two smoke shops, grocery store, convenience store, golf course, museum with gift shop, radio station, Internet service provider, fleet leasing company, and food service. A multitude of Federal programs in the Potawatomi Nation’s homeland provide further employment opportunities.
Retiring the Old System
The nearly 100 financial entities that make up the Potawatomi Nation engage in countless transactions with one another every day. The daycare center may take its students to visit the bowling alley, or the youth program may charge gas and food at the convenience store. These interactions must be accounted for and reconciled-a very time-consuming endeavor. In 1996, the Nation decided that automation was a logical answer, and searched for an accounting application with strong inter-organizational capabilities to replace their antiquated fund accounting package.
An Enterprise-Wide Solution
Susan Blair, director of enterprise finance at the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, reviewed many software options, then helped make the decision to go with Sage PFW ERP. “We set up a fully integrated system based on Sage PFW that incorporates many different applications and modules,” she explains. “We started out just using Sage PFW for the enterprise side of the house. It worked so nicely that after two years we moved over all our Federal programs as well. Now financial records for the entire Nation are all on Sage PFW.”
Blair set up each of the various tribal enterprises as separate companies under Sage PFW. That way she can close out some at the end of each year, if necessary, or keep them running on an ongoing basis. Each Federal program is a company, too, with due-to and due-from accounts easily tracked like standard accounts payable and receivables.
“Sage PFW and its modules are very smooth and surprisingly easy-to-use. We now have a completelyintegrated system-exactly what we need for ourdiverse inter-company environment”
“We’re very pleased with Sage PFW,” says Blair. “The Accounts Receivable module alone has saved us a tremendous amount of work. It keeps all our accounts straight, and allows us to spot pastdue balances quickly so we can take speedy action.”
A sophisticated mix of modules comprises the Potawatomi Nation’s Sage PFW system. Two of the tribe’s locations use Fusion 2000, a point-of-sale application from MIK & Associates that interfaces directly to Sage PFW. MICR and Laser Signature from ISS cuts checks automatically within Sage PFW. Cyber Imports, another MIK module, pulls information on the Nation’s self-insurance transactions to Sage PFW, where it is delivered straight into the Bank Book module-all without records having to be re-keyed.
Remarkable efficiencies have come from the integrated Abra Payroll application. Abra Payroll provides many-tiered entry processing and secure delivery of sensitive payroll information. When the Nation opened a grocery story in May and hired 250 new employees, the tribe’s payroll nearly doubled. Yet Abra Payroll, using data collected from the grocery, bingo hall, and bowling center, along with the Unitime timeclock module and Sage PFW, handled the increase without adding a single hour to the payroll manager’s workload. According to Blair, Abra Payroll, which is another Sage product, and Unitime timeclock from Unitime Systems, Inc., have transformed a week-long payroll task into a mere two days.
Blair gives a lot of the credit for the new system to her reseller, whom she calls “the best consultant in the world.” “Sage PFW and its modules are very smooth and surprisingly easyto-use,” Blair notes. “We now have a completely integrated system-exactly what we need for our diverse inter-company environment.”
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