Resources for Sage X3 Users

For discrete manufacturers, supply chain challenges are increasing every year and becoming more of a daily concern. A recent report from IDC says that 97% of discrete manufacturers will focus on visibility, with 60% concentrating their efforts on end-to-end traceability in their supply chain. In this blog post, we will review the 5 takeaways from IDC’s End-to-End Traceability in Discrete Manufacturing report, which you can keep in mind when coming up with supply chain strategies for your business. Note: content for this blog post was originally posted on Sage Advice by Margaux Wynter, August 28, 2021. Global pressures like environmental changes, tensions, and the challenges presented by coronavirus have shown manufacturers all over the world that their supply chains require improvement and a lot more visibility. The main supply chain-related challenges out there today include increasing competition, the need to innovate, and rising customer expectations regarding the detail and quality of the information available to them. Visibility is key An impressive 68% believe that a lack of supply chain visibility and flexibility will cause significant issues in the future if not addressed appropriately, and 50% say that supply chain visibility is a focus from a supply chain risk management perspective, compared to only 32% in 2018. Traceability is not just about ensuring you are compliant—it is gradually becoming a way to differentiate yourself from the competition. Here are five takeaways from IDC’s End-to-End Traceability in Discrete Manufacturing report, which you can keep in mind when coming up with supply chain strategies for your business. 1. Traceability—your supply chain track and trace As your business grows, your commercial pressures and expectations are likely to increase. This puts strain on the supply chain, and by using the information to manage quality, inefficiency, and the threat of recalls, traceability is vital. You often need to follow international standards for controlling quality and traceability, which impacts the sourcing of raw materials. Traceability identifies all relevant data for the materials used in the production and distribution of finished products—it is the tracking and tracing of your supply chain. Tracking occurs when you can see how products progress from one sequence to the next and how they move through the manufacturing process through location data. Internally, you can see where products are, who has worked on them, and how long until they’re finished. Tracing allows you to identify products through records and supply chain visibility, which lets you link products to their sources in the supply chain. Good traceability is only possible if you effectively record information from manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors, and those systems covering different process steps are connected and integrated. Apply traceability to your entire supply chain internally when it focuses on tracking the receipt and intake of raw materials to manufacturing processes and externally as you distribute the finished goods to their final destinations. IDC’s research features 140 medium to large-sized organizations and shows that many discrete manufacturers have work to do. Only 50% of discrete manufacturers have officially automated traceability 42% still have manual processes in place 2. The insight from traceability can improve your products The key to curing those traceability headaches is to get to the root cause of any recurring issues in your current setup. Is it because of the product design, the components used, the assembly, the software deployed, or something else? Once you figure that out, you need to make sure that discovery is shared with the right teams and loops back into the engineering process to fix the problem. But more importantly, this ensures continuous improvement of the product later down the line. Traceability gives customers something valuable: information. Serving that detailed information is the key to building trust and ultimately enhancing brand value. Whether B2B or B2C, customers expect quality and reliability in what they’ve ordered. When the product fails, has unexpected flaws, or doesn’t meet their needs, customers need quick, satisfactory replacements to limit the inconvenience on their side. While recalls in discrete manufacturing are routine, and for the most part, voluntary, they have a long-lasting impact if the incident is severe enough. These cases commonly involve many products, reports of injury or even death, and extensive media coverage. 3. Prevent problems before they arise Preventing a problem is better than going through the hassle of finding a cure if something goes wrong. Investing in digital traceability technology will give you what you need to take a proactive approach that ultimately adds value to your brand and the product your customers receive. Enterprise application software gives you end-to-end visibility of operational processes, allowing you to download an entire product history as and when needed, from ingredients used to finished goods, taking into account multi-site, multi-company, and multi-legislative product journeys. Accessible data across the product value chain lets you understand: Who supplied the raw materials Who validated the raw materials Which steps went into each process Who handled and signed off on the final product Who shipped and delivered the final product Who on the customer side validated the final product With access to data across the end-to-end process, you