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Sage MAS 500 ERP
NEWSLETTER
Volume 6 Issue 3,
August 2008 |
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| Stay Alert With Business Activity
Monitoring Tools |
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We have all had days filled with
troubleshooting problems and
remedying mistakes or oversights.
Often these problems could have
been avoided if only we had some foreknowledge
- if somehow we had been alerted to
the situation. Of course Sage MAS 500 ERP
captures a great deal of important information
about your company and provides the
reports essential to running your business.
But you may not always have time to read
through reports to identify issues requiring
your attention. That's where business activity
monitoring comes in. Powerful business
activity monitoring tools are available to
review your data and alert the appropriate
persons by e-mail when items needing attention
are identified. And these tools can even
update your data automatically based on criteria
you set.
Mind Your Business
Imagine if you had an assistant to monitor
the situations you deem important, notify
the appropriate people of issues for review and
action, and help to get at the root of each problem
by providing access to the relevant Sage
MAS 500 reports and inquiries. Imagine further
that this assistant never makes a mistake,
and works 24 hours a day, seven days a week!
That is the type of assistance you can expect
from a business activity monitoring system.
The precise capabilities of business activity
monitoring systems vary. At the basic
level, they all can monitor your database and
automatically e-mail designated persons when
a certain condition occurs. More advanced
systems can act on the information and generate
new transactions in your database to
effectively automate your workflows.
Resolve To Stay Alert
The basic capability provided by all business
activity monitoring systems, commonly
called alerts, monitors the activity in your system
and automatically notifies you, your staff,
your business partners, and even your customers
when important events take place. Alerts
use your existing e-mail system to notify you
of significant events transpiring within your
database. Notifications enable you and your
staff to avoid missed deadlines, steer clear
of problem situations, and to capitalize on
opportunities. Here are some examples of the types of issues alerts can handle:
Alert the purchasing manager when an
item is below its minimum stock level at
a warehouse. Never run out of that best
seller again!
. Send an e-mail to the account manager
when one of their customers has an
invoice past due by 30 days.
. Notify your purchasing agent when an
ordered item is late by a specified number
of days.
. Communicate to the sales staff when an
inventory item is out of stock at a certain
warehouse.
. E-mail a customer when they've exceeded
their credit limit by a specified amount or
percentage.
. Notify the sales manager when
backordered items are received at a
defined warehouse.
. Help prevent fraud or catch data entry
errors with an alert when an Accounts
Payable check over a certain amount is
created.
Alerts can even act as a complete receivables
collections tool by sending your customers
an e-mail when invoices become past
due and simultaneously adding them to a list
for internal follow up.
Scheduled Or On Demand
You will want to schedule most tasks to run
automatically at specified intervals, such as
daily or weekly, so that the system can notify
you automatically when the selected conditions
are met. However, you also may run
alerts on demand to run a quick check or to
update the list of items meeting the criteria.
Workflow Automation
More powerful business activity monitoring
systems can take action based on events
that occur. For example, you can generate
a work order when an order is received and
then when the work order is completed, generate
an invoice and e-mail it to the customer.
You can set workflow to route purchase orders
for approval, and when integrated with your
CRM solution, schedule follow-up calls with
customers and leads. More advanced systems
can even monitor and auto-respond to
the content of incoming e-mail messages and
Web form submissions. In addition to sending
e-mail alerts, some systems can send alerts
via fax, pager, cell phone, screen pop up, or
Web browser, so you can be sure to reach the
required person anywhere at any time.
Choosing A Solution
Two of the business activity monitoring
systems available for Sage MAS 500 are the
Business Alerts module and KnowledgeSync,
a powerful Sage Software Endorsed Solution.
Below we have summarized the capabilities of
each solution.
Business Alerts
. Monitor date and time-sensitive events.
. Receive notifications regarding credit
holds, inventory thresholds, sales ratios,
urgency levels, and priority client
transactions.
