Infor LN & Baan Tips & Tricks for EXECUTIVES

FINANCE: Interest Invoices

You can generate interest invoices for paid invoices, partially paid invoices, and unpaid invoices. In addition, after you generate and send an interest invoice, you can generate a subsequent interest invoice for the next period.

Setting up interest invoicing: You can set up interest invoicing in Accounts Receivable and the General Ledger.
To set up interest invoicing, use these sessions:

• Invoice-to Business Partner (tccom4112s000)

For invoice-to business partners for which you want to raise interest invoices, select the Charge Interest check box. If this checkbox is selected, you can select the Interest Rate Code. This interest rate code is assigned to the business partner. If you specify this value, the Interest Rate Code specified in the Financial Business Partner Groups (tfacr0110m000) session is ignored. The interest rate defined for this Interest Rate Code is used to calculate interest amount on reminder letters and interest invoices.

• Mapping Scheme (tfgld4573m000)

Use this session to define the mapping of the Interest Invoice/Revenues Analysis integration document type.

• Interest Percentages (tfacr5102m000)

Use this session to define the interest percentages for each financial business-partner group, and for different periods of days. 

• Interest Invoice Related Data (tfacr5101s000)

Use this session to define whether interest must be calculated on unpaid invoices, partly paid invoices, interest invoices, and/or fully paid invoices. You can also indicate that LN must take advance payments, unallocated payments, and credit notes into account for the generation of interest invoices.

• Optionally, set conditions

Example: LN only generates an interest invoice advice entry if these conditions are met:

• The total of all advice entries in one currency is higher than the allowed minimum amount of an interest invoice defined in the Minimum Amount for Interest Invoice field.
• The invoice is overdue for a greater number of days than the number of days defined in the Minimum Days for Interest Invoice field.

OPERATIONS: Blocking or Unblocking Warehouses

You can block a warehouse for inbound procedures, outbound procedures, or both. For example, you can block inbound and outbound procedures for a warehouse if the warehouse must be closed temporarily for inspection.

You can impose these types of blockings:

• Full block: Full block on warehousing procedures.

• Interactive block: Override blocking allowed except blocks on confirm shipment or confirm receipt.

If you impose a full block on inbound procedures, the receipt and inbound inspection procedures are not allowed for the warehouse.

If you impose a full block on outbound procedures, the outbound, outbound inspection, and shipment procedures are not allowed for the warehouse.

An interactive block on inbound procedures blocks the confirm receipt step. For the other inbound steps (for goods already received), a warning is displayed and you are prompted to cancel the procedure or to continue.

These are the other inbound steps:

• Generate and release inbound advice
• Print and confirm storage lists
• Put away stock

If you perform the outbound steps of a warehouse transfer and an interactive inbound block is imposed on the receiving warehouse, you are warned that the receiving warehouse is blocked.

An interactive block on outbound procedures blocks the confirm shipment step. For the remaining outbound and shipment steps, a warning is displayed and the user is prompted to cancel the procedure or to continue. Assembly, internal inventory movements and inventory adjustments are also allowed.

TECHNOLOGY: Archiving Concept

Companies are developing procedures for entering data into an ERP system and for archiving manuals, drawings, specs, and other hard-copy documents. However, in many cases there is no defined procedures to store historical electronic data. Archiving electronic data should be an integral part of your business processes. 

Generally, archiving is the process of moving historical data from the operational environment to a special archive environment. At home, you might move old bank statements from a closet in your study to a box in the attic. At the office, you might store old hard copies of purchase orders in a room far from your own desk. Just because you no longer need the information in your daily work, does not mean you can dispose of the information. In terms of electronic data in your ERP system, archiving means moving historic data from the operational company to a special archive company; in that way, the historic data will be out of your way and safely stored. To free up disk space on your machine after you have archived the data, you can also move the historic data to an external medium.

Archiving strategy:
Archiving historical data is an irreversible process. After data is moved to the archive company, the data can no longer be uploaded back into the operational company. Archiving has a direct effect on the accessibility and availability of information; therefore, you must define a robust archiving strategy which addresses three major topics: What, When, and Who.

Business requirements:
Your business requirements determine what must be stored and for how long. For example, if you have a warranty situation on your projects for five years, you might be required to keep your project open during this time, or you may keep the project in an archive company. Therefore, if the project must remain open, no project-related information, including orders and integration transactions, can be archived.

Every business manager must decide how long what data must be stored in an operational environment for quick access. Reporting requirements must also be listed.

Legal requirements:
In most countries, legal requirements apply to financial data. Tax authorities may require financial data to be stored for a minimum number of years. Additionally, in specific lines of business such as food and beverages or aerospace, governments maintain specific legal requirements, which impact your archiving strategy.

User requirements:
Users rely on historical information. For example, a customer service employee may need to have shipment information of up to one year in the past to accurately address customer queries. These requirements must also be taken into account when you define what can be archived.

Data to be archived or deleted:
Various parties related to your company use information based on logistical and financial transactions occurring in the past. Before you archive or delete this information, you must investigate the need for the information.

Your ERP system contains standard archiving sessions in all major modules. These sessions are designed to copy historical data to the archive company, and then delete the data from the operational company. 

You have three options in archiving sessions:

1. Archiving and deleting: Data is transferred to the archive company and then deleted in the operational company.

2. Deleting: Data is deleted in the operational company, but not archived.

3. Archiving: Data is transferred to the archive company, but not deleted in the operational company.

Using option 1 or 2 makes archiving irreversible. If you archive only because you want to preview the results, the archiving can be done a number of times.

Usually, in archiving sessions, you can also specify:

• The date up to which the data must be archived
• If texts must also be archived
• If texts that already exist in the archive company must be replaced

In addition to archiving logistical and financial data, you can archive general data. 

Delete sessions:
In all major modules, your ERP system contains delete sessions. These sessions only have delete functionality, no archive functionality. Consequently, they are used to clean up data in the operational company, not to transfer data to the archive company. For more information about these delete sessions, see the "Delete sessions" sections under the various modules. For example, see Delete sessions under Procurement.

After data is deleted using delete sessions, the data is no longer available in the operational company. However, parameter settings may determine whether history data is logged when you remove specific data. If required, you can archive the history using the appropriate archiving session.

When can data be archived?
Based on the answers to the previous question, you can now set a term of retaining relevant historical data in your operational environment, and a term of keeping data available in the archive environment.

Who can archive data?
Because archiving is an irreversible process, a certain risk is involved. For example, what if one of your employees starts up an archiving session by mistake? For this reason, you must determine who is authorized to archive and delete data, and then set up these authorizations with the functionality your ERP system offers.

Because no further changes must be made to archived data, access to the archive company must also be restricted to read-only authorization for most users.

Match strategy with ERP functionality: 
After you list all your requirements, the next step is to verify whether the standard ERP functionality is sufficient to facilitate your needs. Usually, your ERP system provides the functionality to meet all of your needs, but must not force you to compromise. We recommend that you avoid customizing your software, however, because we are looking for long-term operational-data storage, customizations must not be ruled out entirely. An example is the requirement to show, in one report, the data from the operational company and archive company. In the current version, this is not standard functionality, but this can be important to manage your business. What can be even more important, if you are using customized software, is the question of whether the archiving sessions have been included. Do you take into account the fields and tables you have customized? Customized tables and fields may have to be included when performing delete/archive runs.

Archiving plan:
After you define an archiving strategy that suits your requirements, you can define the archiving plan. In this plan, you translate the strategy to a more operational level.

Kathy BartheltKathy Barthelt

Other posts by Kathy Barthelt

Contact author Facebook page Twitter Linked In YouTube Website