Asset Management - Britannia offers M&A service
Britannia Software, the South London-based asset management software house, has set up a mergers and acquisition consultancy team to help users combine different accounting procedures and asset registers following a merger.
The five-strong M&A team joins Britannia’s existing consultancy and will be available at the standard daily rate of #600. It was set up in response to a surge in demand from customers seeking guidance on how to combine the asset registers of merged businesses.
Fixed asset management software, which includes project management controls to track and monitor cost items such as PCs, is particularly important when integrating corporate assets after a merger.
George Snelgrove, managing director of Britannia Software, said the main accounting headaches which face newly merged companies were when they had diverging year-ends and different rules for calculating depreciation of assets, particularly in the European context. ‘Many companies have to report in separate currencies or run two separate asset registers within the same balance sheet,’ said Snelgrove.
He advised companies to remember the golden rule of software implementation when pulling together various systems – work out the business rules before software implementation. The main purpose of the consultancy, he added, was to guide customers through the unpredictable terrain of a newly merged or acquired company. ‘It’s all very well buying a software package but the manual doesn’t tell you about the complications.’