. Merge data into e-mail messages.
. Include e-mail attachments to provide
additional information.
. Send automated responses to customers
and vendors.
. Keep employees informed for better
decision making.
. Track important business events.
. Improve customer service for better
customer retention.
. Provide response to changing business
conditions anytime of the day or night.
. Includes a range of pre-built alerts for
A/R, A/P, G/L, Cash Management,
Purchase Order, Sales Order, Inventory,
and Manufacturing that you can easily
customize to fit your needs.
KnowledgeSync
An enterprise-wide solution featuring scalability,
flexibility, and dependability.
. Trigger personalized alerts about any
business conditions via e-mail, fax, pager,
cell phone, screen pop up, and Web
browser.
. Automate the delivery of forms,
documents, and reports to clients and
staff.
. Execute workflow to deliver invoices and
purchase orders, and schedule intelligent
follow-ups.
. Monitor and auto-respond to the content
of incoming e-mail messages and Web
form submissions.
. Dynamically analyze data between multiple
business functions (e.g. Accounting and
CRM).
. Includes a range of pre-built alerts that
you can easily customize to your needs.
Here we have just provided a brief overview,
please give us a call to discuss the best
business activity monitoring tool for your
company.
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| Getting The Most Out Of FRx |
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The need for financial accountability is
greater than ever - driven by standards
such as Sarbanes-Oxley. Included with the
Sage MAS 500 ERP General Ledger module
is Microsoft FRx Report Designer (FRx),
an industry-standard financial reporting tool.
You may have already used FRx, but perhaps
are not taking advantage of some handy features
of this powerful reporting tool. Here are
some how-to tips to help you get the most
out of FRx.
Column Headers
With Variable Column Headers, a powerful
feature of FRx, when you change the Base
Period for the report, each column and column
heading automatically changes to the
correct period.
To use Variable Column Headers:
. Choose the Insert Code button from the
Column Header Options Window, and
select a predefined code beginning with
the @ symbol.
. You can customize the column header by
combining text with any of the codes.
First select the code, then type the desired
text before or after the code, making sure
to leave the @ symbol intact.
Enhanced Report Appearance
Does your company have a standard set of
fonts it uses in its communications? You can
customize your fonts in FRx Report Designer
to match your company's preferred fonts
or to make your reports easier to read and
understand.
To customize a font:
. From the FRx Report Designer, select
Catalog of Reports.
. From the Catalog window, open an
existing report.
. On the menu at the top of the screen,
point to Edit, and then click Font Styles.
. In the Font Styles window, click New.
. Click the Font button, and select the type
of font, whether it should be bold or
italic, and the size and color.
. To add custom shading or color to the
style, click the Shading button.
. In the Font Style Name box, type
a description of the font for future
reference.
. Click Save.
The font you saved will now be available
for use in the Font Style setting of any FRx
report. To make the font the default for all
new reports created, click the Find button
in the Font Styles window, select the Default
Font Style, and select your saved font.
| Special Note About FRx |
Sage Software reports that Microsoft
has made a decision against further
enhancement or development of its
FRx reporting software beyond version
6.7.
Microsoft has agreed to continue
supporting the current version of FRx
through June 2011, thereby enabling
Sage Software adequate opportunity
to evaluate suitable alternatives.
Sage Software states that it is committed
to supporting the integrity of
its products — your business software
solutions — and has initiated the
process of determining options that
will provide the most effective solution
for your financial report-writing
needs.
We will keep you informed as updates
are available. |
FRx Reporting Tree
Would you like to automatically generate
and send a financial report for a particular
department, division, or location to the
appropriate manager? The FRx Reporting
Tree allows you to define the relationship
between reporting units, so you can quickly
and easily deliver the information managers
need to make better business decisions.
You can use the tree to automatically send
reports by e-mail to all of your management
team at once. You can incorporate the e-mail
addresses directly into the Reporting Tree, as
follows:
. In the report to be sent, open the Tree.
