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

Crossroads Connections

Infor ERP Tips & News from the Experts

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

Do you know where you're required to collect sales tax?

Crossroads RMC 0 33648 Article rating: 5.0

More than 40 states have changed their rules on sales tax obligations for remote sellers in the past year, meaning more companies are required to collect sales tax in states they’ve never even considered before. 

Attend the Avalara sessions at Inforum to learn more:

333450 - Vision: From 1 to 50—Scaling your business to handle new sales tax requirements, sponsored by Avalara
New laws that obligate remote sellers to collect sales tax are spreading throughout the US. In many states, you’re now required to register, file, and remit if you make 200 transactions or $100,000 in sales into the state. In this session, a sales tax compliance expert will break down what these new laws mean for your business and how you can scale your business effectively without turning your accounting and finance operations upside down. Join us to learn how to prepare.
Wednesday, Sep 25, 2:00 PM - 02:45 PM – Room 288

333727 - Speed: Sales tax compliance in the post South Dakota v. Wayfair era, sponsored by Avalara
Join Avalara to learn about sales tax compliance in 2019. We’ll review new mid-year sales tax changes for 2019; economic nexus laws and how to mitigate risk and maintain compliance; help you determine where to file and register based on where you conduct business; and discuss how Avalara and Infor deliver end-to-end cloud-based sales tax automation, including rate determination, return filing, remittance, and exemption certificate management.
Wednesday, Sep 25, 1:30 PM - 01:50 PM – Hub Theater 6 (Product Spotlight)

Anxious to learn more about IDF? Attend Inforum Sessions highlighting the latest and greatest updates

Anthony Etzel 0 23291 Article rating: 5.0
  • ERP242 - Product: What’s new with LX 8.4
    Learn about our latest release of LX and the value it can provide to your business. This release includes additional support for IDF, new application features, and an expanded database. Additionally, this release continues to improve through ongoing enhancements from our enhancement request system.
    Thursday, Sep 26, 10:00 AM - 10:45 AM – Room 272

  • ERP243 - Product: LX—IDF Master Data Management
    Learn about the new flexibility and features available with item, cost, vendor, and customer definition through IDF during this session. Maintaining this critical information is now easier to manage and control with LX 8.4
    Wednesday, Sep 25, 12:00 PM - 12:45 PM – Room 272

  • Academy: Learn to Use IDF to Better Manage Customer, Vendor, and Item Data with LX
    Attend this session for hands-on experience using IDF to manage your critical master data in Infor LX 8.4. (Length: 1hr & 45mins) 
    Wednesday, Sep 25, 1:00 PM - 02:45 PM – Room 277

  • ERP106C - Case Study: Trinity—Upgrading a 20-Year-Old Customized ERP system
    Join this session to learn why and how Trinity is upgrading its customized 20-year-old BPCS ERP system to the latest version of LX and going vanilla. Trinity is using the best business practices built into LX along with Infor OS and IDF to support the latest user experience and integrations.
    Wednesday, Sep 25, 2:00 PM - 02:45 PM – Room 272

OTTO: Making plans happen isn’t just about monitoring material shortages

George Moroses 0 25688 Article rating: 5.0

Making plans happen isn’t just about monitoring material shortages. Supporting activities can be the real cause of delays. Some non-material events customers have monitored using OTTO include:

  • Scheduling and coordination of outside services (such as heat treating and plating)
  • Quality Assurance for pharmaceuticals and inspection
  • Moving off-site inventory to the plant
  • Moving inventory from temporary (conveyor) location to pickable location
  • Scheduling of overseas containers
  • Design engineering for make-to-order

OTTO provides the ability to proactively manage the entire customer order backlog from top to bottom. It begins monitoring orders as soon as they’re booked and identifies and prioritizes those critical events that must happen every day so they can be managed and get orders produced and shipped on time.

Visit Our OTTO page to learn more.

