LIFO Software and Consulting Services

LIFO-PRO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

1. Your clients appear to be the who’s who of the Fortune 500. Do you provide services or software to smaller companies and are these services affordable?

We serve numerous companies with less than $10 million in inventory value. Our extensive experience enables us to be as efficient as possible and charge the lowest possible fees.

2. We can outsource our LIFO calculations to other service providers. Is your firm the only company that provides a LIFO software licensing option?

There are two vendors that sell auto dealer LIFO calculation software. Other LIFO service providers have attempted to develop non-auto dealer LIFO calculation software in the past but they were not successful. Some companies may want to outsource their LIFO calculations but most large corporations want to use software to make their LIFO calculations in-house.

3. A CPA firm told us that they have software that makes non-auto dealer LIFO calculations. Your company's web site says that your LIFO-PRO program is the only such software.

There are a number of LIFO calculation Excel templates in use but it is a real stretch to call this software because:

  • PPI and CPI index lookups are not automated and 10% method calculations are manual; these cannot be automated in a spreadsheet
  • Updating of LIFO layer histories is not automated and a complete set of reports are not automatically generated
  • Report printing is not automated

4. We are fed up with using spreadsheets for LIFO calculations but we cannot decided whether outsourcing our LIFO calculations to your firm or using the LIFO-PRO software is better for us.

The more frequently you make LIFO calculations, the more likely you would want to use the software. For example, if you make midyear calculations quarterly for financial reporting or for tax provision or quarterly payments estimates, you may be a good candidate to use the LIFO-PRO software. Corporations that have separate LIFO pools for a number of different legal entities are more likely to want to use the software.

5. Our CPA firm outsources our auto dealer LIFO calculations to an auto dealer LIFO specialist. Since this auto dealer LIFO service provider also provides LIFO outsourcing services for non-auto dealer LIFO, it seems like it would make life simpler for us to use the same LIFO service provider. Since you don't provide auto dealer LIFO services, why should we go to the effort of establishing a separate relationship with you?

We offer more flexibility because if you decide that licensing the LIFO software is preferable to outsourcing the LIFO calculations, we provide this option. We provide the advantage of greater non-auto dealer LIFO experience. Our extensive experience and use of our LIFO-PRO software enables us to operate very efficiently which translates into the lowest possible cost for our clients. Our CPA firm clients tell us our quality of service, speed of service delivery and cost is superior to all alternatives and our software generates a complete set of reports.

6. What services do you provide to CPA firms?

The most common service we provide to CPA firms is what we call our Service Bureau service for which we are provided a LIFO layer history in the first year and an Excel file, listing the year and inventory balances by PPI or CPI category in the first year and succeeding years.

 

Other services we provide CPA firms include:

  • Preparation of forms 970 and 3115
  • Pro forma IPIC method LIFO calculations and other LIFO pre-adoption analysis
  • LIFO best practices review
  • Sarbanes-Oxley LIFO compliance auditing
  • Assignment of proper PPI in CPI codes to inventory items
  • We have several CPA firm clients who have purchased a license to use our software and they use it to make LIFO calculations for a number of their clients

 

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