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Infor LX Tips, Infor LN Tips, BPCS Tips, Baan Tips, Infor M3 Tips & Infor ERP News

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Infor ERP Tips & News from the Experts

Infor LX | Infor LN | BPCS | Baan | Infor M3

BPCS/LX Tip of the Day: Inventory Transactions

Anthony Etzel 0 586 Article rating: No rating

Define Inventory transactions for issuing components to the shop and receiving finished items. See the Inventory help text for examples of transactions.

  • Transaction type I - Single Issue to Shop Order. Use this transaction type to issue one component at a time. Use this for high-value items that are marked as Must Single Issue on the Item Master file.
  • Transaction type M - Multiple Issue to Shop Order. Use this transaction type to issue all the components as listed in the Shop Order, in one transaction. Note that this transaction type does not issue Must Single Issue items.
  • Transaction type S - Receipt from shop. Use this transaction type to receive the finished item into stock and update the shop order accordingly. 

The Shop Order Lot/Location Allocation program is an alternative to using the above Inventory transactions. Use this when the item is finished, and you want to review exactly what was used to make it. You can review the components as allocated, make any changes, and finally accept the finished order.

Baan/LN Tip of the Day: Multi-Company Warehousing 10.4

Kathy Barthelt 0 435 Article rating: No rating

You can define internal trade relationships between enterprise units or individual warehouses of the same logistic company for the transfer of material, labor, or other costs between warehouses, and to generate invoices for these without using sales orders and purchase orders. For example, you can use this to transfer goods between warehouses in different countries.


You can define warehouse surcharges, which are added to the actual costs of the goods either when the goods are issued from a warehouse or when the goods are received.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Day: MRP/MPS Simulation in LX

Anthony Etzel 0 785 Article rating: No rating

The system allows you to manipulate and maintain a simulated MPS and MRP. You can copy the simulation from the existing first cut, or you can create a totally new schedule. You can also perform a simulation of the rough-cut capacity plan. This allows a quick visual inspection by inquiry or menu of needed work center

loads for the proposed MPS. After you choose a suitable MPS and rough-cut capacity, the system allows you to transfer the simulated MPS to the live Master Production Schedule.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Default Order Frequency

Kathy Barthelt 0 1943 Article rating: No rating

In Baan IV, requirements for an MPS item with the order method lot-for-lot result in daily planned MPS orders.

For example, if a plan period contains 10 working days and the net requirements for an item in that period is 2000 pieces, an MPS planning run generates one planned MPS order of 200 pieces for each working day in the plan period.

In Infor LN, requirements for a planned item with the order method lot-for-lot result in one planned order per plan period.

For example, if a plan period contains 10 working days and the net requirements for an item in that period is 2000 pieces, a master planning run will generate a single planned order of 2000 pieces for the first working day in that plan period. To influence the order quantity of the planned orders, enter appropriate values in the Maximum Order Quantity field and the Order Interval field in the Items – Ordering (tcibd2500m000) session or choose a fixed order quantity.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Day: Cost Accounting – LX

Anthony Etzel 0 868 Article rating: No rating

The challenge in cost accounting is tracking your manufacturing to the levels needed for useful management information. You need feedback for corrective action; but, you need to minimize the cost of collection. Some parts of your operation require specific job-cost tracking while the Just-in-Time areas require

costing in terms of cost per process hour or day. Apply overhead in different ways to different processes and products. Segregate costs into enough detail

to provide management with an accurate picture of the contents of your product. Material, material overhead, labor, fixed overhead, variable overhead, outside processing, outside processing overhead, and so forth all have to be considered.

 

LX meets your cost accounting needs with the following functionality:

▪ Four sets of costs: actual, standard, frozen standard, and simulated

▪ Nine user-defined elements per set

▪ Full and partial cost roll-up and simulation

▪ Cumulative in-process cost tracking

▪ Cost summaries by item

▪ Cost definition tied to work centers or material type

▪ Process hour costing

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

TECHNOLOGY: Facility Security Ranges

Previously, a user could complete the Cost Transfer (CST920) process for any range of facilities regardless of their security settings established in SYS600. This enhancement verifies the user security settings set up in SYS600 before processing cost transfers for a range of facilities in CST920. If the user has authority for a facility range, but there are facilities within that range that are not authorized, the program skips those facilities and completes the cost transfer process.

FINANCE: Expiration Date for Quotes and RMAs

A Cancel-by-Date has been added to the Quote Header and RMA Header panels. This optional field can limit how long a quote or authorization to return items for credit is valid.  

For quotes, this enhancement provides an optional end date for the quote. For RMAs, it provides an optional date by which the customer must return the items to receive the credit listed on the RMA.

The Cancel-By-Date prints on the Order Acknowledgement and RMA Acknowledgement to inform the customer of this important limitation to the quote or return authorization. 

An Order Entry user cannot copy the quote to create a new order if the Cancel By Date has caused the quote to expire.