How Do I Determine If MES Is Right For My Business?

George Moroses 0 27544 Article rating: No rating

There are certain key questions that must be answered to determine whether or not an MES system would benefit your organization: 

  • How do you analyze OEE?
  • Is there an opportunity to reduce WIP inventory, indirect labor, downtime, waste or scrap?
  • What is the cost and impact of producing and distributing shop paper including drawings and work instructions?
  • Would you like to go paperless on your shop floor?
  • How are your continuous improvement initiatives tied to your ERP?
  • Is Management requesting real time production status reporting via dashboards or drilldown reports?
  • What different “islands of automation” exist on your shop floor?

The answers to each of these questions could have a significant impact on the profitability of your business. Want to quantify your results? Contact George Moroses today to schedule your FREE MES ROI Analysis.

Consulting: Methodology for Infor LX & BPCS Upgrades

Anthony Etzel 0 37663 Article rating: 5.0

Throughout the years, Crossroads RMC has participated in several 4.0.05CD upgrades to LX, from which we had the opportunity to refine our methodology for CEA (Configurable Enterprise Accounting) implementations/upgrades. As a result, we have fine tuned our overall upgrade approach and have been very successful in implementing this approach with our clients.

CEA replaces the green screen GLD module and allows for considerable flexibility in the design of the COA (Chart of Accounts).

Our approach incorporates any changes that are needed in the COA and facilitates the transfer or replacement of Profit Centers and Account Codes from BPCS to LX, building on the existing GL. Among the issues we manage is the conversion of historical GL balances.

We maximize the use of LX and CEA while minimizing the manual effort that gets you there.

Contact Frank Petrasio to discuss how we can help you:

  • Preserve what works in BPCS
  • Optimize what works in LX

with a maximum of respect for your time and budget. Learn more about Crossroads RMC Consulting>

Infor LX & BPCS Tip of the Week: Additional Selection Criteria for Cycle Count Purge Enhancement – 8.4

Anthony Etzel 0 48291 Article rating: 5.0

The final step in Cycle Count processing is to maintain the (ICY) Cycle Count file. This history file increases in size with each posting session. It is up to users to purge the historical data that you no longer need. Previously, INV015 Cycle Count Purge by date only allowed users to purge the cycle count file by date. Now, additional selection criteria have been added that allows users improved ways to control records they may want to purge.

Infor LN & Baan Data Collection News: Crossroads RMC Cycle Counting Application

Kathy Barthelt 0 32562 Article rating: 5.0

How often are you counting your inventory? Are you sure your counts are accurate?  Are inaccurate counts affecting your ability to satisfy customer orders?

Crossroads RMC Cycle Counting Application gives you:

· Overall increased inventory accuracy

· Ability to review and approve count before direct update of Baan/LN tables

· Elimination of unnecessary re-orders of items with current inventory

· Greater ability to satisfy customer orders due to greater visibility to (accurate) inventory levels

· Direct labor cost savings – less staff required for count

· Increased productivity during count – with some of our customers, counts used to take weeks. They can now complete a count of all their inventory in one day.

Learn more: Crossroads RMC Data Collection - Web Collect 

Consulting News: ERP Implementation or Upgrade... Are You Prepared?

Crossroads RMC 0 38134 Article rating: 5.0

There are several factors that need to be considered when undertaking a major project like an ERP implementation or upgrade. Before you look to others outside of your organization to provide the expertise needed, you need to first look internally to ensure that the right players are in place to lead the project and also ensure business continuity during the project.

  • Executive Sponsorship - Does Senior Management have a clear and well understood commitment to project success?
  • Strong Project Manager?
  • Core Team Functional Representation - Are the Team Members knowledgeable participants and able to keep the project moving forward?
  • User Community Support?
  • Motivation - Are the Team Members willing and able to provide the time needed for a large-scale implementation?

Do You need help figuring out if your organization is properly positioned for an implementation or upgrade? Contact us. We can help.