can analyze the supply chain for insights and improvement in: Quality control Planning and scheduling Compliance Sizing quality and sustainability initiatives to the needs of individual markets 4. Increase the value of your brand with traceability With product recalls, traceability is key to protecting both the consumer and your reputation. The standards around product safety and quality have never been higher—having consumer doubts surrounding your products could have a lasting effect on your brand value. Use traceability to catch issues early, providing the visibility you need to get your manufacturing processes in top shape. Through end-to-end value chain traceability, you can show customers that you are a viable, trustworthy supplier and can offer the depth of information they crave. So yes, investing in traceability is necessary from a regulatory perspective, but it’s also essential to understand that it can positively impact the long-term brand value of your business. Today’s customers choose environmentally sustainable and ethical brands, and it’s traceability that can help you source materials that work for your business and work to support your ecologically conscious targets. 5. Traceability pushes businesses towards digital transformation Traceability for discrete manufacturers demands real-time, pinpointed information. The pockets of siloed data in applications you have can be harnessed then and shared across your business with appropriate user permissions in place. Becoming digitally mature means transforming your business into one that can compete better in an increasingly digital environment. Therefore, it’s advisable to continuously adapt and better handle traceability by digitizing your data and processes in digital transformation. The very act of starting an end-to-end traceability journey gives your digital transformation program a boost, as it essentially helps to lay down a digital foundation. Digital maturity puts you in an excellent position to fulfill quality, documentation, and traceability requirements. In addition, Digital supports end-to-end visibility, allowing you to optimize your supply chain and improve your customer experience. The end message? You should drive your growth with a more significant commitment to traceability – driving value for money from crucial digital investments.

With today’s frequent fluctuation in commodity pricing and supply chain challenges, the cost of raw materials can change significantly over time. Read today’s blog to learn how you can use an X3 utility to update the inventory value of FIFO products within the manufacturing processes to keep your profitability in line with changing raw material costs. Learn how to process an inventory value change for a FIFO valued item. Content for this blog post was originally posted on Sage City by Joel Singam, December 23, 2021. For an item that is valued at FIFO (First in First out), we can use the value change function to modify the FIFO basis lines. This will generate a stock movement record in STOJOU with a TRSTYP of 23. Lately there have been some changes in this area and the recommendation is to modify each FIFO layer at a time. For example, let’s take an item whose valuation method is FIFO. Go to value change function under Stock, Utilities, Valuation, and pull up this item. You can see it defaults the distribution and auto journal code fields and lists the available FIFO stacks, quantity and the unit price. If you are managing lots, then you will see the lot layers under “Batches” grid. For the item selected below, you can see the Global values and FIFO totals on the top half of the screen and the bottom half displays the FIFO basis and lots lines. Value change screen: Global values match the product site record and the FIFO totals with FIFO stack lines. Stock valuation report: If we run the stock valuation report as of today, we can see the same values as shown above. Next, issue out a quantity of 20 from lot 2222. In the stock valuation report the current unit price is $10.71 and the amount in USD is $321.25. In value change screen FIFO totals match the stock valuation screen. The FIFO price used for the issue is $10.50. Product site record average cost matches the value change global value average cost. Listed below are the STOJOU, STOCOST, STOMVECOST tables. CSTCOU_0 value for the receipts used, match the delivery transaction record. STOJOU: STOCOST: STOMVTCOST: Now let’s use the value change function to update the value of a FIFO layer. When changing a FIFO price or quantity, always update a single FIFO layer at a time and do not update two layers at the same time. When you run the stock valuation report after a value change using the FIFO basis grid, the stock valuation report will look for any value change records where CSTCOU_0 is equal to the CSTCOU_0 of the receipt. Therefore, the recent change implemented requires that any value change must be done on the FIFO basis and only one FIFO line at a time. Value change is not built to create multiple STOJOU records when multiple FIFO tiers are adjusted at the same time. Reduce the unit price of the second FIFO stack by $5. In STOJOU, system picked up the CSTCOU_0 line (7770.0) and assigned that number to the value change line TRSTYP_0 = 23. If you want to modify 2 FIFO tiers, do the second change after completing the first. This way the stock valuation report will have a clear picture and be easy to analyze. If you have any questions about processing a value change for a FIFO valued item, or any other questions about Sage X3, please contact us.

