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Infor LX Tips, Infor LN Tips, BPCS Tips, Baan Tips, Infor M3 Tips & Infor ERP News

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Infor ERP Tips & News from the Experts

Infor LX | Infor LN | BPCS | Baan | Infor M3

Have You Heard About the Latest & Greatest Way to BOOST Productivity?

LIFE HACKS

Kathy Barthelt 0 22956 Article rating: 5.0

In a world of life hacks and constantly changing routines, we could all use help boosting productivity.

With Crossroads RMC support services, boosting your productivity just got 10x easier! Boost the productivity of your entire team by adding just ONE team member that you only pay when you need them. And the best part is that they are waiting for your call right now and every hour of every day, even on weekends and holidays.

Check out Crossroads RMC's Support Services Designed YOUR Way: ...

An ERP System Review is NOT a Report Card

It's a no-judgment-review - we promise!

Kathy Barthelt 0 28351 Article rating: 5.0

report card C minusWe all remember our school days and the nervousness that we felt when it came time to get our grades. Even if we were doing well, we were still nervous. Sometimes we experienced that same nervousness when it came time for a performance review in our job. Nervousness…sometimes dread…knowing that our performance maybe was not what we wanted it to be, or others expected it to be. 

Somehow I think the feelings that we felt in our past often find ways to creep into our present. I have seen this recently when I suggested an ERP system review to one of our customers. They immediately became flustered and thought about every possible problem that they knew existed within the software and how they were currently using it.

An ERP system review or more specifically a Utilization Review is NOT a personal report card, or performance review showing how well a particular individual does his/hers/their job, nor is it an attack on the team that implemented the software. 

An ERP Utilization Review will:

Infor LN & Baan Finance Tip: Unallocated Payment

Kathy Barthelt 0 70040 Article rating: 5.0

How do I assign an unallocated payment to a purchase invoice when the document dates are not the same?

When trying to assign an unallocated payment, it is possible that the purchase invoice is not displayed in session Assign Unallocated / Advance Payments to Invoices (tfcmg2106s000), even though it is showing in the open entries. This can happen when the document date of the unallocated payment lies before the document date of the purchase invoice you want to assign it to. There are 2 ways to handle this...

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: What items should be M-P-S planned vs. M-R-P planned?

George Moroses 0 33872 Article rating: 5.0

Master Scheduled Items are those items that are finished goods, or service items, that receive their requirements either specifically from Independent demand, or both Dependent and Independent demand.

  • Independent Demand is demand that cannot be calculated from higher-level demand in the product structure, and therefore must be either a forecast or an actual customer order (Finished Goods or Service parts sold to customers).
  • Dependent demand.....

Infor LN & Baan Tip: Separate item codes for incoming & outgoing subassemblies

Kathy Barthelt 0 61889 Article rating: 5.0

You may be wondering if it's necessary to have separate item codes for incoming and outgoing subassemblies.

No, it is not necessary to have separate item codes for incoming and outgoing subassemblies, but it is recommended. In theory, you could have only one item code with the description subassembly and use the same item code for the outgoing subassembly and for the incoming subassembly. However, when monitoring inventory movements and financial integration transactions, it will be difficult to understand the process. Also, the costing logic is much clearer when different item codes for the incoming and outgoing subassemblies are used. Because of this, it is advised to use a different item code for the outgoing subassembly and a different item code for the incoming subassembly.

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: Changing an item to non-inventory

George Moroses 0 24130 Article rating: 5.0

When an attempt is made to change an item’s type to a non-inventory item from any other value, a new validation is performed to determine if the item has any inventory on hand and, if so, prevents changing the item’s type.

This enhancement available in LX 8.4 prevents LX from showing an on-hand inventory balance for a non-inventory item.

The programs or areas impacted include:

  • Facility/Planning Data Maintenance, MRP140D2
  • IDF Enterprise Item

To get this enhancement, request and apply MR 80120.