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

This enhancement provides additional views, additional order and line details, improved navigation, and additional capabilities to the IDF Customer Order Inquiry cards and to customer order-related business objects such as Allocations, Customer Invoices, Inventory Transaction History, Promotions, Drop Shipments.

Enhanced Order views based on user roles such as customer service, warehouse/logistics, salesperson/commission, data analysis/management reporting

  • Improved sort, select and filter capabilities
  • Enhanced navigation, data organization and data display
  • Improved customer service access to all transactions throughout the entire customer order life cycle – from quote to order, related invoices, and any RMAs, return orders, related credit memos
  • Improved grouping of related fields
  • New cards to present additional order and order line details
  • Consolidation of cards and card details when appropriate
  • Enhanced Display and Maintain capabilities for drillback to related customer, ship-to, item, carrier, terms, and other master file details
  • Improved display of dates, times and applicable time zones when Region Code time zone support is implemented
  • Multi language Description, Name and Address fields displayed in user’s language, if defined, else in base language

This enhancement provides search capabilities on segment value description in Segment Value List window (WINGSVD).

Segment Value List (WINGSVD):

  • Converted to a standard subfile
  • New action code 10=Search

This makes it easier to locate segment values when defining segment values in Model Account Builder or Alias definition. In addition, WINGSVD has been redesigned as a subfile to enable WebTop grid capabilities.

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Tips: LN | Baan

George Moroses

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: PowerLink

PowerLink is a Windows-based client for end-users within the Infor Development Framework (IDF). PowerLink allows exports/imports from/to the ERP database, but how much do you really know about it? Here is some helpful information about PowerLink.​

Why does PowerLink sometimes fail to export all records?
There's not a finite amount of records that PowerLink can export. However, PowerLink export was never intended to handle large volumes of data. It was designed as a quick snapshot of a fairly small subset and a simple view of the user's PowerLink card. 

What is the maximum amount of data that can be exported?
The maximum number of records is only limited by the system resource like memory, etc. When the system runs out of resources, an OutOfMemory error should occur. In previous testings, we have exported +1 million records, although the size of records differs greatly between business objects, the total size of the data could be an issue. For larger volumes of data, customers should investigate other tools such as the iSeries Access "Data Transfer from iSeries Server" feature to download directly to Excel.

How do I know if the size of the data is an issue?
1. When exporting to an external file (text, HTML) then importing to Excel: You can easily check the output (text, HTML) to see if the intermediate output has all the records. This can be done by visual inspection or through the use of column totals. Simply compare between the output and what you see in PowerLink. If the exported file has all the records, then the problem is definitely Excel.
2. When exporting to clipboard, then copy/paste to Excel: There is a clipboard export size limit that is controlled through client preferences. Check the exported data in the clipboard, and see if it contains all the records or only partial records due to the size limitation set in client preferences. If limited, change the client preferences using Customize from the Main browser > Preferences > Miscellaneous tab > Limit Clipboard Export, and try the export again. If the clipboard has all the records the problem is in Excel, which we don't have jurisdiction over.

Suggestions for improving the export process. 

  1. Reduce the number of columns seen in the view. This will serve to reduce the data being exported and may increase the number of records that can be exported. 
     
  2. Reduce the complexity of the view. If the view has one column that lives on a related object, then it has to build SQL behind the scenes to get that related record. If all of the columns come from a single business object, then the processing will be significantly faster.
     
  3. Export to HTML, which can be opened directly by Excel, Access, and many other programs. This reduces the processing of the export formatting because PowerLink needs only to put begin and end tags around each data element. This will also preserve column alignment when Excel or other programs open the file.
     
  4. Unless you are exporting a fairly small volume of data, export to a file, not clipboard. Clipboard is held in memory until the entire view is read, and records are written to the file as they are retrieved.
     

 Also see KB 1357068 for more information about testing your view.

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