OPERATIONS: Default Split Salesperson to Customer Orders

Sales commissions are based on combinations of the Primary, Split, and Line-Level salesperson and the commission codes defined for the customer and item. You can now define the Split Salesperson in the same master files as the Primary Salesperson. While the Primary Salesperson is mandatory, the Split Salesperson is optional. It defaults during Order Create using the identical hierarchy as Primary Salesperson. Using Split Salesperson provides more flexibility in the calculation of sales commissions. The ability to define a default Split Salesperson improves the accuracy of sales commission qualification and calculation and reduces maintenance and adjustments necessitated by corrections.

Previously, a user could complete the Cost Transfer (CST920) process for any range of facilities regardless of their security settings established in SYS600. This enhancement verifies the user security settings set up in SYS600 before processing cost transfers for a range of facilities in CST920. If the user has authority for a facility range, but there are facilities within that range that are not authorized, the program skips those facilities and completes the cost transfer process.

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Tips: LN | Baan

Crossroads RMC

Dashboards vs. Reports – What do they offer and which do I need?

Companies are collecting oceans of data, and struggle with transforming it into usable information. Most businesses focus on two methods of sharing data - the report and the dashboard. While these two terms mean many things to many people, it is important to understand what these terms mean and how the report and dashboard have similar features but they are not the same thing.  

What is a Report?

A report is meant to be used to gather detailed intelligence on the operations within an organization, thus a report can be either very broadly covering a wide scope of related information, or narrowly focusing on details of a single item, purpose, or event. All of this information, while presented in a report, is meant to be a snapshot in time.

Quite often, a report is built within the ERP system itself and often is constrained by the graphical and user limitations within the ERP. More often than not, large amounts of data are exported to Excel where added features allow for better manipulation of the data to a format that is digestible by users. Regardless, the data is only valid for that moment and time.

What is a Dashboard?

A dashboard is a graphical interface that provides at-a-glance views revolving around answering a central question. For example, an executive may ask you for up-to-the-minute details on "how the business is doing?". The answer to that question is as complex as the organizational structure of the company, but it is probably very simply measured with approximately 10 metrics. Those 10 metrics can likely be analyzed in chart form, and can and should be combined into one chart when the numbers are relatable or are on a similar scale. All these things should be considered when building a dashboard.

Dashboards, similar to the one in your vehicle, display critical data. Imagine driving down the road and having to push a bunch of buttons to find out how much fuel you have left, or having to pull over and pop the hood to check the oil pressure. It would be dangerous and a waste of your precious time. Your car's control panel or dashboard displays the most crucial information in an easy-to-use, graphical way.

How do Dashboards and Reports differ?

First, a report contains much more detailed information. Where a dashboard might provide a CEO with information on how the entire company’s sales are progressing, a corresponding report will give the CFO or VP of Sales the ability to see how each sales region or even salesperson is performing and make leadership decisions. Just like responsibility, data will get more granular as the organizational hierarchy goes down. The C-Suite might be interested in the detailed data, but for seeing a snapshot of high-level information, the dashboard is the desired mode.

Second, a report is much longer than a dashboard. Not only in the amount of detail but also visually. Tables and charts that live within a report can take up many pages. Furthermore, a report will likely require the reader to scroll through many screens or click from page to page.

A dashboard should confine its display to a single screen with no need for scrolling or switching among multiple screens. Something powerful happens when we see things together, all within eye span. Likewise, something critical is compromised when we lose sight of some data by scrolling or switching to another screen to see other data.

When an individual dashboard has so much information on it that scrolling is required, the power of the dashboard is diminished because the information that lives there is intended to be viewed together. Each piece of information on the dashboard is meant to give the reader the ability to answer part of the central question of the dashboard. These charts combine to answer the question, so if the reader can’t see them together, making them work together is much more difficult.

To sum it up, a report is a more detailed collection of tables, charts, and graphs and it is used for a much more detailed, full analysis while a dashboard is used for monitoring what is going on. The behavior of the pieces that make up dashboards and reports are similar, but their makeup itself is different. A dashboard answers a question in a single view and a report provides information. Put in another way, the report can provide a more detailed view of the information that is presented on a dashboard.  

With dashboards, you can empower your entire team with data insights in real-time information, so your data is never stale. Users can create and share custom views of your data on the fly, in minutes.

With powerful Dashboards, you can:

  • Create pie charts, graphs, interactive maps, and more with just a few clicks.
  • Build a dashboard once and make it instantly available on any device.
  • Tell a story with your data with your own custom layouts, colors, and commentary—all with no coding and changes available instantly to users.
  • Know you always have current reports with real-time data updates.
  • Access your dashboards from anywhere–computer, tablet, or phone.
     

Manufacturing

Enlarge Production Summary Dashboard Enlarge Work Center Job Step Status


Finance

Enlarge Accounts Receivable Dashboard


Materials

Enlarge Inventory Dashboard Enlarge Sales History Dashboard


 

Analytics Dashboard for Infor LX & BPCS>

Analytics Dashboard for Infor LN & Baan>

Contact us today to learn how dashboards can help you go fast, go big, and go bold.

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