The Reality of Moving from MISys SAE to MISys Manufacturing
Transcript – Abridged
Presenters
- Ed Nejdlik, MISys Implementation Consultant, SJM Comm. (EN)
- Charlie Kimbell, VP, Sales and Marketing, MISys, Inc. (CK)
(CK) With me is Ed Nejdlik down in Arkansas. I'd like to welcome you to this webinar, where we will talk about the difference between SAE and MISys Manufacturing SBM. The reason we wanted to put on this webinar is because we have been getting questions about the difference between the two systems from many Business Partners and end users.
Many of you in the business partner community may know of (Ed) or you are soon too. The goal today is to cover the major difference between the two systems.
We will spend 40-45 minutes going over the differences and then answer questions at the end. With that, here's Ed.
(EN) I'd like to walk you through the differences and similarities between the SBM system or MISys Manufacturing and the grandfathered system, that was lovingly called SAE. Right off the get go, you see the screens are considerably different. MISys Manufacturing has more of a Windows Outlook type approach to it. Many functions have been relocated to other sections. In the new system we only have five or six areas where in SAE there were like fourteen.
As an example, the planning module now includes what used to be called the "stock check module"along with the MRP or the Master Planning system in the old module. So you are going to see a lot of differences in where things are located, but overall it functions much the same. Many, many major improvements in it.
A couple of things I'd like to point out quickly: SBM runs in its own database, it is not nested in the Accpac database. And SBM only runs with Sequel. You can get a free copy of Sequel Express when you purchase the SBM software if that is sufficient for the number of users you need. If you need to install a much more robust version of Sequel then go up ahead and let SBM run under it. So the gist of it is that if you are running Accpac and MISys today in Sequel, you are going to put SBM in there. If you are running under a Pervasive database and you don't want to change that, keep your Accpac running under Pervasive, install the MISys with the Sequel Express, and take off and run.
Now one other major difference is that the MISys Manufacturing Module now only ties up one Accpac LanPak. You do not need extra LanPaks for every MISys client install. That is a big difference- some people converted recently from SAE to SBM. They dropped the payment of the maintenance on them going forward which is a major savings. It will integrate from all versions of SAE Accpac from v5.4 on up including the new v6.
One other major difference is that SBM is not going to appear in the Accpac desktop menus. It is a completely standalone function and you bring it up on your screen when you need it. Again, when you first log in, you are going to notice it is a completely different screen. One of the neat things that we have now are these dashboard alerts. There's a standard pack of alerts that comes with it and you can create a great variety of custom alerts on your own. You can even modify these standard alerts by going into the configure function of the alert. Says it is an overdue PO it is looking at PO detail. The formula says that the Purchase order line status is open. The Purchase Order Detail Current Due < Today + 0 Days. Well, I might want to say, "That's not good enough, I want to look at purchase orders that are due in within the next ten days." I'll save that and now that's what my PO alert is going to be based on. These PO alerts are per user, so every user can have additional alerts of their own or they can customize the existing alerts. If you check that little box, as soon as you login to the system, that alert is going to have that data there waiting for you. If you only want to see it on demand, just click on it. Its going to run it and give you the results.
One other thing I think they really did a fantastic job on are these roadmaps. Now I think Dave Brown may have run out of colored pencils because not every function has them, but the ones that have them are really helpful. So I can look at shortages today, what if today, future shortages, future what-ifs. And I can drill right down into the function from here. You'll see us showing these more as we go on thru the system, but in terms of walking people thru what to do, where to go when you want to do something, it is really great.
It is structured very similar to an SAE from a database (See here is where he ran out of colored pencils). So this is structured very similar in the master files you had. Item Masters, Bills of Materials, Suppliers, Jobs, Locations, Tools. These have been relocated a little bit and there's been an addition called "Work Center Classes" which allows you to set a hierarchy and assign work centers to it so that you can actually substitute on the fly -moving something from drill press A to drill press B just because of what's available to use. I don't know how deeply we can get into that today, but that is a new feature establishing Work Center Classes.
