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Sage MAS 500 ERP
August 2008 • Volume 6 • Issue 3
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Monitor date and time-sensitive events.An enterprise-wide solution featuring scalability, flexibility, and dependability.
Here we have just provided a brief overview, please give us a call to discuss the best business activity monitoring tool for your company.
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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
