Highlights From Our Sage MAS 90 MAS 200 ERP User Groups – NY, NJ

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We had two great mornings last week at our New York City and New Jersey MAS 90 MAS 200 user groups! Both had good crowds with over 20 end users from a range of industries and versions. I was particularly excited to see the folks from one of our clients who traveled from the Albany, NY area – meeting in person is so nice after talking on the phone! Here are some highlights from both groups:

Day 1 – New York, NY

Brian Poole, Net at Work Consulting Manager, started the group with a round of introductions. We noted the different versions before starting the discussion of the quarterly product update process from Sage Software, and which titles will be rolled in from the extended solutions. We had some good conversation about the new ability to record wire transfers with the wire transfer tracking #. There were some questions about transfers between companies’ own accounts and how bank code maintenance is set up.

Authorized purchase control caused some smiles from several clients, as did the invoice # search in cash receipts. It was noted that you still can’t search by dollar amount in cash receipts but you can in AR Invoice history. We also discussed how cash receipts can’t handle one check for multiple related customers but that the add-on for National Accounts can.

There was a lot of discussion about checking duplicate customer PO’s in sales order entry. It was noted that you could check for duplicate PO’s in sales order now if the previous order hasn’t shipped, but in version 4.4 you have an enhanced lookup that will look in history files too.

ACH and Positive Pay will be coming in the next release. The ACH will do the e-mail to the vendor advising that the ACH has occurred.

We discussed that you can set up Sage Online to be notified you when there are product releases, but you need to make sure there is no conflict with 3rd party add-ons and customizations.

The FRx topic was a hot one! Brian explained how FRx is being phased out from 2012. A good portion of the group was affected and there ensued lively discussion: how long can we use FRx for and should we move to Alchemex (new Sage MAS Intelligence tool), as well as what features will be standard with the new tool.

We ended the morning with a look into the new custom office for version 4.4. The new scripting and user field options were well received.

Kudos to Brian – Great job!

Day 2 –Newark, New Jersey

Brian started again with introductions similar to yesterday. The companies present at the group were using versions ranging from 3.71 to 4.3. Two of them mentioned that MAS “runs their business” and they are always looking at new features.

Brian reviewed the extended solutions that are slated to be bundled starting in version 4.4. There were several functionality questions about standard AP functionality and lots of smiles when Brian showed entry of cash receipts by invoice #. There were no payroll or lot/serial users in the group so those enhancements were skipped.

Some side comments on bank reconciliation enhancements – about half the group is currently using bank reconciliation module and see the benefit. ACH and Positive Pay were also a big hit and many people indicated they would like to take advantage of those new features when they upgrade.

Brian discussed FRx and its planned replacement of Alchemex, but only one company in the group uses FRx and the representative will pass the information along to the financial group.

For Custom Office Brian discussed how the new changes allow for the use of scripting without putting a button on the screen. Several expressed that they liked the rule-based security Brian set up with scripting. The vendor allocation also got a few smiles.

We finished up with open questions from the floor. There was a lot of back and forth within the group and paperless office, as well as the ability for database alerts (KnowledgeSync), were hot topics.

We finished off the morning with requests for further classes on custom office as well as the possibility of Net at Work packaging some of the previously written scripts.

Great groups – thank you again to Brian and all the end users who came. We’ll be announcing the dates for our next groups very shortly. I hope to see you there.