Could Not Have Done It Without You – THANK YOU!

What a Year! On behalf of all Axis partners and consultants, we would like to take this time to thank our client’s for giving us the opportunity to earn President’s Circle honors in 2006. We appreciate the trust and confidence you have extended to us as your technology and business advisors. We look forward to trying to exceed your expectations by continuously adding value to your organizations long into the future.

We are very proud to announce that as a result of this commitment, AXIS was named the top Sage Accpac ERP & Pro ERP product sales in the US.

How can WMS help maximize an employee’s performance?

How good are the warehouse employees? Is there an employee who routinely outperforms the others? What is this employee is doing differently? Is there an employee that isn’t pulling their weight? These are questions every warehouse manager needs to know. A Warehouse Management System (WMS) can help your company sort through data to see how employees are performing. There are a number of ways in which Sage ACCPAC WMS can help accomplish this goal.

In the WMS Console, under view, the warehouse manager can look at what a number of employees are doing on various handhelds throughout the warehouse in real time. This is helpful at seeing exactly how individual employees are completing different task and see who is idle.

Using Web Dispatch, the warehouse manager is able to track employees through a number of different performance reports. In dealing with an employee who may not be working as hard as expected, the manager can use the Picker InActivity Report to see precisely how long an employee has been doing nothing. Another report, the Employee Activity Report, shows what an employee did throughout the day. The Employee Statistics Report allows the manager to sort by activity (i.e. picking, receiving, or cycle counting) to monitor employees.

Improving employee productivity and efficiencies is one of the primary goals of an automated warehousing system. The return on investment (ROI) provided by these efficiencies usually justifies a company’s investment in an automated system with short payback. If you have questions about the different employee performance tools available in Sage ACCPAC WMS please contact us at info@axisintegratedsolutions.com. We’re here to help.

Managing Deferred Revenue and Expense Transactions in SAGE Accpac ERP

Revenue and Expense Deferrals for Sage Accpac ERP helps companies amortize maintenance or service related contract revenue over the life of the contract. Revenue is recognized periodically based on the number of days of service the customer is entitled to in that period. Companies get the advantage of compliance with the Public Company Accounting and Investor Protection Act of 2002 (also known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002). Although not specifically covered under the Act, non-public entities are also finding that bankers, investors, and acquisition candidates are now conditioned to expect increased transparency and real-time disclosures, in effect placing a greater accounting and reporting burden on companies who are not legally obligated to comply with the Act. Revenue and Expense Deferrals helps companies meet these additional demands.

A good example is the sale of a service contract with duration of one year or more. Under GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, it is prohibited to recognize the full contract value in the period of the sale. Instead, the amount should be recognized periodically, depending on how many days of service the customer is entitled to in each period. Revenue and Expense Deferrals initially removes the whole revenue amount from the General Ledger account it was posted to. Then, as each period nears its completion, the respective portion of revenue is posted back to the original account. Thus, the revenue stream is spread over the life of the contract, instead of being posted fully at the beginning of the contract.

The application can be configured to process transactions from any Sage Accpac ERP module, including 3rd Party applications, as long as they generate a GL Batch and they support Accpac’s Transaction Analysis and Optional Field Creator module. Revenue and Expense Deferrals comes pre-configured for General Ledger, Accounts Receivable & Order Entry. For more information, please contact us at info@axisintegratedsolutions.com.

Disaster and Business Continuity Planning is a Must for Today’s Business Environment

With the fifth year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack and the hurricane season upon us, the awareness among business leaders of the need for disaster and business continuity planning is at an all time high.

Business owners invest a tremendous amount of time, money and resources to make their ventures successful, so it would seem natural for owners to take steps to protect those investments. While the importance of disaster and business continuity planning is self-evident, the urgency of the task is often blunted by the immediate demands of the workplace. Often the business person is prone to the all-too-human tendency to believe that “it won’t happen to me”. In the meantime, businesses will continue to suffer setbacks that often could have been reduced or prevented altogether had someone taken the time to plan and take action on strategies to recover if the unexpected occurs.

We all recognize that disaster can strike anywhere, at any time. Disaster and business continuity planning is an integral part of any successful business plan.

