Oracle's Profit magazine recently interviewed Lyle Ekdahl, Oracle Group Vice President for JD Edwards, in an article titled "Innovation, commitment, and loyalty the secrets to JD Edwards’ success".  In the interview Lyle describes how the JDE product has grown since it became part of Oracle five years ago and Oracle's ongoing commitment to it.

A key message from Lyle is: "Our customers have seen consistent investment in product innovation over the past five years, and we are delighted to have earned their loyalty. As part of Oracle, we’ve had 15 discrete development releases for both JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World products. We’ve brought seven new products to market and announced integrations that benefit JD Edwards customers. That’s a lot of work and investment from Oracle. And our customers are proving their support of our strategy by upgrading to the newest releases of our products. And we get our share of new customers, which validates that we are providing viable industry solutions to the marketplace."

These are the types of reasons why Jireh continues to invest in supporting JDE, helping JDE customers upgrade to the latest releases, and seeking out new customers for the JDE solution.

We encourage you to read the full article.

Further to our previous more general blog posts, we have now been provided further details on getting JDE ready for the GST increase from 12.5% to 15% that will occur in New Zealand on 1 October.

Inland Revenue have confirmed our previous general comment that for most JDE customers the standard time of supply rules will apply.  Which, in its most simple form, means that transactions dated up to 30 September should have GST applied at 12.5%, whereas transactions dated on or after 1 October should have GST applied at 15%.  We can help you with the simple configuration required in JDE to make this happen.

There are two scenarios identifed by Inland Revenue which are potential exceptions to this rule that we think could be relevant to how JDE is configured:

1. credit notes issued after 30 September against invoices issued prior to 1 October should have GST applied at the original 12.5% rate - for JDE customers on more recent releases (8.12 onwards) there is an option to make this happen automatically (we can check for you if this option has been set correctly in your system) but those JDE customers on earlier releases (prior to 8.12) will need to work out the best way to handle this scenario (we can help with this);
2. annual contracts involving successive supplies - there are a number of options on how to handle the GST portion so please contact us for advice if this is a scenario you encounter in your business.

We note that the government is also passing a legislative amendment to the GST Act to legitimise the common practice of issuing invoices early in the month that cover goods or services provided in the previous month and are dated as at the end of the previous month.  Technically (without the legislative amendment) such invoices prepared in early October but dated late September should have GST applied at the new 15% rate as under the time of supply rules they are 'issued' in October even though they are dated in September - but the legislative amendment will allow GST to be applied at 12.5% providing they are issued on or before 11 October.

Oracle have also advised us to look out for the following scenarios (again, we can help you plan for these scenarios if they are relevant to your business):

• Adjustments in (or after) October relating to pre October 12.5% GST transactions;
• Prepaid and orders booked prior to October invoiced post 30 September;
• Credit notes processed post 30 September relating to pre October 12.5% GST transactions (see above);
• Settlement Discounts including GST taken up post 30 September relating to pre October 12.5% GST transactions;
• GST on Merchant fees recognised post 30 September relating to pre October 12.5% GST transactions.

If you would like help with planning for, or making, this change please contact Gavin Knight - our Director of Business Consulting - by phone (021 428 059) or by email.

Please note that the above is not intended to be legal or tax advice - please consult your legal or tax advisor for such advice on how the GST increase will affect your business.

Jireh sent a team to the InSync Oracle applications and technology conference in Melbourne earlier this week. Here are our initial reflections on what we saw - most of this is not new, but it is great to see it being so clearly reinforced:

• in the Oracle applications keynote a significant portion of the content focussed on JDE - indicating that Oracle continues to be committed to JDE (they have an increasingly broad range of applications in their portfolio, not just JDE);
• Oracle is continuing to invest in JD Edwards EnterpriseOne - Gary Grieshaber (Senior Director, Product Strategy for JDE globally) highlighted that new releases are in development, following 15 EnterpriseOne releases already since Oracle acquired JDE with the PeopleSoft purchase in 2005;
• Oracle is continuing to invest in JD Edwards World - Gary also pointed out they have made 2 World releases since acquiring the product (the first World releases since 1997!) and a further release is currently in development;
• JDE EnterpriseOne and JDE World continue to be a close fit with the size and types of organisations typically found in New Zealand (and Australia);
• there is ongoing strong marketplace interest in JDE in this part of the world - there were approximately 750 people at the conference, including a doubling of JDE attendees since last year;
• IBM and Oracle made a joint announcement of a new i Platform offering that directly competes with the Intel market on pricing;
• apart from being an interesting announcement in it's own right the new IBM i Platform offering is an indication from Oracle that they continue to be committed to the JDE EnterpriseOne multi-platform strategy;
• there was a strong partner presence at the conference - services partners like Jireh and partners with products that integrate with the Oracle applications;
• Oracle Fusion is a very interesting story and should be considered by all JDE customers - whether that be the Middleware part of the Oracle Fusion story and/or Fusion Applications.

If you would like to discuss this further please contact:

• Mark Elley, Director of Technology Consulting, +64 (27) 672 5126, mark_elley@jireh.net.nz;
• Gavin Knight, Director of Business Consulting, +64 (21) 428 059, gavin_knight@jireh.net.nz;
• Kaz Handa, Director of Business Development, +64 (27) 672 5125, kaz_handa@jireh.net.nz.