Sage X3 multi-currency translates transactions entered in foreign currency into your native accounting or ‘ledger’ currency and automatically provides any exchange variance (gain/loss) due to currency fluctuations for these transactions. In this blog post, we will look at an example that shows how Sage X3 handles invoices and payments in a foreign currency (EUR) with an unrealized currency gain. AP is a multi-currency ledger, meaning that AP Vendors that transact in EUR will have their balance aged in that currency, and users are able to cancel the invoices in that currency using a EUR account. Here’s an example of a payment: As we can see, the payment was in Euros, the invoices were shown and paid in that currency using the EUR bank account. No conversion takes place in the AP sub ledger. Now, in the GL we see the entry made in EUR: But also, by hitting the ‘Currency’ button, we can see the conversion done by Sage X3. The rate used (1.18744 USD) corresponds to the posting date. Now, let’s look at the Manual Matching screen. Here you can see what Sage X3 did with these amounts and the side by side translation from the transaction currency (EUR) to the ledger currency (USD): This payment for 147,332.82 EUR is perfectly matched against the four invoices that it is paying (Match Letter A). However, if you look at PIN065348, the Invoice was for 22,173.00 EUR, against the payment of 22,173.00 EUR, but the invoice was created at a given rate that translated the EUR to $26,329.11 USD, and the payment was made for $25,043.74 USD. The difference, or exchange rate variance, of $1,285.37 means that the USD appreciated against the EUR in that period—resulting in an unrealized currency gain. Hopefully walking through this example helps explain how Sage X3 treats invoices and payments in a foreign currency (EUR) with an unrealized currency gain. If you have any questions about multi-currency support, or any other questions about Sage X3, please contact us.

The Price Utility for Sage X3 automates the process of updating price(s) and/or cost(s). The Price Utility allows you and your team to quickly and easily make profit-preserving decisions and make mass updates to the pricing and costing table in Sage X3. Key Features Access current and past pricing by a variety of criteria including stat groups, like descriptions, BPs, site, etc. Increase or decrease pricing by amount or percentage Select the site and cost method to use for the margin calculation Save your work in progress for review/approval before you publish new pricing (all changes are retained for audits) Supports multiple units of measures – either specify a new price for one unit and the utility will apply to all other units OR manage each unit individually Supports conversion of liquids to dry (and vice versa) using density/specific gravity stored in Sage X3 Set an effective date for pricing to manage changes in advance View and compare margin for new and old values in a grid display Manually override pricing as required – updates to resulting margin show in real-time for decision making Generate a detailed report or export from the grid to Excel for further analysis and/or distribution Produce price increase letters and send directly to customer contacts Choose to exclude products not recently sold so customers only get notified of changes to active products Works for both sale and purchase price lists Supports any currency configured for price lists Old pricing is never deleted – records are expired when the new pricing is published   For more information about the Pricing Utility for Sage X3, or any other Sage X3 questions, please contact us.

Once again, it is time to start preparing 1099 filings for calendar year 2021. Sage recently released the 1099 updates for 2021 for both Sage X3 and Sage 500. In this post we will review what you should expect if you are on a covered version and what we recommend you do if you are not on a covered version. Sage X3 Sage released the 1099 update for 2021 which covers Sage X3 v11 and 2019R5 (v12p20) and higher. The update is included in v11p21 and 2022R1 (v12p29) and therefore doesn’t need to be installed on those two versions. If you are on a covered version, Net at Work will: Refresh a test folder if required (time depends on folder size) Install the patch on a test folder in your environment Support testing and training as required Install the patch on your production folder NOTE: patch installation does not require downtime while a folder refresh does. If you are NOT on a covered version, Net at Work recommends purchasing and using 1099 Express. If your 1099 reporting is company based, you can simply extract information from Sage X3 and place it in the required format for use with 1099 Express. If your 1099 reporting is site based, Net at Work will need to build queries to get information in the required format for use with 1099 Express. For more detailed information about Sage’s 1099 update for Sage X3, please check out this Sage City post from Pam Nightingale. Sage 500 Sage released 1099 updates for Sage 500 v2018, 2019 and 2020. If you are on a covered version, Net at Work will: Refresh a test database if required (time depends on database size) Install the patch on the test database Support testing and training as required Install the patch on your production database NOTE: Sage 500 ERP sums up 1099 data and sends that data to Aatrix.  From there, Aatrix can print forms, mail forms, send electronic 1099s via e-mail, etc.  If you are on a support plan, some of that is included, with additional options at additional costs. NOTE: patch installation does not require downtime while a folder refresh does. If you are NOT on a covered version, Net at Work recommends purchasing and using 1099 Express. Please contact your Team Manager at Net at Work or helpdesk@netatwork.com to coordinate patching, if you need support.

