In5Minutes Podcast: Introducing Intelligent Audit – Helping your clients get control of their shipping expenses

There’s no question that companies have more data than ever. Technology has allowed reporting teams to generate incredible insight into company performance, creating huge demand for timelier, high quality reporting. And let’s face it, converting insights into something that can meet management and board presentation standards is no small feat. Finance teams typically spend days manually stitching together data in Excel via massive exports that often become outdated as soon as they share them. So how can finance teams more effectively take their analysis and create accurate, high impact reports? NetSuite Planning and Budgeting Smart View for Microsoft Office can solve these challenges. It gives users the tools to build and publish flexible, highly formatted and refreshable financial and management reports with drill-down and drill-back capabilities to data in NetSuite ERP within the familiar confines of Microsoft Office applications. For example, Smart View’s ad hoc analysis allows users to retrieve data from NetSuite Planning and Budgeting and analyze it in Excel spreadsheets. “Everyone loves Excel. Planning and Budgeting Smart View feels like Excel, but it’s able to connect to NetSuite and isn’t a burden to maintain,” said Karen L. Crow, VP of Finance, Arbor Research Collaborative. Smart View capabilities include: Ad hoc or Free-form Analysis Flexible access to an organization’s data in a secure, permission-based environment allows users to quickly get and use important business data and metrics. Users across the organization can use Excel to interactively and dynamically investigate data extracted from NetSuite or other sources. Report Design Smart View’s financial and management reporting capabilities allow an organization to display NetSuite data in highly formatted Excel, Word or PowerPoint views. With the data accessible in Office applications, users can create reports as needed, combining different data types from NetSuite. One-Click Refresh With Office, users can create comprehensive reporting packages, which can be refreshed with a single click. For example, the format of a board book stays largely the same every month or quarter, but the data points need to be refreshed and the narrative needs to be updated, Smart View refreshes these reports with a single click, meaning users can update it even minutes before a board presentation. Predefined Form Interaction Users who prefer to leverage predefined input/ reporting forms find Smart View a convenient way to interact with and consume data via Office applications. These users are often in operational or other non-finance roles across the company and prefer to work in Excel, Word or PowerPoint when it comes to analysis and reporting. Data can be seeded in predefined forms leveraging user-specific permissions and dynamic data refreshes. Pre-Created Content Access Data forms can be designed and organized in a way that supports user-friendly navigation and consumption of content. Users may access prebuilt content — for example, double-clicking in Excel, Word or PowerPoint to open dynamically linked tables, charts or grids — for use in their own calculations, documents or presentations. These grids can be further customized and saved for future reference by others. Easily Create Ad-hoc Reports in NetSuite Planning and Budgeting Smart View for Microsoft Office NetSuite Planning and Budgeting offers comprehensive integration with Microsoft tools such as Excel, Word and PowerPoint using the capabilities of the Smart View for Office add-in. Users can leverage Excel as their modeling environment and slice and dice data using Excel-based ad hoc analysis. Common planning actions, such as spreading and allocation, are available within data grids. Additionally, users can directly integrate data from NetSuite Planning and Budgeting into Word and PowerPoint to create reports. This allows users to create highly customized documents and presentations with accurate information. Users can automatically refresh the report when the underlying data changes. That reduces manual intervention, improves data integrity and increases reporting accuracy. Simply put, with NetSuite Planning and Budgeting Smart View, financial data users are able to retain the full capabilities of Excel while gaining NetSuite’s budget and forecasting capabilities. Watch this product video to learn more about how to create ad hoc reporting in NSPB Smart View. This post was originally posted on the NetSuite Blog. By Rami Ali, Senior Product Marketing Manager