In your Item Masters you have all of the same features you had before plus a few new ones. Before, on Stock tab you would see the Accpac sales order information on a location line. They have now moved it to a separate tab of its own and you can see the information about the various sales locations. There's a nice little tab here also called a Stock Movement. When you take an inventory snapshot, it's going to update this stock movement table and you can see what happened to inventory at a given location looking at one time period and then looking at another time period. We now have the ability to assign alternate items. So I may now be able to substitute 12 gauge wire with 14 gauge wire depending on the application. So you can document that information in here also. There is now a feature that has been added called "Custom Fields." These custom fields are pretty neat- you can do a lot of different things with them. They can be look up tables, somewhat like the optional fields used to be. But there are a couple of additional capabilities in it and those optional fields can be part of your search criteria. So here is that REV ID field I set up and I might say "I want to see everything at REV A." And my selector list will be driven by that. You might have lists going by who the supplier is, what the family category is, all sorts of things.
There's one thing on the Bills of Material I want to point out. In the old version, you could have a blank REV Number. Your standard beginning number was a blank. SBM, or MISys Manufacturing, does not allow a blank for the REV field. So what you need to do if you are converting from SAE to SBM, one of the migration screens, or one of the piece of information it asks you for in the migration is what do you want to make the REV number of anything that is now blank. Make sure you make it pretty unique so that it doesn't stumble across some other REVs that you might have in there. It can kinda mess you up trying to do the conversion if you don't watch out for that.
In the BOMs you have your materials as before but you can also define alternatives if you have them established at the Item Master Level. So in this particular BOM in saying that I will accept having an alternate W14 or a W-12. Otherwise the BOMS are almost identical again. You have your Routings, your Materials, your Revision Control, you have your Document Attachments. Almost everything is the same as before, a few extra things we can look at. I'll definitely make sure we talk about Work Orders because that is a completely new feature although it is really a throw back to the old DOS days.
Question: "Can you sort the items in the BOM?"
(EN) I believe the answer is totally no. However you if you want to resequence the BOM and I want the R12 to be the first item in the BOM, I can move it to the top. If I want R12 to be down three lines, I have to do it this way. It is a good question for the tech guys.
So I mentioned when we were talking a little earlier, we have made these changes in the Work Centers and in the Work Center Classes. So if we were to establish a Work Center Class and we just called it Fin for the lack of anything else, I could save it. I could then in my Work Centers say, "This is going to be a part of Fin." Later on you will see how we can actually utilize that piece of information. So you set up your Work Centers basically the same as you did before, defining your resources that are going to be in there- labor and overhead whatever you are doing with them, how you are charging it in there per minute, per unit. And if you notice on the header there is a place called Shift and there is a place for Class. Shift used to be a separate tab on here. Now there is a set up we will look at a little bit later where you define your Shifts and you just include the appropriate Shift for this department or this Work Center, and then you have your runtime, queue times, etc. One big difference: efficieny percentage in SAE was just a pretty looking number, it did nothing. In SBM, or MISys Manufacturing, it will actually be used in calculating times so it is a major change. If you know you need to build 75% or 85% efficiency, this will come into play for you.
You have your inquiries for your Work Center Loads very similar to what you had in the old system also. You can see a dispatch list, a load chart. I am not going to spend time going thru all of them but they are basically what you had before.
Again, some of the things have been moved around. Stock Control was primarily to transfer stock in the SAE version of the system and Serial Lot Tracking and BIN Tracking and Physical Inventory have been brought under this wing as opposed to being separate ones by themselves. But the functions are what you had before just things have been moved around a little bit differently. One other nice thing that they have done: before you used to have to hit pull down buttons to see how much inventory was in a given location. Now if I say, "I want to move something from home it is immediately showing me what is in inventory in home. I want to move it to my electric department, I immediately see what was there. So don't have to hit those drill downs and make sure you are not moving more inventory than you had before, it just pops right up on the screen for you.
One other thing that is completely different in SBM from SAE is how reserve is treated. In the old system, reserve was just kinda like a sticky note. It said I had 100 in stock but I reserved 20 for something. But it didn't take that 20 out of stock. In SBM when you reserve something it does actually reduce the stock and increase the quantity in the reserve bucket. Just different, not pro or con better or worse, but definitely different.
