Case Studies
The following brief case studies describe typical projects undertaken by Copernicus. The main challenges and how they were overcome using Solar3 are highlighted
UK
In the UK we have been supplying software for pricing, administration and accounting for nearly 30 years.
| Challenge | Solar3 |
|---|
| Variable rate | Solar has dozens of different variable rate calculation options including fixed factors, generated cash flows, open-ended contracts (where the customer pays a fixed amount until all variable interest and principal are repaid) and many more |
| Tax | Tax is still an important component of the UK asset finance industry. Copernicus developed the first PC based software to accommodate Corporation Tax in 1982. More recently this has become a web based calculation engine and there is now a version for the iPhone. Over the years we have undertaken numerous tax variation exercises for our clients |
| VAT | VAT was 17.5% from 1991 until 2008 when it switched to 15% for 13 months. It went back to 17.5% in 2010 but then increased to 20% on 4th Jan 2011. Since Solar calculates VAT (and Sales Tax in the USA) immediately prior to invoicing then changes to the VAT rate may be made by users and applied immediately at no extra cost |
China
Our Solar software has been live for over 5 years at a Chinese vendor finance company.
| Challenge | Solar3 |
|---|
| Chinese language | Solar uses Unicode throughout which makes the entry, storage and display of Chinese characters straightforward |
| Bank of China base rate changes | Solar recalculates the future payments in response to base rate changes and automatically updates the General Ledger for the changed GLR and Deferred income |
USA
Our Solar software has been in use for over 3 years in the USA.
| Challenge | Solar3 |
|---|
| Sales Tax | Solar imports Tax Authority data and calculate the State, County, Local and Other sales tax values immediately prior to billing to ensure the latest rate is used. The same approach is taken for all countries enabling VAT and sales tax rates to be amended by the user at any time |
| Interface to Salesforce | Saleforce and other CRM data is automatically uploaded and imported into Solar. This is greatly simplified by the the web native nature of Solar |
| Stub rentals and fixed billing dates | Historically a "stub rental" has been charged to allow for the use of fixed billing dates each month (which themselves are a product of the need to import sales tax data on fixed dates rather than continuously). The stub rental is calculated to cover the period from the contract start to the next billing date in the month |