In this blog post, we’ll show the steps Sage X3 users need to take to create and open a new Fiscal Year, as well as how to open the periods of that year. How to Open a Fiscal Year in Sage X3 and its Associated Periods: Open Common Data, General Accounting Tables, Fiscal Years (GESFIY). Choose the desired company from the left list. If the year does not exist, click the Fiscal Year button to create it. In Fiscal Year Creation, the From and To dates will be populated. In the Y/N field, select Yes for each year that you want to add. Click OK. Repeat the following steps for each company code. Click OK. Complete the Title and Short title for each year added. Click Save To open the years, click Opening. In Fiscal Year Opening, select Yes in the Y/N field for each year to be opened. Click OK. Repeat for each company. Proceed to Common Data, General Accounting Tables, Fiscal Periods (GESPER) to open the associated periods. Select the company and fiscal year from the left list. Click Opening. Select Yes in the Y/N field for each period to be opened. Note: Only periods where the fiscal year is open can be changed to open. It is possible to open periods for more than one fiscal year at a time. Click OK. Repeat for each fiscal year/company combination. If you need help with Sage X3 or have any questions, please contact us.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you need to change the start or end date of multiple existing work orders? Whether the scheduling mode is Forward or Backward, it is possible to use a function in Sage X3 called Modify Objectives “FUNTDUOF” to accomplish the change en masse. In this blog post, we’ll explore how you can mass update work order start/end dates and priority. Note: Content for this blog post was originally posted on Sage City by Vanessa Quwar, December 9, 2021. The Modify Objectives function is found in Manufacturing, Planning and any user with rights to this function can access it. When launching this function, the Production Site must be entered prior to making any selection or filtering. Once a production site is selected, it is possible to filter by firm and/or planned work orders and you can include optimized orders as well. It is possible to enter ranges for work orders, projects that are associated with WOs, BP destination, sales order number, released product, and start and end date. The search can also be sorted by the work order start date or by early/late number of days which is the difference between the objective date and the end date. The status of the work order must be Pending or In Progress as Closed work orders will not be included. Once the work orders are listed, if the scheduling mode is Forward, the start date can be modified. If the scheduling mode is Backward, the end date can be modified. Also, it is possible to change the Priority on a work order from Normal to Urgent or Very Urgent. Once the changes are made, click Save and the system will generate a log with the work order numbers that have been modified and the number of changes. If you have any questions about mass updating worder orders, or for any other questions about Sage X3, please contact us.

Are you interested in isolating items in the Left List? Do you want the ability to slice the Left List data into pieces and be able to review it one piece at a time? Without any fancy customizations? Let’s examine a quick and simple way to go about it. Note: Content for this blog post was originally posted on Sage City by Pam Nightingale, November 30, 2021. A simple option is to utilize the filters at the top of the Left List columns. Clicking on the Funnel icons will display the following filter options: Contains, Starts with, Ends with, Greater than or equal to, Greater than, Less than or equal to, Less than, Equal to, or Not equal to. If you only want to see invoices for Bill-to customer NA009, for example, you can select the filter Equal to and enter NA009. The problem with this solution is that its isn’t permanent and it is limited to visible columns. Now let’s look at something that we can save. Head to the Right box and expand Selection. From there, click on Advanced selection. Create the same filter for NA009 Bill-to customer in Advanced selection. Next to Memo where you can save the filter. Memo code: this is the name of the selection criteria that you will save. If you name the Memo code STD, this memo will be loaded every time you open the screen. Global: if this is selected, everyone will have access to this Memo code. If not selected, it is your own personal code. Description: Brief note that tells you about the Memo code Click OK to save the memo Now, note that under Selection, you have the option NA009. Do you want to show only unposted invoices for NA009? The posted status isn’t one of the visible columns in the Left list. However, you can add an “AND” line to the Object selection and by drilling down can select Field INVSTA with the Value Not posted. You can create a Memo for this that isn’t Global—is it just usable by you. Once you do, you have NA009 with Not posted… in your Selection section. What if you want to see the Not posted status in your Left List? You will need to add it to the Invoices drawer. Go to Development, Script dictionary, Window management. If you aren’t comfortable modifying Windows, please contact your Sage Business Partner for assistance. As with any customization or modification, vet this thoroughly in your test