In production they have added Work Orders. A Work Order is very similar to the Assemble From Stock function except that in this one document I can keep track of multiple assemblies. So I might have a project going for somebody where I have to build 10 or 12 different things for them to satisfy one big order. I can put them all in here as just Work Order items, and do Assemble From Stocks, Reserving Inventory, Allocating it, Completing it, Transferring it to sales and so forth or this Work Order can actually be tracking a manufacturing order. So, I've had to do it in a Manufacturing Order because I need to change what is going into the item or whatever. But I also want a place where I can look at what's going on and I can get right to that manufacturing order. It is really a nice additional feature. Its primary purpose is to replace the Assemble From Stock with something where you can watch something much closer but it can also be used as an umbrella over a series of manufacturing orders.
This is the part that I really like. There is a thing called "Production Schedule." It is going to show me what is going on in Work Orders if I have them, what is going on in Manufacturing Orders if I have them. I can look at it by order number. I can look at it by what customer it is for. I can look at it by what item is being built or I can look at by my shop operations for a given period of time. Let's just throw some dates in here real quick. And here is all my MO numbers, the operation code, the work center, my time frames. And I have a problem, I have some capacity issues. So I need to do something to reschedule these things. I can grab this thing, drag it over to here and magically my conflicts have disappeared. If I save these changes, it is going to go into those MOs and reschedule the dates on that operation in that department. What it is telling me is that it is a single level change and if I want the changes incorporated into all the other levels, I do need to go back and reinitialize my master schedule. So you can realign them here but you do need to do a second step which is to reinitialize your Master Schedule. There is one other feature on MOs that I have to be honest that I'm not sure why I would use it- but you can actually from a manufacturing order, if I can find the right little icon, I can actually create a sales order from here. So I'm taking a manufacturing order and I'm shoving into Accpac as a customer order in order entry going to this customer. I already did it and that is why that number is there. It is a great little feature but I haven't figured out if it is a good thing to do or bad thing to do.
(CK) : The idea of that was to be able to create a quote in a manufacturing order and then if you win the quote to go back and create that as a sales order."
(EN): That is a good point and I never thought about it that way. I am sure it was well thought out and has a definite use, as I said I hadn't even thought about it- getting the quote here and then shoving it over as an accepted order but that is a very good explanation as to why you would use it. See even I learn something in these things. And then again, things have changed from moving away from little buttons and tabs to little icons telling you the things that you can do. This is also really neat: let me get to a good order.
We had nothing like this in the SAE world. When I create this MO and I look at my material tab, it immediately shows me items that I have shortages on. And if I go all the way over to the far side, I see that they are on order and I can drill right down to the PO and find out who it is coming from and when it is supposed to be here. And maybe move right into expediting on the go or something. They had to have gotten a wholesale deal on drills because they have added drill downs all over the place in the SBM version- they are really neat what you can do with them.
Lets move on to purchasing, quick. Supply Schedule: very similar to that display on the MOs and the WOs by purchase order by Supplier, by Item, and as you drag across you immediately get the information on it and you can decide what you want to do from there. These date bars are adjustable, so just dragging and dropping you can move things around to get different perspectives on things. One issue that was always a bit of a bugaboo in SAE was if you received an invoice from a vendor and the price you received on that invoice was different than the price on the PO and you couldn't get back to do anything about correcting it such as un-receiving it, changing the price, re-receiving it and so forth what ended up happening is you had some money hanging kinda like a loose chad in your PO Receipt Control Account I believe it was. In SBM what they have done when they recognized that difference, they put the correct amount into that PO Receipt Control Account and pushed the difference into an entry for PPV so you get away from that problem from having that money hanging out there unexplained. I have a note here about interfacing the Accpac AP: we will get back to that in a moment- I want to make sure we get into the planning session.
Question: How will it work with a batch system in Accpac? Do you run the purchasing and adjusting when you are actually going to make the purchases?
(EN) Right… I'll go ahead and jump there real quick.
In Company options there is an option here that says, "Automatically Post the AP Invoice Batches." If you have kind of issues or things where you have to go into that AP Batch and manipulate things, don't turn this switch on, leave it off. We will create a batch in AP very similar to the way we did before, you can go in and make changes in it. That may be what he was asking. We used to bring up the actual AP Batch in the MiSys purchasing invoice function. We no longer bring that up right in there, but if you leave this unchecked you can always make some changes on the AP side in your AP batch but most of the things that were issues before that caused us to have to play with that batch distribution they have kinda cleaned those up and they are not anywhere near the issues that they used to be. But if they want to bring that up at the end, we can always get into it again.
