Flows ERP
Tianlang Media runs advertising work as jobs: one client on the income side, several suppliers on the cost side, and the profit sitting in between. As the company opened more branches, the spreadsheets could no longer answer a simple question — did this job make money?
About Tianlang Media
Tianlang Media is one of the better-known advertising companies in Xinjiang. Its work covers brand planning, advertising production, and events, and besides the head office it has branches in Inner Mongolia, Xi'an, and Chengdu.
Where they use Flows ERP
Money on a single job
The problem. A job involves client payments, supplier payments, and staff costs. In spreadsheets these sat apart, with nothing linking them, so working out whether a job made money took a day or two of checking, and the answer was never certain.
With Flows ERP. Each job's sales contract and purchase contracts carry the same job reference, entered in a custom field. Filter on it, and the income, the costs, and the difference are on one screen.
Contracts
The problem. Contracts, receivables, and payables lived in files on different computers. Numbers were missed, updates were late, and two people often had different versions.
With Flows ERP. The contract is the main record. Receivables, payables, and invoices hang off it, so finance can see where a contract stands, what has been collected, and what is due next.
Paying suppliers
The problem. Jobs involve many suppliers, and payments were arranged over chat. Occasionally a supplier was paid twice, or the wrong amount, and finding the mistake took longer than making it.
With Flows ERP. Each purchase contract has a payment plan, and every payment is written off against it. The write-off center shows what is already settled, and permissions decide who can pay at all.
Everyday costs and cash
The problem. Rent, travel, and the other running costs were recorded separately from the job money, so the company's real cash position was never in one place.
With Flows ERP. Daily expenses are recorded with their category, transfers between accounts record both sides, and the balance of every account is always up to date.
What they told us
Q: What changed in how you account for a job?
A: Speed and accuracy, both. A job's income and costs used to take one or two days to pull together; now it takes a few minutes, because the numbers are already attached to the contracts. And because people enter them once, in one place, there is much less to correct afterwards.
Q: Was there a small thing that stood out?
A: Putting the job reference on both the client contract and the supplier contracts. It sounds minor, but that one field is what lets us see a job's real profit without anyone rebuilding it in a spreadsheet.
Q: How is it different from other tools you looked at?
A: Three things. It fits the way we work, where everything hangs off a contract. We can add our own fields, so it matches our jobs instead of the other way round. And it is simple enough that people who are not in finance can use it. The support team also answers quickly when we have a question.
“Flows ERP made the money on each job clear, put our receivables and payables in order, and saved our finance team days of checking every month.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Flows link a job's client income to its supplier costs?
The client side is a sales contract and the supplier side is a purchase contract, and both carry the same job reference in a custom field. Finance can filter on it and see what a job brought in and what it cost.
How does Flows prevent paying a supplier twice?
Every payment is written off against its purchase contract and its plan, so the write-off center shows what is already settled before a second payment is made. Every change is logged with the user and the time.
