EXP-RO01-4.0.22.0

Entersoft Expert^®

New Features & Functionality (Outline)

This document aims to report the new features and extensions of Expert Version 4.0.22.0. First, the newly added functionality and features are briefly listed and, then, a detailed presentation follows. User guidelines and examples are provided where necessary.

Entersoft ERP

• Sales & Distribution flow (monitoring of all stages of the process without the known transition limitations, average time on Sales & Distribution stage, direct overview of the progress and the current status of a Sales Order). The functionality is also available at the Entersoft eCommerce.
• Invoicing policies have been extended to address specialized scenarios, that are quite common in the business environments of Super Markets, electronics etc. (gradual application of target scale, definition of scale on the % of budget achievement, on the pricelist turnover without discounts etc.)
• New re-designed profit margin analysis dashboards.
• New re-designed Current Sales Insight dashboard & Top Revenue Dimension Comparison of two fiscal years.

Entersoft Framework

• Four new types of steps are available at the Entersoft Migration (EMIs): Import data (advanced mode). These will significantly facilitate the tasks that need to be done when trying to integrate the Entersoft Application to some other application etc.

Entersoft ERP

Sales & Distribution flow

The Sales Orders subsystem has been extended in order to gather and report information on the following questions; questions that are particularly meaningful when the applied Sales & Distribution processes include more than one stages.

• Which orders have been delivered to customers?
• What is the current status of a sales order?
• How much time is spent on each Sales & Distribution stage?
• For which orders delivery was delayed?

Internal & External reporting

Sales & Distribution Stages should be designed and implemented with the aim to address the need for (a) internal analysis and reporting and (b) for informing customers promptly, accurately and consistently through various channels (e.g. e-shop, e-mails etc.). An example based on the default configuration follows:

Sales & Distribution state

Under the menu Sales/Sales orders, the new, three-level list: Sales & Distribution state provides valuable information on the status of sales orders.

• Every level presents the preferred delivery date per order. If, at the moment of the list execution, the delivery of the order is delayed (i.e. if less than 100% of the order has been delivered), then the font of the content in the particular column is presented in bold.
• First level | Sales Order
  • Here, the report presents info on the Sales & Distribution stage for every sales order. Based on the logical and time sequence of stages, an order is progresses through the various stages even when some part of it progresses to these stages. Therefore, if some of the ordered items are delivered (partial delivery) the entire order progresses to the “delivery” stage while the next column describes whether the 100% of the order is in that stage or not.
  • The % that each order has been fulfilled. This % describes the share of the order that has been delivered to the customer in case of partial deliveries.

• Second level | Sales Order Items
  • The second level includes detailed information on the ordered items and quantities that have been delivered: The Sales & Distribution stage for every sales order item and the % of the ordered quantity that has been delivered.
• Third level | Item dimensions
  • Here, the report presents information on the item dimension level. Specifically: The Sales & Distribution stage for every item dimension combination (e.g. color, size etc.) and the quantity % that has been delivered.

Note that…

A prerequisite for the result validity us the existence of prices/values on the order items (because these are compared to the delivery documents – not to the quantities: (a) since measurement units may differ and (b) in order to support services and not strictly inventory items)

Through the action: Sales and Distribution log (that is available on the toolbar of the view “Sales & Distribution state” and on the Transition menu of a Sales Order UI Form) the system presents information related to (a) the successive stages of a selected sales order, (b) when these tool place and (c) what documents was issued (if a document was indeed issued).

Differences in order delivery

The new view Differences in order delivery (available under the menu: Sales / Sales orders) presents information on the delays regarding order fulfillment. By using the available filters, one may study the delays that occurred e.g. when serving a specific customer or/and in a specific period of time or/and delays related to specific orders or even branches. The view presents fulfilled orders only sorted by Variation (Days). The second and third level present the equivalent info for Items and Item dimensions correspondingly.

Sales and Distribution time per stage

Next, under the same menu, is the new cube: “Sales and Distribution time per stage” that presents information about the time spent in each stage. Data are grouped by quarters and orders. The various available filters allow you to check the sales & distribution performance within a specific period of time, for specific customers, branches, or sales representatives. The first line of the report presents the average per stage as regards:

• the duration (in days)
• the participation (%) of the specific stage to the total time; the % facilitates the comparison of the time consumed in each stage

For the equivalent information per item and per item dimension, use the corresponding cubes: Delivery time analysis (by item) and Delivery time analysis (by dimension), available at: Sales / Sales orders.

Note that…

In the case of these particular cubes, the layout cannot by altered by the users due to cube designer limitations related to the calculation of averages. If dynamic statistics in relation to periods-customers-items etc. are required, it is recommended to export the data to Microsoft Excel for further processing.