Okay, Planning: The old Check Stock and Buyer's Advice have been moved here along with the MRP function. And you still have the ability to create scheduling batches. Those scheduling batches can be built from a forecast sucking the invoice information out of your Accpac order entry just like we could before, and then you have your master production schedules. Again, multiple users can have multiple schedules and play games with them. Now one difference is that you used to establish time buckets in the SAE. SBM does everything on a discrete planning basis. I can't start the schedule before today. Go out as far as I want to go, treat Autobuild Override just like I did before, treat Shortage Basis just the way I did before, Zero Minimum Reorder. I've got some what used to be kindof on that filter tab in the SAE basically really is here now. What do I want to include in there? Do I want to use alternate locations if I have them? Do I want to consider those alternate BOM components if I have them? Bring in my sales inventory, my sales orders. If I want to create Discrete Pegged Orders, I could go ahead and actually create pegged orders coming out of here, but I'm going to leave it at like the consolidated level. Which before you could only say all or one location, now I can select groups of locations to plan.
On my options tab, Current Inventory, or Current Activity Scheduled or Inventory less than Minimum. Take Everything, only include certain levels of things. If I am running Shop Floor Control and I want to consider optional Shifts in my planning, I can. Then I can go to Initialize- now this is a small database, so it is going to run real quick, no question about it. But even on a large database, this thing runs unbelievably faster than the SAE version did, especially in what we used to call AutoSchedule JIT has now been renamed to a new functionality called Resolve Shortages. So here is my "ah- shuckems" and I want to resolve all the shortages. And again this is the new equivalent to the old AutoSchedule JIT which was a good thing to start and go to lunch.
It also tells me that I have not been very good about planning things when I should have. These are all things that should have been taken care of before today. But that's the way I am…. When those are done, and again if you had a scheduling batch you would have posted that batch in there and added that to your requirements list. Now I want to create an MRP and because maybe you are a one-man shop, it gives you the option "Do you want to stop and create your purchase orders right now?" Well, I don't- I've got somebody else who does those. And somebody else takes care of the Production Orders. So now our plan is done, and again just like in the SAE version, if I go to my Reports section and go to Planning, here is that big scheduling audit my Cash Commitment, my Purchasing Advice reports, my Production Advice reports— all of the reports that you had before are in Reports now instead of being an icon on the MRP or Master Scheduling Desktop. But then Purchasing has the Processed MRP just like they had before. Little bit different layout now- before if the item had multiple demands, it was in yellow and you had to blow it out and look at the details. Now the details are right down here and you can do a little shopping if you wanted to by saying "Okay, I'm going to take this item, this item and this item. I'm going to take those three quantities and combine them together on one PO, I'll wait and order this quantity separate. So, again you have a little bit more control- it is a little bit easier to work your way thru now in this lower section with the detail. Production has basically the same thing.
QUESTION: When resolving shortages, it schedules the MOs, but does it reschedule the Purchase Orders?
(EN) That's why you have to rerun the plan. When you reschedule those shop orders, it tells you gotta go rerun the plan. Well when you rerun the plan, what effectively you get is a kind of a mixed bag there of when your Purchase Orders are coming in if you have already scheduled them and when you need 'em and then if you really are trying to keep it nice and clean you'd have to go into the POs with the Expedite function and start shifting dates with the suppliers.
QUESTION: If you have multiple MOs that are short the same part, how does the system know which MO becomes complete if you receive only enough stock to cover one?
(EN) Well, that is the psychic version that hasn't been finished yet. You still would have to go to your shortage reports if you wanted to look at the universal shortage of a part number. When it is looking at those MOs, it is looking at them in a vacuum. One MO- I need 20 pieces. I've got 18 in stock, I'm short. Another MO needs 30 pieces, it is still looking at those same 18 in stock. So when you have a shortage on an item, I guess the answer to that question is that they really need to look at the total requirement for that part number before they go to expedite the PO.
QUESTION: If you have one MO that needs 10 items and you have 18 in stock then you want to complete that item.
(EN) Well, even if I started assembly of that item, if I did a Start Assembly of that MO, it would suck those pieces out of inventory and now the others would be still showing that they were short, but this one would know it had enough inventory to go through. But that is a valid point- they are still individual pictures looking at an MO by itself.