. In the Security/E-mail column enter the
e-mail address for the unit's reports.
. Save the Tree.
. In the Report Catalog, click the Output
tab.
. If the recipient does not have FRx
DrillDown Viewer, click Send as Excel
File on the Output Options tab.
. Click the E-mail Options tab.
. Select the Enable E-mail check box.
. Select the Use Tree check box and run your
report.
We hope these tips have helped, please call
us with any questions. |
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| In the Spotlight:
The Sales Tax Solution |
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There are more than 8,000 taxing jurisdictions
across the United States. State,
county, and municipal jurisdictions typically
overlap, making it very difficult to determine
what taxes to collect for a particular street
address. Add to this the fact that in a typical
year there are more than 3,000 changes
to the tax rules and you have an enormous
number of variables - and an enormous
compliance burden.
Substantial Penalties
Incorrectly charging sales tax can result in
fines, audit penalties, or even class-action lawsuits.
Penalties of thirty percent and higher
are not uncommon, and when interest is factored
in the total can be significant.
The ZIP Code Myth
Do you rely on ZIP Codes for sales tax
collection? Unfortunately, ZIP codes were
created by the Untied States Postal Service
(USPS), while sales tax rate boundaries
are set at the state, county, and municipal
level - they are not the same thing. For
example, in the state of Washington, the
Department of Revenue reports that 40 percent
of ZIP codes cross up to five different
jurisdictional boundaries. To make matters
worse, the USPS reports that one out of
every four ZIP codes change each year.
Use of ZIP codes to determine a sales tax
rate may result in a potential error rate of 10
percent. And while the use of ZIP plus 4 can
result in greater accuracy, it is still not a foolproof
method.
Expanding Scope
This complexity makes sales tax collection
for the nation's businesses exceedingly
difficult. To date, many businesses found a
reprieve in the fact that they were not required
to collect sales tax when selling to customers
outside of their home state. Those days may
soon be over.
As states and local tax jurisdictions experience
sales tax revenue decreases and their
revenue expectations shrink, they will aggressively
look for non payers through enforcement
of the nexus concept. Nexus is the legal
term whereby a taxing jurisdiction can claim
the right to tax your business activity based on
the level of activity or presence within their
borders.
Increasingly, states are adopting a series of
rules to establish nexus for companies that are
doing business in the state without having a
physical presence.
More than 40 states have now joined the
Streamlined Sales Tax (SST) consortium. Its
goal is to streamline tax collection and encourage
compliance across states. The incentive
is an offer of amnesty for past violations.
Businesses reporting through this group also
will avoid future sales tax audits by member
states in full compliance.
The Solution
The only way to accurately apply a correct
tax rate is by knowing the real geographic
location (or geocode), as well as the corresponding
tax jurisdictions.
The average business cannot hope to keep
on top of this information - there is just too
much data, and no centralized place to gather
it. This is why we recommend you consider a
sales tax management system like Sage MAS
Sales Tax, Powered by AvaTax. It is a sophisticated
Web-based solution that works behind
the scenes, supplying the correct sales tax rate
to orders and invoices in Sage MAS 500 ERP.
Call us to learn more about Sage MAS Sales
Tax. |
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© Copyright 2004-2010 Tango Marketing, LLC. www.tango-marketing.com All Rights Reserved. This newsletter and its content have been registered with
the United States Copyright Office. This content is licensed by Tango Marketing LLC and can be distributed by licensee until 07/31/2010 at which time the licensee must cease
distribution and use of this content unless permission in writing is obtained from Tango Marketing LLC. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is strictly prohibited.
The capabilities, system requirements and/or compatibility with third-party products described herein are subject to change without notice. Sage, the Sage logos, and the Sage product
and service names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sage Software, Inc., or its affiliated entities. All other trademarks are the property of their
respective owners.
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