Consider the following:

• An estimated 25 percent of businesses do not reopen following a major disaster, according to the Institute for Business and Home Safety.
• The number of declared major disasters more than doubled in the 1990s.
• A business can be hurt indirectly when a disaster strikes customers or another business, such as a supplier or distributor.
• The realities of a post 9/11 world and increasing dependency on computer technology call for additional protection of business operations.
• The 9/11 Commission emphasized the critical importance of preparedness in protecting business assets and safeguarding employee’s lives.

“Private-sector preparedness is not a luxury; it is a cost of doing business in the post-9/11 world. It is ignored at tremendous potential cost in lives, money, and national security.”
- 9/11 Commission Final Report, Chapter 12

When convincing people of the need for disaster preparedness, too much emphasis is placed on dramatic, worst-case scenarios – as if these were the only possible disasters that might occur. Many businesses are impacted on a daily basis by unexpected events. Thieves steal, fire burns, weather and water destroys, equipment fails, even human error can impact business operations.

While disaster and business continuity planning as a whole entails addressing many aspects of a business operation, how we protect and our ability recover one of our most critical business assets – our data – is an important element.

Many businesses only backup to a local device, leaving their data vulnerable to a local disaster. For this reason many companies have made the move to an online backup and recovery solution for the critical task of data backup. In addition to the added security and reliability that an online backup service provides, it allows businesses to get their data off-site and stores it in secure data centers away from local or regional disasters that may impact their business.

“Backing up data to a local device means that any catastrophic event that destroyed a company’s primary server would likely destroy the backup media as well,” said Adam W. Couture, principal research analyst for Gartner. “Companies hoping to protect their data for the long haul must look at using remote backup and recovery service providers.”

AXIS can help you check Remote Backup and Recovery Solution off your disaster planning check list through our partnership with CoreVault. CoreVault has the right online backup solution for companies like yours that are serious about protecting their business-critical data. For more information on CoreVault solutions, visit us at AXIS or e-mail us at info@axisintegratedsolutions.com.

Audit Logger for Sage Accpac ERP

Audit Logger for ACCPAC provides intelligent auditing by monitoring user interactions with the system views from within the Sage Accpac ERP environment.

Auditing Features

This solution provides auditing on view inserts, updates and deletions to be stored and later reported on. Each view can be independently customized to suit the clients’ unique auditing requirements. Audit Logger stores both before and after images of the audited fields.

• Ability to set auditing as inactive per view for bulk updates or import operations.
• Records authenticated Windows user name and domain from the workstation where the change occurred.
• Records IP address from the workstation where the change occurred. In a thin client environment, the audited IP address is that of the client workstation, not the server.

Design Features

Audit Logger for Sage Accpac ERP is developed in the ACCPAC SDK, which provides several important advantages over auditing products implemented at the database level:

• Totally seamless operation
• Minimal performance overhead
• Supports all Advantage Series databases

Operating at the application layer, Audit Logger creates the auditing profile in real-time based on knowledge of field attributes and company setup. This provides zero-maintenance operation and durability to view changes from version upgrades and any third-party extensions to the views.

Configuration

Audit Logger provides an easy and intuitive interface displaying the supported activated modules in each company. Each view can be easily configured and audit settings are immediately effective for all users.

Reporting

Reports can be produced showing view changes, insertions and deletions along with all vital auditing fields including timestamp, user, windows user, client IP address. Reporting can be filtered by view, user or date range and can include all fields selected to be audited or just fields that have been changed in the audit.

Availability & System Requirements

Available Editions:

• Sage Accpac 500 ERP (Enterprise Edition)
• Sage Accpac 200 ERP (Corporate Edition)
• Sage Accpac 100 ERP (Small Business Edition)

Supported databases:

• IBM DB2
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Oracle
• Pervasive

Web Deployable: Yes

Frequently Asked Questions

Q – Can I set up an Inventory Control Bill of Material to have a sub-assembly beneath an assembly?

A – Yes. In Sage Accpac ERP version 5.4 the Inventory Control Bills of Material feature now supports unlimited levels of assemblies and sub-assemblies in a single bill of material, providing a sophisticated tool for manufacturing or assembling items for sale.

Each bill of material level includes a list of component parts and quantities, as well as the fixed and variable costs for manufacturing, such as labor cost, materials, and overhead.