Let's look at some accounting implications rather quickly and then some administration and housekeeping and then hopefully we'll have at least 10 minutes for questions.
The Accounting Function has been revised a little bit. It used to be called Transaction Processing. You now have your Period End in here, you have your Cost Adjustments in here, your Chart of Accounts, Your Account Sets, various Accounting reports, Tax Services information, Currency Service. You can update and populate this stuff from Accpac but it is also maintainable on its own.
Chart of Accounts: MISys used to dive into the Accpac Chart of Accounts and tell you which accounts were available. You now have to maintain a copy of that Chart of Accounts within MISys, but again these are all things that are importable. But it does maintain a separate chart of Accounts on its own, just like we used to and still do maintain a separate Supplier File. Cost Adjustments are basically the same as you had before: Specific Items, Range of Items, Batch of Items. Period End has a couple of important things: One, you can pre analyze it— make sure you didn't set something up in MISys that doesn't agree to Accpac Start of Accounts. And you can print unposted items, you can print your last posting, take an inventory snapshot which is going to always be there so you can compare time periods and it will update that Stock Movement Table on the Item Master. And there is an Undo button. Now the Undo button will take away the last posting flags in MISys but it doesn't do anything to the accounting side, so if you for whatever reason you have to go and unpost it, hopefully you have not been posting your batches automatically in the Accpac General Ledger. So if I found something really screwed up, I'd go delete that batch out of the Accpac GL Transactions and I'd undo the posting here.
All SubLedger Reports are now saved where before the system only saved the last one. So every SubLedger that's ever been run there's going to be a SubLedger Report out there. SubLedger 0 is always what has not yet been posted. So, if you want to take a look at this thing before you get to your period end, come in and print SubLedger 0 and it will show you what you are going to push over to Accpac.
One other point: In the old SAE system we had two methods we called Overlaid GL accounts and Segmented GL accounts. SBM as it exists today only supports the concept of an Overlaid Account Number. Even if you have segments today, I believe you can set the account number up such that it is the root number plus whatever segments you had in MISys as just a flat account number and my opinion is and I haven't fully tested it, is that it will push to Accpac okay. But that is probably another question Charlie could ask somebody.
You have your Users, you have your User Security Groups, there is a whole list of things you can do of what you allow a User Group to have and what you don't allow a User Group to have. Really some detailed choices what you can make on a Security Profile.
Your production Calendar if you are running Shop Floor Control is established here and also as I mentioned, those Production Shifts. So I set up this Shift which could be used in multiple departments, but is the Start Time, the Break Time, the Stop Time, the days they work and so forth. So you set them up a little bit differently and then you just include them into the Work Center.
Housekeeping has a whole bunch of things. You can back a database up right from here. The only way you can restore the backup though is thru System Administrator. You have your Change Item Number function, Change Supplier, Delete Obsolete Numbers. This one is really different than before. Before you could just replace Part A with Part B. Now I can actually remove something from all the bills or a range of bills, or I can add something to every bill within a given range. You have your Check for Recursive BOMs, your Reset Statistics, all the basic maintenance things you had plus a Restart Maintenance of our own now instead of being under the Accpac one. Update your activity monitors, Check Data Integrity, Purge Master Log.
Here is where the custom fields come in. So, I've got one custom field set up in Items right now, in my Bill of Material Header, I might want to add some field- I might even call it Author, anything that is a single line text, I'm saying the default value is blank. These can be a single line text. Date/Time, True/False, Selection List, whole bunch of things you can do there. And as I said, these custom fields are searchable in the Master Files and they are includable into the crystal reports. And there have been several sessions on that plus the 5.0.0.4 release that just came out has quite a few new changes in it now for customizing reports.
Company Options: What accounting system are you tying to?
How do you want your Period End Consolidation, what functions? Company Database, Manufacturing Vendor ID, how do we trade a sales adjustment? Multiple Currencies, automatically post those AP batches, Your Stock Check information, your Costing Information.
One thing: FIFO or LIFO will not allow negative inventory. Standard and Average are the only ones that give you the choice of allowing negative inventory.
Here is your controls on your incrementing on your serial and lot numbers and so forth. Just one quick side note- if you are into Serial Lot Tracking, you can either say yes or no about tracking Serial Lot numbers thru WIP. So if I don't want to track it in WIP it is only going to ask me what I use when I get to the completion stage. If I want to track it in WIP, I turn the switch on.