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

Improves control over PO costing changes during invoice entry by replacing passive warnings with an intentional override action.

  • In ACP500D3 (Invoice Entry PO Costing), users previously could unintentionally accept changes by pressing ENTER, even when quantity to cost or amount to cost values had changed.

  • A new “F14 to Override” warning message replaces the old message:
    “Details have changed. Press enter again to accept data.”
    This ensures users acknowledge and confirm significant changes explicitly.

New System Parameter:

  • “Apply GRN Costing Tolerance for PO Costing” (optional):

    • Within tolerance: Displays the original message —
      “Details have changed. Press enter again to accept data.”

    • Outside tolerance: Triggers the new override requirement —
      “F14 to Override”

Benefits:

  • Enhances oversight and reduces unintentional cost acceptance.

  • Enables better control of PO costs when invoice details differ from expectations.

Last

Tips: LN | Baan

Kathy Barthelt
/ Categories: Infor LN & Baan Tips

Infor LN & Baan Tip: Performance improvement by setting the First Free Number Cache (tcmcs0651m000)

Many transactions in all kinds of modules use order numbers or serial numbers. These order numbers are most often automatically generated. In the Number Groups (tcmcs0151m000) session you can define groups of order numbers used for dedicated areas. A Number Group is a group of the first free number series that you can assign to a specific use. All the numbers that Infor LN generates in the number groups that are dedicated to the same purpose are unique.

All the first free numbers are stored in the table tcmcs050.

As many different processes can request a free number from the number groups, we often see delays in the performance, due to locking on the first free number records. This locking issue can have a severe impact on the performance of huge batch-type transactions, but also on the performance perceived by individual users in many areas in LN.

For example:

  • Processing warehouse transactions. Single or in-batch
  • Completing / closing orders
  • Backflushing of production orders
  • Generate Order Planning
  • Cost calculation and warehouse revaluation


How this performance can be improved?

Resolution

In the Number Groups (tcmcs0151m000) session you can open the details of a specific Number Group (tcmcs0651m000) or start the session stand-alone.

In the Number Group, you define the Series with the related First Free Numbers. Per Serie in the First Free Number, you have the option to define the Cache Size.

This Cache size is defaulted on a value of 0 (zero). A cache size of zero means No Cache. How does the First Free Number caching works:

  • When the Cache Size is zero: With this setting a process requests a Free Number from the Serie and the first free number is issued to the process. But the first free number record is not updated yet. At the moment the requesting process is finished, without errors, it reports back that the number is used and the first free number record is updated. All the time that the process is working on the transactions the first free number record is locked. If another process is requesting a free number from the same series, it must wait (retries) until the record is updated and released by the previous process. This is the locking which is causing delays in the other processes.  
  • Setting the Cache Size to a higher value then zero activates the caching. When the Cache Size is set to 1 or higher, the requested free number is sent to the requesting process, the first free number is updated, with the number as defined in the Cache size, and the record is saved. It does not wait until the requesting process has reported back that is finished, with or without errors. In this way the record is immediately released and no locking will occur. If another process is requesting a free number, it does not need to wait until the free number record is released by the earlier process. If the process is ended with errors and therefor the number is not used, this number from the series is lost. This can result in gaps in the numbering. When the cache size is greater than 1, for example it is set to 5, the requesting process receives 5 free numbers. Even if it only needs less than 5. In this way the process only has to request for a new free number after it has used the first 5 numbers from the cache. This will also speedup the process in case of large batch transactions. For ‘warehouse integration users’, like for example Factory Track or WMS users we advise to set the cache size to 5.  

Note that financial documents are not based on number group series / first free numbers. Instead they are based on transaction type series, for which the caching functionality does not exist. Financial documents, like sales invoices, bank transactions, are thus not cached.

The caching is especially important to improve the performance of all logistical processes.

It is strongly recommended (mandatory) to set the Cache Size for all Number Groups to a minimum of 1.

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Kathy Barthelt

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