Configuration & Customization

• Definition of the statuses of the Sales & Distribution stages the way we want these to be externally visible. The status is a grouping of the detail Sales and Distribution stages. The system contains eight such stages by default and the Entersoft Consultant will adjust them in order to comply with the requirements of the specific environment. When a transportation company is involved then the status “204 (Livrare/Delivery)” can be replaced by the sequential statuses: “205”, “206”, “207” (if, of course, it is desired to monitor this part of the process).
• Definition of the Sales & Distribution stages using a sorting code that represents the sequence of the stages. Every stage corresponds to a status. The system contains by default eighteen such stages that need to be adjusted. If the delivery is handled by some transportation company, then the stage “265 (Livrare finala/Final Delivery)” is to be replaced by the sequential stages “270”, “275”, “280” (or by any of these stages that need to be monitored). Alternatively, the stage “265 (Livrare finala/Final Delivery)” needs to be maintained and its sorting code need to be changed in order to make it the final stage of the Sales and Distribution stage (e.g. use the code 45). The default configuration does not associate Invoicing to any status since the Sales and Distribution stage is primarily related to the delivery (i.e. until the delivery is 100% complete).

The example presented in the above image, demonstrates that the stages: “order from Site (Replenishment Order)” (i.e. an inter-Warehouse transfer order), “purchase order” and “products en route” (i.e. Bill of Lading), have all been associated to the status “waiting for stock”. Similarly, the status “order preparation” is associated to the stages “delivered from Site”, “delivered from supplier”, “picking”, and “packing”. Picking and packing can be monitored as one stage by using the document “Stock Reservation for Customer” or, for example, packing could be considered as a “Workflow step” of the particular document and, therefore, it does not make sense to activate all three stages in the context of the default configuration: either the 250 (Picking/Packing i.e. Order preparation) or the 255 (Picking) and 260 (Packing) should be activated if needed.

• Selection of how the Sales & Distribution process starts and ends. This information is very important since it makes it possible for the system to return the fulfillment %, the sales order status and so forth:

  1. One stage is considered to be the Start of the Sales and Distribution process. The default configuration assumes the Sales Order document as the Starting point.

  2. The process constitutes of several other stages. The default configuration assumes that these are represented by documents (such as the Inter-warehouse transfer order, the Purchase order and so forth) or by workflow steps (that are updated by document transitions on a document itself) e.g. OK (due to successful credit control), PICKED, SHIPPED etc.

  3. One stage is considered to represent the cancellation of the process. According to the default configuration this can be the document type: Sales order rejection, which is used instead of deleting the order for purposes related to maintaining the information that has been gathered in the context of a particular order.

  4. One stage is considered to represent the completion of the process. According to the default configuration this can be documents of the following document types: Invoice-Delivery Note or Retail sales-Delivery Note or Delivery note etc.

• Import of the new recommended transition rules from Entersoft XML (“master config”; see Appendix)

• Activation of the Sales & Distribution stages. A basic guideline for the successful configuration of the various Sales & Distribution stages is to identify the batch processes that apply on entire documents: such as approvals, printing assorted documents, checking accuracy-fulfillment etc. If partial delivery is not considered possible in your business, it is not recommended to maintain the entire documents for the purposes of Sales and Distribution, since this would be that the DB and the system as a whole would be significantly burdened.

These cases assume that the information is maintained exclusive on Document Header lever and, therefore, a workflow step implementation can be applied. All of the items in documents of the same Workflow step (that is not monitored using a distinct document type) are, therefore, considered being in the same Sales and Distribution stage. On the other hand, a sales order that is followed by several other documents is considered to be in the Sales and Distribution stage that is latest (based on the sorting code) among the stages its items are in.

This way, of some of the Sales Order items have been delivered (Sales Order Delivery note), while others are in the Waiting for Stock stage (e.g. to be delivered by a supplier) (Sales Order Purchase Order without having received any using Purchase order Receipt note), then the order is considered to be in the stage “Delivered to customer” and at the same time the fulfillment % is < 100%; at the Item level one may check items have been delivered and which items are still pending.

These generic guidelines can help you activate the Sales & Distribution stages, assuming that it has been decided how each one of these stages is to be monitored.

When activating stages, the system demands the definition of the method this monitoring is to take place (by stage). At this point the results of the previous considerations should be taken into account in order to determine the role of each stage to the Sales & Distribution stage:

1. With a special document type | In this case, the document type will be requested at the next stage (the document attributes and the related document types are to be selected using the corresponding button and by selecting on the UI Lists). By clicking on the “Run” button, the system will update the fields “Sales & Distribution stage“ & “Role of the stage” on the document type. This will result the update of all series with this stage (each series can be differentiated as regards the stage, as it is going to be demonstrated later on) and, especially if the “Role of the stage” is “completion”, then the “Sales & Distribution completion” flag will be updated too.

2. With a document series | In this case, the selection of document series will be requested next. As before, we proceed with selecting the appropriate records and, by clicking on the “Run” button, the system will update the Sales and Distribution stage on the series and, IF the “role of the stage” is “completion” then the related flag will be also updated.

3. With a special workflow step | In this case, the workflow step will be asked next. Evidently the role of the stage in the process cannot be determined in this case. Through “steps” only the stages that are internal parts of the process can be represented (i.e. not the start, the end or the cancellation of the process).

