Financial accounting for the upstream and mid-stream sectors of the petroleum industry is reserved for specialists. The question is not whether you can find an accounting system that will work, but rather was the system purpose-built to handle the types of business transactions, investment structure, regulatory environments, and joint-venture arrangements that characterize the industry. The globalization trends have introduced system selection criteria related to coexisting functional and local currencies, regional sales, value added, and even income taxes, and multiple languages in some jurisdictions. Vertex is quite familiar with this challenging scenario, since it has invested in the order of 150 man/years of research and development directed toward perfecting the features that are important to the petroleum industry. The system you choose will be either a big help, or an expensive experiment that will inflate your information costs for years.
Imagine a financial system designed specifically for the industry that is so versatile that it is used by all oil and gas industry disciplines, often with virtually no accounting training! Business transactions are consummated every day, resulting in financial and joint-interest accounting implications that must be classified and recorded as a key ingredient of the internal control scheme of any business.
The Vertex system was designed to fit the oil and gas organization naturally, providing a seamless, accessible repository of information for accountants, project managers, drilling engineers, plant operators, marketers, and the list goes on.
Some of the features that impress customers the most are:
There is virtually no downtime for users in any department, even during the accounting month end process.
Have you ever tried to estimate the cost of users being unable to use the system for a couple of days each month?
Notice of assignment and global interest updates performed by system processes in minutes.
What is it worth to your reputation to keep contracts, rights, property , inventory, and other asset ownership records up-to-date, effortlessly?
Retro-active adjustment of partner shares on any project, for any period, processes in minutes, including the accounting entries and joint-interest billing adjustments.
How often have you been caught by the timing of an unexpected change in participation, after closing several month ends?
Every month and quarter end has the same multi-close versatility that you expect at year end.
A very helpful feature when you want to distribute joint-interest billings, but are waiting for accounting adjustments before the final close.
Global player?
Vertex is configurable to handle regional sales, vat, and other local taxes, at the transaction level, and prepare the remittance to local authorities.
Need taxes paid in the local currency?
The system maintains any number of currencies in parallel with the functional currency; local transactions are handled in the local currency, and official financial reporting is delivered in the functional currency. (Fully auditable in all currencies)
As you can tell, we have been at this for a long time, and the system now contains the experience and knowledge of many business process specialists and some astute application developers. At this stage in our history, we can safely say that the system contains the features and configuration capability required of very large producers. Smaller organizations can grow into the big-company features, but initial implementation is simpler, using a standard, off-the-shelf version of the products.
Contact us for details on specific features of interest; we’ll be pleased to learn something of your requirements, and we will respond promptly with how our customers address the issues.
Vertex performs the accounting and treasury functions for every aspect of the upstream and mid-stream business…by design.