Formats, Decimal Point Control, the Display: How many records per page do I want to display on a search, the bigger the number the more you see. The bigger the number, the longer it takes to display yoru page. Change your colors if you want. Again, here's the Accounting Interface information, and here is the default account set. If you are into wanting to use emails and you're not using some kid of exotic email server, you establish that in here.
QUESTION: Conversions from SAE to MISys manufacturing SBM. What are the things that both business partners and end users should be aware of—what should they do in preparation for that?
(EN) The very first thing is that you have to have your SAE system to where you have no integrity errors in it. Now over and above that there are some things that in SBM they have really tightened down the screws on in terms of integrity errors. That, for whatever reason, were allowed to happen and were not caught in SAE. A couple of the more common ones I've run into is a purchase order in SAE that is a piece of garbage really. And it has an old vendor number in eth PO. No vendor number in the PO Header. There is no way in the normal SAE maintenance that you can delete that thing. You end up having to go into the data tables with the Pervasive tool or the Sequel tools and get it out of there. I've also run across several occasions where a line type II or line type I, whatever is an inventory line type in a PO Detail did not have an item number in it. And again, that is one that you can't get rid of in the normal SAE desktop business. You have to go into the table and get rid of it. SAE in the Item Master maintains a couple of fields for preferred vendor and preferred manufacturer. I recommend that you go in and blank those out with a utility thru the database maintenance because for whatever reason SAE would have allowed an obsolete vendor or an obsolete manufacturer's number to stay in there. So that is another one that I have run into problems with. There is also a rule in SBM that you have to have a manufacturer ID or a manufacturer's number or whatever terminology you want to use for it. So, I have to give this something, it is not edited, it just has to be there. SAE did not require this, so when you try to import them, you would come up with errors that there was a blank manufacturing number. Again, the only way I have been able to get rid of those was to go in and delete them out of the table because it is not something that you could add.
The other area I've run into problems with is the transaction history. There's a lot of things that could be left out in Transaction History that the SAE integrity check does not look at. SBM craps out because of it. So again, some of the errors you will be able to correct by going back into SAE, make the correction, restart your conversion. Some of them, the only way around them is to go into the database and play games. And then restart the conversion. The restart function works very well now. In the beginning there wasn't even one there. Now the one that is there works very nicely. I have not looked at the 5.4 notes to see if there were anything in there related to improving things with the migration or not, but I'm going to assume the things that were a problem are still a problem.
(CK) The notes about what was included is on the website in terms of what was included in 5.0.0.4.
QUESTION: In Period End: In SAE all must be out to run Period End. Do all users have to be out to run Period End in SBM?
(EN) Yes, it is still an exclusive function. Same with most of the cost adjustment functions.
QUESTION: On alerts: are Dashboard Alerts stored within the Sequel database or are they local to the Work Station where the client is installed?
(EN) Those are Client specific. They are stored in the database because Charlie can move from one computer to another. So when Charlie signs on, it is going to get certain information from tout of the actual database global files for him. But most of the settings in terms of lines per page and things like that- a lot of those are work station specific.
Oh- there was one thing I did not point out. You do not have to have accounting installed on every MISys Client Station if that user does not have any need to be tied into Accounting. In other words, if this machine is out on the shop floor and all we are doing is putting in move tickets and Start and Stop Assemblies and Stock Adjustments and stuff like that tht do not need to directly connect to Accpac, then we don't have to have Accpac installed on that PC. It is a client based concept, in other words every workstation that's running SBM should have MISys installed on that workstation. There are people who are running it thru terminal services off of their server only. But that is kinda not something that MISys has been able to support and check out. I know of several that are doing it and it works fine but it is not in the MISys standard installation instructions.
QUESTION: In terms of locations- when you multiple site accounting producing the same product in both places with the same SKU or item number, how do you account for the variance in separate GLs?
(EN) It gets a little complicated in that he would have to set up account sets related to how he wanted a given location to be feeding assembly controls and inventories and variances and so forth. And then he would have to take that account set and connect it to his location. So I can say that Location Electric is going to pump its data to the general ledger based on this account set. Whether he can address every condition he needs, that straight forward you'd have to look at more into the details of what he is doing. But this is not that different from how you could have done it in SAE.
