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August 2009 |
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Excalibur Newsletter - August 2009
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Welcome to the August 2009 edition of the Excalibur Monthly.
In this issue:
Click here to download the issue as a PDF.
The Excalibur team at P2 Energy Solutions has been receiving a lot of requests lately from customers asking us to help them clean up data, train their employees and generally help them utilize Excalibur more efficiently. We are using this issue of the Excalibur Monthly to let you know about some of the most common problems we are hearing from your peers. We have also decided to offer service packages to address each of the top 7 data problems.
 | Clean Up Duplicate Names and Addresses |
The Problem: As oil and gas companies add name and address records through property acquisitions, new vendors, new owners, etc., the potential for duplicate records increases greatly. In addition, companies usually don’t have a stringent name and address entry procedure, so duplicate entries can be created even when valid name and address records already exist in the system.
Duplicate records reduce staff efficiency and increase the probability of errors from an incorrect vendor or owner being paid. This is a common issue faced by most every oil and gas company with ongoing operations.
The Solution: P2 Energy Solutions has developed a process that will identify duplicate name and address records. It will then merge the duplicate records across the entire database. This service uses an already-developed program that only needs to be installed and configured on the client’s server. No program development is required at your company.
Your involvement: The only action required by your company is to review the output from our program to determine which duplicates are to be merged and which ones will be the surviving records. After running a test of the process, you will need to review the results and provide approval to run the merge process in the live area.
 | Purge Unused Companies |
The Problem: Oil and gas operators often change their strategies and: sell off all properties from a company; merge one company into another company; or convert certain assets to other structures like master limited partnerships. These activities can leave obsolete company data in your accounting and land system. That drags on staff efficiency and can reduce the accuracy of reporting.
The Solution: P2 Energy Solutions has developed company purge utilities that can remove this unwanted data from your database. We can remove the company(s) from the entire database or just specific modules.
 | Eliminate Sub-Ledger Entries |
The Problem: Some companies have revenue sub-ledgers filled with hundreds of lines of details on owners whose pay balance nets to zero due to reversals and rebooks. These transactions can create thousands of lines of data in subledgers that have no financial or operational impact.
The Solution: P2 Energy Solutions financial support reps are industry experienced accountants, many who are licensed as CPAs, who can assist you with this tedious task. They can analyze and cleanup the targeted data and remove it from your suspense ledgers to make your sub-ledgers more meaningful and cleaner for you and your auditors.
 | Regularly Reconciling Sub-Ledgers |
The Problem: Some companies don’t have the time to reconcile sub-ledgers and the general ledger on a monthly basis.
The Solution: P2 Energy Solutions financial support reps are oil and gas accountants who can take this tedious task off the list of your staff. If your staff hasn’t had the time or has been unable to reconcile your Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Revenue Accounts Receivable, Cost Center or property sub-ledgers with your General Ledger, now is the time to let us assist you with your account reconciliations.
 | Land data clean-up for mapping |
The Problem: Many oil and gas companies now see the benefits in integrating their land administration systems with GIS or mapping systems (see the June/July Excalibur Monthly for more about this). However, their land data may not be in the right shape to properly work with a GIS solution. They may not have entered their land data in the right way to display leases and other pertinent business information on the map, for example.
The Solution: Get land data in shape for GIS integration. Also, create new data entry best practices to ensure all future land data entry will work with GIS integration. The P2 Energy Solutions consulting staff has deep experience in both land administration and GIS. Our team developed standards and processes to clean up customer data so that it can best integrate with GIS and other mapping systems.
 | Eliminating double data entry |
The Problem: Most oil and gas companies use other applications and spreadsheets beyond their core Excalibur system to manage various data flows and processes. When the data from these other systems is rekeyed into or out of Excalibur, it can lead to errors and inefficiencies in the work process.
The Solution: P2 Energy Solutions has developed the Excalibur Data Interchange solution to support system integration between a wide range of oil and gas software solutions. We have standard interfaces for 3rd party products including JibLink, Oildex, IHS Field Direct, Merrick, Production Access and Aries. We also have extensive experience building custom interfaces between other 3rd party or custom-built applications.
 | Training |
The Problem: Not so much a data problem, but rather a problem of who knows how to handle the data. As employees come and go from oil and gas companies, experience levels with software become out of sync. Excalibur is in a constant state of development, with significant new releases and technology updates every 12 to 18 months. At the same time, Excalibur users may not have attended recent training sessions, or received any training at all to help them maximize their use of the system. We also find that over the years, many Excalibur users have moved to new roles in their organizations and have not been formally trained on the new modules, reports and processes they need to use on a daily basis.
When your accounting and land personnel are not optimally trained, it leads to inefficiencies, slower workflows and higher overall support costs.
The Solution: P2 Energy Solutions Professional Services for Excalibur can provide standard classroom training or customized tutorial training for new and existing users. Some of the educational topics that may be of interest to current clients include:
Training for new employees or new employee responsibilities:
- Base Financial Modules: GL, AFE, AP, JIB, AR, Revenue
- Asset Management
- MMS Reporting
- Land-related Modules
- Gas Accounting Modules
- Production Modules
Report Writer Training:
- ADHOC Reporting – Standard reports are great, but ADHOC lets you define your own customized format. We’ll show you key concepts of ADHOC, how to query out key accounting, land or production-related information, and give you the ability to quickly view data setup, transactional data entry, and allocated data. We offer both basic and advanced courses for the ADHOC.
- Excalibur Report Studio (ERS) – Are you interested in seeing your information via charts and graphs instead of columns and rows, having drilldown capabilities and easy ways to deliver information to your C-Suite? ERS delivers these features and more.
- Excalibur Financial Subroutines Interface – Get the most out of these Excel-based reports that connect directly to the Excalibur database.
Advanced and optional features in the Excalibur system that may not be currently utilized:
- JIB Overhead
- Revenue Accruals
- RR Allocations
- ACH check issuance
- Transport system for emailing JIB or Gas documents, or check details
- EDI uploads
- State Tax Reporting
Training for Operational Module Integration:
P2 Energy Solutions can provide a fundamental understanding of how data flows between Gas Control, Energy Production Accounting, Production Regulatory Reporting, Revenue, Land, Accruals, Responsibility Reporting and Property Analysis
We know these are common problems among oil and gas companies. That’s why P2 Energy Solutions has come up with packaged service offerings for each one of these problems through our Excalibur Consulting Services group. Find out how to get started today by contacting us here.
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