MAS 90/200 v4.5 Release Overview

Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200 Version 4.5 will be available late this year. This release promises to be packed with valuable enhancements, many of which address top customer requests. In this article we provide an overview of this release. More details will be shared in upcoming newsletters.

Useful Module Enhancements
Inspired by customer feedback, the main functional enhancements in Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200 4.5 are found in the Sales Order, Purchase Order, Accounts Receivable, and Payroll modules. Here are the highlights of each moduleís enhancements.

Sales Order And Purchase Order
The Sales Order module is enhanced in several important areas in Version 4.5. Pricing enhancements allow you to set prices by product line, by customer, and for total item quantities. You also will be able to distribute lot and serial numbers during sales order entry. In addition, commission splits are enhanced with the ability to set splits by customer, and by using a rate table to match salesperson, customer, and item. In this release, you will find new and better ways to automatically create purchase orders from sales orders. Sales Order integration with Job Cost becomes more powerful.

National Accounts Feature In Accounts Receivable
A highlight of Version 4.5 is the National Accounts feature. If you have customers that have many locations or divisions, National Accounts in Accounts Receivable will greatly enhance your workflow. It gives you the ability to establish relationships between a single national account, typically a parent company, and multiple subsidiary accounts, such as branches and retail outlets. National Accounts allows you to invoice the parent company for goods and services provided to multiple locations, each with their own unique customer account.

Payroll
Customers using the Payroll module will benefit from some key features added in Version 4.5. The new functionality includes:

• Five additional deduction calculation methods
• The ability to perform deduction recalculations automatically and set deductions based on earnings type
• Enhanced Visual Integrator importing of common time management software formats into Payroll Data Entry
• The ability to establish a minimum number of hours worked for benefit accruals

Extended Enterprise Suite Change
With the release of 4.5 the standard Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200 and the Extended Enterprise Suite products will be merged, and the term Extended Enterprise Suite will no longer be used. The benefits of using SageCRM with Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200, the user-based pricing model, and the simplified installation process will be available for all three versions of Sage ERP MAS 90, 200, and 200 SQL 4.5. Current Extended Enterprise Suite customers will receive an equivalent Version 4.5 system with equivalent Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200 licenses and separate SageCRM licenses. Both named and concurrent SageCRM licenses will be available, although each customer will be required to choose one type of licensing. It is not possible to mix the two types of licenses in one system.

SageCRM For All Customers
All Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200 customers will be eligible to receive a free SageCRM Server license and one free SageCRM user license when upgrading to 4.5. Current Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200 Extended Enterprise Suite customers also will be eligible to receive a free SageCRM user license that will be added to their existing user count when upgrading to 4.5. Version 4.5 will be compatible with SageCRM 7.1, which delivers the tools companies need to communicate and collaborate more effectively and to better compete in todayís marketplace.
Usage Research

A feature has been added to Version 4.5 to assist Sage in driving the direction of the product to greater customer benefit. The Product Enhancement Program will gather information such as the platform and operating system, usage of the system, and most frequently used tasks. This information will provide a framework for future usability and cost of ownership improvements. The information gathered will not include any confidential or company-specific data. Periodic uploads of data to Sage are seamless to the user. During installation, the wizard will alert the administrator to the presence of the tool and afford an opportunity to opt-out.

Sage ERP MAS Intelligence
Sage ERP MAS Intelligence receives significant enhancements in Version 4.5 that expands its power for financial reportingóincluding the ability to create Reporting Trees and attach them to Report Designer Layouts, as well as greater flexibility in distributing and publishing reports.

Also included is a utility that will reduce the effort in migrating FRx reports to Intelligence. In addition, Intelligence will be compatible with the Sage ERP MAS 200 SQL product in this release.

Choice Of Platform
The flexibility of the Business Framework allows customers to choose ProvideX or Microsoft SQL Server. A migration process will be provided to assist with upgrading Sage ERP MAS 200 for SQL 3.7x customers to Sage ERP MAS 200 SQL 4.5.

Looking Forward
If your organization is running an older version of Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200, we encourage you to plan to upgrade to the most current release.

Sage continues to listen to its customers and provide the functionality that is most important to them. Planned for 2012, Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200 Version 5.0 will focus on web enabling the product to improve usability and allow customers more mobile access and additional web-based integrations.

Please call us with your questions.