QUESTION: Account Codes: The account codes for product do not get entered into Accpac. Where in MISys do they go? Currently they add on to PO but does it recall the code then the next time you order that item?
(EN) Is this referring to GL Account Sets where you can tie individual item numbers again to different inventory amounts and so forth… see if the question can be clarified.
QUESTION: Should we minimize the transaction log when converting from SAE up to SBM?
(EN) It would be the best thing you could do. Realistically, you have to keep 2 to 3 years for them, but if you have a client that has every transaction history record they have ever had since they bought MISys 7 years ago you really need to purge that thing as much as you can. And you don't actually have to purge it, when you do the migration there actually is an option when you go to import the SAE, I can say, "Only give me transactions going back to January 2010 or 2011." So I don't actually have to purge them, I can just say forget about anything before this date- don't bring it over. It might run a little faster if they were purged out ahead of time because the conversion wouldn't be checking those dates, but if for some reason you can't do it that way, you can control what dates you bring in here and then here's where you put that coverall number to rename your BOMs that have blank revisions, and here is where you tell it that you want to resume a previous input. Anything that you can get rid of to reduce the size of the SAE database is definitely going to reduce the amount of time required to migrate it over.
QUESTION: Can MISys calculate a true FIFO even with Sub Assemblies?
(EN) Well, it is going to calculate a FIFO based on the costs of the Sub Assemblies being brought into it. Now, FIFO is going to be first in, first out, so if I had four of those Sub Assemblies in inventory, at an old FIFO cost, that is the cost that is going to come up to the FIFO cost for the item I'm building. So, if I were to look at the cost of a Sub Assembly today at the top FIFO layer, that's not necessarily the cost I'm going to use consuming that Sub Assembly into an upper level Assembly. It's going to pull out the oldest ones first. If I've got 4 in one layer and 3 in another layer and I need 5, I'm going to get 4 at one price and 1 at another price and it gets all smashed together.
QUESTION: Can you change the Ship To location once a PO has been saved or posted, or is it unchangeable as it was in SAE?
(EN) Here's my Ship To location, this is a PO that has been recorded. Yup- you can change it. Second question though is did it change it on the Detail line? (checking…) The answer is, "Yes, but Beware the Details." (no, it didn't change in details.)
QUESTION: Are both Accpac and MISys tables updated for receiving into AP for Vouchers matching at the same time or do we need to perform a Batch Upload into Accpac from MISys?
(EN) Okay, MISys does a real time creation of the Accpac batch which is only half the transaction. The other half is still sitting in SBM and does not come up to your general ledger until you do your Period End. The one transaction that drives everybody crazy is the posting of an invoice. When you do the invoice thing in SBM, you have to tell it the invoice number. Now you also have the Transaction Dates and the Bill Due Dates that you can set here, which basically went to the Accounts Payable terms automatically before. I'm not sure how well it uses the Accpac terms to be honest with you. So when I invoice this, its connecting to Accpac, its creating a batch in Accpac immediately. But again, that is half the transaction, the other half is sitting still in SBM waiting for the Period End to be preformed. And the account that is actually getting all discombobulated…. The PO Receipt Control… posting that invoice in MISys makes an entry into here and over in Accpac the other side of that is waiting to be pushed to your Accounts Payable. So, when you receive inventory, you debit the Inventory Asset, you credit the PO Liability. When you Invoice it, you debit the PO Liability, credit the PO Receipt Control. Those are all transactions within MISys waiting for Period End. Over in Accpac, when you post that AP batch, you are crediting your AP liability and you are debiting this account. So the debit side is sitting there in Accpac waiting for the MISys Period End to be run. That one confuses people. There is a whole section in the Help Manual of SBM that is very good. Anybody that wants some detailed information about what happens when you are costing or running average costing or FIFO costing, it really pays to go in here to this thing because it will then take you through transaction by transaction and again it is not an account number its an account set entry title, what is going to be debited and what is going to be credited in that processing."
QUESTION: Was this actually available in SAE?
(EN) Yes, it was if the Help files were installed properly.
QUESTION: SBM is usually installed on each PC, so what happens when there are upgrades? Does each PC need to be updated?
