There are two modules in Enterprise which provide intercompany functionality:
These modules offer the following possibilities:
Company1 creates a shipment and links this up to a trip. Next it subcontracts the trip to Company2 with a special function.
The shipment is made in Company2 and on this shipment Company1 is set as the customer.
Company1 bills the shipment to the original customer, Company2 bills Company1.
This method can be used by two companies which both want to use 1 version of Enterprise, both also want to keep their own bookings and planning.
You can access this function directly from a shipment. In this case only 1 shipment can be subcontracted. A booking with 1 shipment is then created in the other company.
When multiple shipments at once are subcontracted, a trip must be created which contains all these shipments. Then you can internally subcontract the entire trip. In the other company a transport booking with multiple shipments is created.
In short:
You can subcontract shipments from the order screen.
This is done by right-clicking on the shipment. Select Subcontract internally.
Which fields are sent to the other company can be set in the Company Relations screen.
This methode of intercompany uses the module Intercompany.invoice-exchange and is meant to automatically exchange purchase invoices from Company1 to Company2.
This is done in many Danish companies, where the work and the planning happen in the Danish company, while the resources are listed in the German company.
The trip costs contain the German creditor, at the end of the month all trip costs are then collected on 1 purchase invoice.
Through Intercompany booking this purchase invoice is transferred to the German company as a sales invoice. In both companies these invoices are then processed in the normal way.
Here a department of Company1 is shared, so that this department is also visible in Company2. The orders which are made in this department are automatically placed in Company1 and are also invoiced there. The differences is that they can also be planned on a trip in Company2.
This way orders from Company1 are carried out by Company2 without internal subcontracting. In Company2 a trip invoiceline can automatically be created, so Company 1 can bill Company2 for the transportcosts at a set tariff. In this way both companies have both revenue and costs.
The benefit of this method is that the bookings in Company2 keep the original customors instead of having Company1 as the customer, which happens when using Internal subcontracting.
With this method you can plan part of a shipment (planlegs) in another company. This is done by sharing a plangroup to Company2. When parts of a booking are placed in the shared plangroup after crossdocking or splitting a shipment, these planlegs are made visible in the planning in Company2. There they can be planned in the usual way. In Company2 the details of the order can't be seen.
The difference with Sharing a department is that with this method only parts of a booking are shared. When you share a department, the whole order is shared.
How much information should be shared between companies, depends upon what the customer wants.
In some cases you'll want to share nearly nothing and only exchange shipments using internal subcontracting. This means more work for the customer, because addresses from one company have to match addresses in the other company. The same is true for products, units, etc. By sharing these tables the internal subcontracting is simplified.
Not all tables can be shared, and from some tables not everything is shared. For instance relations / addresses: The addresses are shared, but the financial data is not.
When a relation is a debtor in Company1, this isn't automatically true for Company2.
Debtornumber, tariff group, other rulesets, non of these are shared and have to be set up in each company.
See also the article about sharing relations:
The settings for various intercompany setups can be found in different places.