To make it easier to handle large BOMs, Inventory Control’s Bills of Material entry screen now provides a tree view that displays, and lets you navigate through, all components and subassemblies.

You can also drill down further into a sub-assembly bill of material by double-clicking on the sub-assembly part number in the tree view.

Note: Multi-Level Bills of Material are available only in Sage Accpac 500 ERP.

Q – Can I set up customer item numbers to use when entering Order Entry Orders?

A – Yes. In Sage Accpac ERP version 5.4 the new Inventory Control Customer Details form lets you set up a list of numbers that your customers use for your inventory items.

The Customer Details icon is located under the Inventory Control Items and Price Lists folder.

Create the Customer Detail by first choosing the item from your inventory. Specify the customer, the customers’ item number and their description of the item. Enter the unit of measure, as well as any relevant comments and particular instructions for handling or shipping. Comments and instructions appear on Orders when the customer item number is used in Order Entry

You can then enter the specified customer item number when entering an Order Entry Order.

Note: Customer item numbers are available only in Sage Accpac 500 ERP.

Q - What does the Dashboard Tab at the Company Level do?

A – The Dashboard tab within the Company context can be used to display a management overview of the status of the customer account — a chart of overdue cases, a list of high priority opportunities, or a snapshot of upcoming meetings.

To view a company dashboard:

1. Within the context of a company, select the Dashboard tab.
If your System Administrator has created a default company dashboard, then the dashboard content will be displayed. The System Administrator sets up the default company dashboard in Administration | Users | Standard Dashboards.
The content displayed is specific to the selected company.
If no default company dashboard exists, then the Dashboard Content page is displayed for editing.

2. Select the Modify Dashboard button to edit the company dashboard.
Note: Any changes made to the company dashboard apply to the Dashboard tab of all companies.

Q - Can I run Reports from the Dashboard?

A – Yes. Reports selected as Favorite reports, which are displayed in the My Favorite Reports category, can be run from the Dashboard.

1. Select My CRM | Dashboard | Modify Dashboard. Select Other from the Filter By drop-down list. Select the Add button next to the content called Favorite Reports, and click on Save.
2. A new content area is displayed called Favorite Reports. Click on the hyperlink of the report you want to run.
3. The report output is displayed in a new browser window.

Q - How do I make my customized reports to appear in a specific order?

A - To sequence customized reports on a menu, follow the steps below:

1. Open System Manager.
2. Under the Maintain menu, point-to Customize and click Reports.
3. Double-click the report that must be sequenced, from the navigation tree.
4. Click Edit.
5. Type a sequence number into the Seq# field, this determines the order in which it will display on menu. The lower the sequence number, the higher it will display on the menu.

Example:
Four custom reports are created for ARIRED: report-a, report-b, report-c, report-d. These should be displayed on the menu in the following order: report-c, report-a, report-b, report-d. In order to display these reports in this particular order, the sequence number should be assigned as follows:

Q - How do I get rid of the "Error 1526: Invalid Column Name 'Subcode'” message that appears while posting to General Ledger?

A - The issue has been documented under Product Trouble Report (PTR) 78098 and has been fixed in Sage Pro 7.3 Service Pack 1. It occurs when Project Accounting or any Manufacturing module has not been installed. This issue can also be resolved by adding the Jobcode, Phase and Subcode fields to the GLDENT and GLDUNP tables and entering the corresponding field information. Please refer to the table below for more information. Follow the steps below:

Note: The following should only be done by a Sage Certified Consultant or Business Partner. Create a full and verified backup before proceeding. This should first be attempted in a test installation and the results should be fully verified before implementing in a live system.

1. Open System Manager.
2. Under the Maintain menu, point to Dictionary and click Tables.
3. Type "GLDENT" into the Table ID field.
4. Select "Field" from the list box.
5. Click Select.
6. Type Jobcode into the Field Name field; a message appears indicating the field is not found.
7. Click Add; a message appears asking whether to copy the default values from an existing record to the new field.
8. Click No.
9. Refer to the table below and enter the corresponding values for Description, Base Type, Length and Input Mask.
10. Click Save.
11. Repeat steps 6-11 for the Phase and Subcode fields.
12. Repeat steps 3-12 for the GLDUNP table.
13. Update from Data Dictionary for GL in all companies.

Field Property Information