(EN) Yes, you have to upgrade the server, update the server and normally you have the Client installed on the server. Depending on the level of the update—in other words if we are going 5.3 to 5.4— its real simple. You update it on the server and as soon as you bring up the client it says, "Do you want to apply it?" you say "Yes," it runs out to the server, grabs it and applies it in a real short time. If you are going from 4.2 to 5.0, then it is a whole different ball game. It is a complete install at the server and at the work station. If it is what I would call a service patch, just going from 5.3 to 5.4, the answer is yes, it has to be done at every one but it is very simple at the work stations compared to what you do going from 4.2 to 5.0. Because that is a complete new install.
QUESTION: In PO Receipt History the most recent receipt is always at the bottom of a possibly a very long list. In SBM can you sort the order of receipt history can you sort the of an item?
(EN) No. So- in the Item Master, the Purchase History… well, you are going to have your history of purchase orders, but on the Cost tab you also have a History… let's see if I can find one with some activity in it… I bet you can because I just did sort it by cost, I bet you could sort it by date, but here on the Cost tab not on the PO History screen. You can filter this to say just receipt on Pos."
QUESTION: Regarding Multi Location General Ledger. Does the Location Account Set override the Items Account set?
(EN) It goes the lowest priority is Job, the next priority is Location, the top priority is Item."
QUESTION: Is the Manufacturer Product Code searchable?
(EN) If it is not, you could make it a custom field and then it would be searchable. I don't see it in the standard search criteria. But if I added a custom field called Manufacturer Number, or I used the reference field to carry it in then it would be searchable. See here is my custom field for REV ID, so the issue here really is the fact that the Manufacturer information is not actually in the Item Master Table, it is in a secondary table associated to the Item Master.
QUESTION: Isn't there a lookup file in the Master Item table?
(EN) I don't see a tab for that. Now there is a Product Code Lookup- Supplier Product Code or Manufacturers Product Code. Now I don't know if he is saying manufacturer's name or manufacturers part number.
(CK) It is Product Code.
(EN) Well if that Manufacturer's Product Code was in there then you should be able to find it through the Product Code Lookup which will work against either the Supplier Table or the Manufacturers Table. So Manufacturer Number here (In Lookups- Product Code now- demonstrates how to do this in the drill down capabilities).
The drill down capabilities in this thing will just blow your mind. I've tried some things where I've gone four or five screens and still been able to drill down to more information continuing thru those screens. The old version it was one level you could drill down and that was about it- sometimes you might have the opportunity to go two levels, but just on the Production Order being able to drill down to the POs for something that is on order- we never had anything near that before.
QUESTION: How do you manage scrap percentages or loss factors in SBM for use in a batch manufacturing environment?
(EN) Okay, now there's a couple of different approaches that I've used in the past. If we are in, let's say the blending business I'm going to develop a Bill of Material- let's call it "Blend." This represents a 500 gallon batch of fufu dust. And my materials would be like 500 or 3000 or whatever. If I know that I can't pick this stuff apart when I'm done, I make the Detail Type a consumed item. So when I go to manufacture this and I create a manufacturing order for 500 gallons and I get 492 gallons out at the end and I close that order, it is not going to do an inventory blowback based on the 492 gallons I made, it is going to do an inventory blowback based on the 500 gallons I planned to make. That is the only way to actually recognize some sort of a shrink factor and you are basically doing it on a recipe basis. It is probably not as exotic as some people would like but as an average blender, or converter, it would accomplish it for you because it immediately gets rid of that issue of creeping shrink.
(CK) In your example, 500 gallons went to finished goods, but you only got 492 gallons…"
(EN) I would have created the MO to build 500 gallons, I would have reported a completion of 492. 492 would have gone to finished inventory, the components required to make 500 gallons would have been pulled out of inventory. So the excess would have been scrap- part of that manufacturing variance.
Please note there is a significant amount of information on the MISys website about the things to be careful of if you are making any kind of conversion from SAE to MISys Manufacturing SBM. There's details on the pricing. So just in a nutshell, if anyone is on a maintenance plan with SAE and they want to move over to MISys Manufacturing SBM then there is no charge to do that. If they need to upgrade to 5.4, 5.5 or 5.6 in SAE in order to transfer over, I think we are still running a special of $2500. And if they are out of plan, they don't have any kind of maintenance plan, then it is just what the annual fee would be for the MISys Manufacturing Configurations. We are happy to go over pricing, we work with the partners very closely making sure that everything is set up correctly.