One of the many configuration demands when it comes to physical inventory stock control within ERP system such as Sage X3 arises when we are faced with the reorganization of our warehouse locations. The reorganization can require the renaming of actual physical stock locations not only in the warehouse but within Sage X3. This challenge can become laborious within Sage X3 when we have preexisting inventory already within a bin that is now in the process of being renamed. The process can be especially demanding when we store more than one raw material or finished goods within a single location. The question we face is how can we do this as straightforward and as quickly as possible within Sage X3? Fortunately, there are processes we can use through the front-end software to assist, please note that these transactions can also be done on the handheld or through the or the Windows Telnet Client from a command prompt. Using ADC Stock Change by Identifier [VXBSC]: The screenshot below is the location in X3 navigation menu to perform the stock change via the ADC Web Client functionality. Once the user selects the “Stock change transaction” function the screen below will appear. Please note that this is a “one for all” transaction function where every product in the current location will be moved to the new location. In our example everything from “REC01” is being moved to the new location “STO933.” Using stock change transaction [GESSCS]: Using X3 software function from the Navigation menu – the user can select location, destination location, and then select all the contents to be moved, which can allow the user to leave some of the items in the existing bin if required. This screenshot is a view of the products and their “Left List” selection during the Stock Change process. In this example the selected products are moving from location “STO933” to location “STO934.” These functions, although not very common, can save time when it comes to physical and system stock location changes during year-end inventory counts or cycle count processes, when changing bin locations, location IDs, or warehouse changes are very common. Other examples can be during a reorganization, opening a new warehouse, adding new racks and bins, and rotating and moving stock during this process is highly likely. As stated previously this type of functionality is very useful for companies who combine different products often in bin or rack locations and find a business requirement to constantly rotate products to a new location. The function allows the user to move the entire content of location from Bin “A” to “B” for example. This function also will work with serial and lot tracked inventory items, as well as not tracked items. One final note is that this ability to move products all together cannot be used on products assigned to an LPN number within Sage X3. If you find this to be something that would be helpful to your organization below are where you can find them through the Sage X3 Web Client Navigation page.

Sage delivers major enhancement releases to Sage ERP X3 every couple of years. In between, point releases deliver program fixes and a substantial number of enhancements. Sage recently released Sage X3 Version 6.4, which includes 80 functional enhancements. In this post we cover some of the highlights. Sage ERP X3 Usability Enhancements Sometimes small improvements to the software can smooth workflow and increase efficiency. These are just a few of the usability enhancements added throughout the Sage ERP X3 system: A new flexible and efficient search function makes it easy to find customers and prospects, especially in a large database. On an intercompany receipt, you now can enter the lots and supplier lots. A closed WO (work order) now must be reactivated to be updated. Previously it was possible to update a closed WO having a Provisional Production Cost (PPC) that was not yet calculated. On modifying a product category, a new prompt asks whether all the site categories need to be updated as well. If the BP (customer or supplier record) is inactive, the menus used to create distribution documents are not accessible. New zooms from the customer/supplier record have been added, including Non Expired Drafts, and Postponements. A confirmation message is added when creating a picking ticket in sales orders in the event of stock-out for a given product and if the order is set to Complete order. In Shipment preparation lists, the order of the lines is improved to keep the order displayed in the sales orders. When modifying the quantity of a POF in the planning workbench, a question is displayed asking whether the prices and discounts should be recalculated. The entry of items having a disabled status is now authorized in price list records. A deactivated or blocked customer cannot be selected on an order. Sage X3 Control/Compliance Changes The following changes were added to enhance control and compliance. Direct reversal of entries originating from payments is no longer allowed. A payment must be reversed by way of the accounting cancellation program of payments. Locks were added in a number of areas so that if one user is modifying a record, another user cannot modify it. New management of issued checks has been added to meet the U.S. requirements for report traceability and formalism. Reporting Enhancements in Sage ERP X3 Reporting enhancements include: Creation of a new report during an Intra-Group Transfer to control the assets bought by the company of origin and the assets transferred to the target company. A new inquiry has been created for the cost price of subcontract orders. The report is similar to the industrial cost prices for Work Orders. New reports display movements in the transaction currency and give the detail of the totals by currency. Please call us with your questions about Sage ERP X3 | Sage X3 Version 6.4.