Category: Blogs

Business challenge

Fresenius Southern Africa’s, Vernon Beck (external advisor to SSA CFO, Jason Fraser) says that the company faced significant challenges in creating bi-annual and annual financial statements per requisite IFRS. Fresenius SSA operates the SAP ERM but the complexity of exporting the necessary financial information from the system into Caseware made financial reporting in line with the IFRS framework challenging.

“Caseware was the most effective and efficient financial reporting software application that was able to solve this perennial issue for us efficiently,” Mr Beck says. “We also needed to be absolutely confident that we are utilising the latest Financial Reporting Standards, issued by the IFRS which Caseware addresses by consistently updating its Financial Reporting Standard Templates with the latest standards.”

Business benefits: Streamlining the development of accurate, compliant, and timely financial statements

Fresenius Medical Care South Africa implemented the Caseware IFRS Interim, Annual and Consolidation Financial Reporting suite in January 2023.

Fresenius runs on SAP, and the process of converting the data from the SAP system into a format that is compatible to importing into Caseware to produce fully IFRS compliant financials is a complex one, Mr Beck explains. “This is where the immense technical expertise of the Caseware technical and support team proved invaluable”.
“All our requests to Caseware – no matter how large, time constrained, or complex – have been attended to and delivered,” he says.

He says that already the process of preparing financial statements for multiple companies across sub-Saharan Africa has been significantly streamlined and is now internally managed as opposed to being reliant on external consultants for financial reporting purposes. The process is far more effective, and the results are more accurate, relevant, reliable, and timeous. The automated balancing routines immediately indicate and identify anomalies and incorrectly mapped accounts which further enhances the efficiency of the account mapping and financial reporting.
For Mr Beck, the cloud functionality offers several benefits, notably the ability of users to access the system from multiple points and the reliable backups. It’s also useful that we can access the system from the office or remotely and even designated colleagues at the Fresenius head office in Germany, can access the system if required.

“Caseware’s IFRS solution is the optimal solution we found to address the SAP’s accounting data structure and the dynamic IFRS requirements but most impressive and important is the quality of the backup from the entire Caseware support team – technical and other. “It is simply outstanding”, he says.

Business challenge

Fresenius Southern Africa’s, Vernon Beck (external advisor to SSA CFO, Jason Fraser) says that the company faced significant challenges in creating bi-annual and annual financial statements per requisite IFRS. Fresenius SSA operates the SAP ERM but the complexity of exporting the necessary financial information from the system into Caseware made financial reporting in line with the IFRS framework challenging.

“Caseware was the most effective and efficient financial reporting software application that was able to solve this perennial issue for us efficiently,” Mr Beck says. “We also needed to be absolutely confident that we are utilising the latest Financial Reporting Standards, issued by the IFRS which Caseware addresses by consistently updating its Financial Reporting Standard Templates with the latest standards.”

Business benefits: Streamlining the development of accurate, compliant, and timely financial statements

Fresenius Medical Care South Africa implemented the Caseware IFRS Interim, Annual and Consolidation Financial Reporting suite in January 2023.

Fresenius runs on SAP, and the process of converting the data from the SAP system into a format that is compatible to importing into Caseware to produce fully IFRS compliant financials is a complex one, Mr Beck explains. “This is where the immense technical expertise of the Caseware technical and support team proved invaluable”.
“All our requests to Caseware – no matter how large, time constrained, or complex – have been attended to and delivered,” he says.

He says that already the process of preparing financial statements for multiple companies across sub-Saharan Africa has been significantly streamlined and is now internally managed as opposed to being reliant on external consultants for financial reporting purposes. The process is far more effective, and the results are more accurate, relevant, reliable, and timeous. The automated balancing routines immediately indicate and identify anomalies and incorrectly mapped accounts which further enhances the efficiency of the account mapping and financial reporting.
For Mr Beck, the cloud functionality offers several benefits, notably the ability of users to access the system from multiple points and the reliable backups. It’s also useful that we can access the system from the office or remotely and even designated colleagues at the Fresenius head office in Germany, can access the system if required.

“Caseware’s IFRS solution is the optimal solution we found to address the SAP’s accounting data structure and the dynamic IFRS requirements but most impressive and important is the quality of the backup from the entire Caseware support team – technical and other. “It is simply outstanding”, he says.

We are writing to highly recommend the services of Caseware Africa as the providers of Caseware IDEA.

We have been a customer of theirs for the past 12 months on a renewable license, and we use their product for data analysis and audit purposes.

The product has been extremely useful and has significantly improved the efficiency of our data analysis processes. We would highly recommend Caseware Africa to anyone in need of data analysis software, and we are confident that they will provide excellent service and support.

George Mutua
Partner

This letter serves to confirm that the Office of the Auditor-General Namibia used Caseware for engagement management, data analysis and time recording.

We purchased Caseware IDEA from Caseware Africa in 2013 and have successfully rolled out this data analytics tool internally. Caseware IDEA assists us with investigating fraud, financial analysis, security reviews, operations and system audits.

The licences are renewed on an annual basis. It is against this background that this Office recommends them as a reliable service provider.

Erica Dien
Director Administration

I am writing to highly recommend the services of Caseware Africa as the providers of Caseware IDEA. We have been a customer of theirs for the past 20 months on a renewable license, and we use their product for data analysis and audit purposes. The product has been extremely useful and has significantly improved the efficiency of our data analysis processes.

We would highly recommend Caseware Africa to anyone in need of data analysis software, and we are confident that they will provide excellent service and support.

Carmen Arce
Chartered Accountants (SA)

Provantage has enjoyed exponential growth – particularly in the last five years, and Mr. Burger says Caseware enables him to manage growing numbers of financial statements efficiently and in line with IFRS reporting standards. “With the growth we have experienced, incorporating normal day to day accounting transactions into our ERP system is more challenging than doing the financial statements on Caseware. 

Our entire finance team is comprised of 55 – 60 people across Africa, yet we are still able to get through the statements quite quickly. In terms of cost versus benefit, if we had to set up 50 sets of statements and bring in external consultants, it would take quite some time and cost us a fortune. With Caseware, we are able to be fast, efficient, and cost effective.” 

Thanks to Smart Sync, Provantage has the option to collaborate remotely. “With the current environment, we can just work from home, and if our department grows and has more people using the programme, it will certainly add even greater value,” he says. 

Mr. Burger notes that another area where Caseware adds value is that because the company’s auditors use it, processes are fast-tracked. “The majority of auditors use Caseware, so we can simply give them access to the server, and they start auditing off it,” he says. 

“It’s all about cost controls and efficiencies in business today, and Caseware supports that. If we were ever told we could only retain a handful of solutions, Caseware would be one of them,” Mr. Burger concludes.