Pay less in the bounds of decency. In the previous episodes: Old Bones’ death
Our merchant, Robin, son of Edgar, he had the
nous.
Oh, yes, he had the real nous!
Here’s what he came up with: having figured out how to turn Old Bones away, he started helping his trusted fellow merchants to ease their burden of Old Bones’ levies with a similar method. And not without taking care of himself – i.e., for a wee share of profits.
Many a man tried to wrap up a deal like that afore, since it does
seem good, when you think of it.
According to the testimony if the witch
Helga, who was taken into custody by junior secret service inquisitors, she googled the text
below somewhere deep down on Internet and has not in the very least touched it with her gnarled
fingers, wherein she set her hand.
To do this, you set up
various legal entities for different business activities (auxiliary legal entities, ALEs).
These
ALEs are included into the payment chain in between the customer’s companies.
So, the customer has a real supplier.
An ALE is introduced
(on paper only) in between the real supplier and a customer’s sales company. In reality, the
customer controls prices that the ALE ‘pays’ to the real supplier and ‘sells for’ to the sales
company. To do this, the customer accountant sends to the account manager (a.k.a. ALE
accountant) delivery and shipping documents, as well as an order to transfer money further along
the chain.
If the business turnover is significant, the number of such ALEs may run into hundreds, and the service provider’s need for its own accountants – at least into tens.
ALEs may form rather bizarre configurations of mutual relationship – based on either declared activity profiles, or goods and money flows that are transferred through them.
For each ALE (again, if you do it the proper way), you’d need a separate 1C database. Consequently, considering the number of installations and the need of regularly update, in reality only 100%standard 1C configurations can be used.
The problem is that the system organized like that has rather low reliability and non-existing foolproofness:
nobody, except its accountant, can control accuracy of source documents, generated by customer’s employees, even in theory;
- as a consequence from the point above: services may be rendered on a product supply contract, and/or supplied goods may not comply with the ALE profile;
the customer’s accountant may send erroneous data in a delivery note, the ALE account manager (accountant) creates / loads it without checking. Introduction of any kind of control mechanisms on the 1C side is impossible due to the strict requirement of its configuration being standard.
in import/export schemes, Customs Cargo Declarations may go into the red: the standard 1C configuration lets such things happen.
Helga-the-Witch recounted all of the innumerable hurdles to Robin,
but he took the news all right: he remembered the road to those wizards from over the seas who a
while ago gave him a while ago gave him the box-that-can-count, and without hesitation he set out
on his journey to see them.
For half a year no one saw him in his shop.
However, upon his return, he showed them such a thing of beauty that Helga almost choked on her stew made of a young lad’s bones. Let alone other Stupidville citizens who all just stood and watched in awe.
Anyway, during this half year the wizards modified Robin’s wonder
box in such a way that now it could transfer both goods and money through as many shops as you like.
Merchant users can now enter into their private areas through the
Internet and key in (as well as import) their bogus deals into the wonder-box.
The box thinks it
all through in the blink of an eye and if some ham-handed user made an error, it narrows its lids:
plague on him.
So if the box does see something wrong, it won’t let those foul waybills or
invoices go through at all, and scolds those lame users.
So now Robin has no more need in keeping an army of his own accountants, just less than half of them. For there were no more screw-ups; the box sucks it all in, thinks it through, calculates and sends over hundreds of 1C databases tirelessly. Just like some kind of a robot: no screw-ups, no days off, no pay.
Thus the cost of the anti-rotting providing was cut by half.
Whereas
Robin’s profits, certainly, increased even more.