environment before attempting in production. Select the Window OSIH. Remember don’t select the Windows beginning with “W”. Those are system generated and will be overwritten upon validation. On the Browser tab, go to the Object grid and Jump to the SIH Object. In the Selection screen grid, add Table INVOICEV with Field INVSTA. Click the Save icon and Validation. Return to Window management, click the Save icon and Validation. Go to Sales, Invoices, invoices, expand the Left list and note that the Status column is now visible. If you click on NA009 with Not posted…, you can verify that the selected invoices for NA009 are Not posted. What if you want to see invoices that were created today for NA009? Not those with today’s accounting date, but invoices that were actually created today. On the Expression line of the Object selection, enter CREDAT = Date$. The Expression field is linked to the other grid lines with “AND”. After clicking OK, you can see the 3 NA009 invoices created today with various accounting dates. If you want invoices created yesterday, enter: CREDAT = Date$ – 1. This is great for spotting keying errors or checking dates on items coming over from a 3rd party system. To get rid to the Advanced selections, click Advanced selection. Click Delete Memo on the Object selection screen. This will bring up your personal Memo to delete (Global is not selected at this point). To delete the Global memo, select Global on the Delete memo screen and you will have a Memo selection screen. Select the Global memo that you want to delete. We hope this helps you to slice up the data in your Left list for easier review. If you have any questions, please contact us.

The Log4j2 security vulnerability only affects organizations running Sage X3 versions 11 and 12. This is due to its integration with Elasticsearch. Vulnerabilities have been reported in Elasticsearch versions 6.8 (for v11), 7.9 and higher. If you are on an earlier version of Sage X3, your Sage X3 system is not impacted by this vulnerability. Also, as part of Sage and Net at Work installation best practices, Elasticsearch is not exposed to the internal or external networks and is only opened to connections from the Syracuse node—so your risk should already be mitigated. If you are unsure, please feel free to reach out to us. Sage is currently testing Elasticsearch 7.16.1 which would address this vulnerability. We will share more information as it becomes available. Impact Recently, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced a critical security vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) in Apache’s Log4j2, a popular Java open source logging system by developers of web and server applications. The vulnerability affects a broad range of services and applications on servers, making it extremely dangerous—and the need to update those server applications urgent. According to the NIST security alert, “Apache Log4j2 <=2.14.1 JNDI features used in configuration, log messages, and parameters do not protect against attacker-controlled LDAP and other JNDI related endpoints. An attacker who can control log messages or log message parameters can execute arbitrary code loaded from LDAP servers when message lookup substitution is enabled.” While Sage X3 software is not exposed to the Log4j2 vulnerability, Sage X3 integrates natively with a third-party solution called Elasticsearch. Sage X3 versions 11 and 12 are likely to be integrated with impacted instances of Elasticsearch, but not exposed if Sage X3 published security best practices have been followed. If you are on an earlier version of Sage X3, your Sage X3 system is not impacted by this vulnerability. Also, for those Sage X3 clients using Sage Enterprise Intelligence, please note that SEI is not affected by this vulnerability. Elasticsearch running on JDK8 or lower may be vulnerable to the information leak piece of the exploit, according to a security announcement from Elastic. To mitigate, it is recommended to set the following JVM option in Elasticsearch: -Dlog4j2.formatMsgNoLookups=true This is the same recommendation as published on Sage City for other Sage products. Elasticsearch 6 and 7 are not susceptible to the remote code execution part of the exploit. If Elasticsearch is properly secured, without remote access, risk should be minimal. Servers without exposure to the Internet, using current firewalls with updated security and threat detection protocols, and other security devices with current updates should assist in mitigating risk, but there are several communication protocols on which this exploit could be used. Recommendations As a general best practice, you should check for and apply any updates for your security devices, as many have released updates to detect and prevent usage of this exploit. Actively monitoring servers for unexpected traffic can help detect if your systems are being targeted. Additional Resources For more information about the Log4j2 vulnerability, please refer to the following resources: Apache Log4j2 Vulnerability Guidance published by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) A list of known impacted applications here. The severity and understanding of the vulnerability are still being investigated, and information is changing rapidly. We will continue to advise as further recommendations become available. In the meantime, if you have questions, please contact us, our experts are here to help.