• Customization of the Transition Rules that start from documents that are configured to use Workflow Steps for monitoring some of the Sales & Distribution stages. For example, if the document for reserving stock for a customer is used for monitoring the Sales & Distribution stages: “Picking” & “Packing” via workflow steps, then the following need to be done:

  1. Rename the document (its series) to “Sales order routing”

  2. Because the transition “113. PREGATIRE” of the document “Stock reservation for a Customer” changes the stage to “PICKED”, the transition “123.IMPACHETARE” must be modified to have the value “PICKED” as “Source W/F Step”.

  3. Because the transition “123.IMPACHETARE” of the document “Stock reservation for a Customer” changes the stage to “PACKED”, and if the next step is to issue (e.g.) a Delivery Note, then the transition “152. RIC=>AEV” must be modified to have the value “PΑCKED” as “Source W/F Step”.

The entire process should be tested and the appropriate parameters should be adjusted on transitions in order to ensure that no user errors will occur; make sure that you apply the methodology described in the above example. The extent of this simple configuration depends upon the requirements of each distinct business environment.

For the Sales Orders that will be issued after the completion of the configuration & customization (and having restarted the Application Server) their complete history log will be possible to be monitored though the “association data”, regardless if the during the processes (transitions, w/f steps) information related to quantities is updated or not. This fact actually allows the effective monitoring of parallel processes in the context of order processing (e.g. Purchases subsystem – Order to Supplier etc.). So, while implementing the Sales & Distribution Process and having taken into consideration that W/F steps involve entire documents only, it must be assessed whether partial order fulfillment is actually a case or not. If yes, then the corresponding Sales & Distribution stage needs to be monitored using a DOCUMENT (or/and a document series); if not, then W/F steps can be chosen to implement the stage.

A rather standard Sales & Distribution administration scenario is presented in the following table:

Stage Code	Description	Seq. Num	Status	Document Type		Transition	Step
200	Oferta	Offer (Quotation)	0		OFV
210	Comanda de vanzare	Sale order	1	201	CVR		471. OFV=>COV
215	Anulare	Cancel	2		RCV		157. COV=>RCV
220	Aprobare	Approval	3	201	CVR		101. APROBARE	APPROVED
225	Comanda de reaprovizionare	Replenishment order	10	202	CTM		104. COV-CTM
230	Receptie din Sucursala	Receipt from Site	12	203	NTR		443. CTM=>NTR
235	Comanda de aprovizionare	Supplier order	10	202	COC		104. COV-COC
240	Comanda incarcata	Order loaded	11	202	PRC		118. COC=>PRC
245	Receptie marfa	Stock receipt	12	203	ARV		119. PRC=>NIR
255	Picking	Picking	21	203	RIC		113. PREGATIRE	PICKED
260	Impachetare	Packing	22	203	RIC		123. IMPACHETARE	PACKED
265	Livrare finala	Final delivery	30	204	AEV		152. RIC=>AEV
270	Livrat la transportator	Shipment to transporter	40	205	AEV		115. LIVRARE TRANSPORTATOR	SHIPPED
275	Livrat de catre transportator	Delivered to transporter	41	206	AEV		117. RECEPTIE TRANSPORTATOR	ARRIVED
280	Livrare in curs	Shipment ongoing	42	207	AEV		119. TRANSPORTATOR - CLIENT	DEPARTED
285	Confirmat de client	Confirmed by customer	50	208	AEV		120. CONFIRMARE PRIMIRE CLIENT	CONFIRMED
290	Facturare	Invoicing	60		FDV		113. AEV=>FDV

Limitations

• No deferred registrations should be made. This applies to all Sales & Distribution stages. Specifically, before issuing a document or performing a document transition to a Sales & Distribution stage, any preceding issuance/transition must be completed.

The possibility of deferred registrations when the Sales & Distribution process is simple and straight forward (Sales order, Reservation, Shipment) is equal to zero. However, if the Stock Replenishment (from other Storage locations or Suppliers) for Sales Orders subsystem is implemented, then -in a disorganized environment- it is rather possible to observe the late or even the bulk registration (e.g. once, at the end of the month) of stock receipts and purchase invoices (since such documents are not directly related to the urgent, daily process of issuing-sending documents). In such cases, the monitoring of key metrics related to the consumed time and the efficiency of the process is not feasible. The advantage of activating the previously described process in such cases is the monitoring of the current status of sales orders.

• The processing of more than one sales order placed by a customer must be avoided. This limitation applies to the initial sales order only. In a subsequent stage, the picking can be partial and many documents (that were issued due to the same initial sales order) can be merged to one and be delivered to the customer as one, single Delivery Note etc.

In order to facilitate the monitoring of cases that involve the issuing of repetitive sales orders before the processing of existing sales orders, the system supports the merging of Sales Orders. This functionality is available on the view: “Sales & Distribution state” on the selected sales orders by the same customer.

The merging will result one new sales order with the contents of the merged orders; the distinct orders will be cancelled. If the Sales Order processing for some orders has progressed to a specific subsequent stage (at document level; e.g. stock has been reserved for a customer’s order) then the merging will be allowed and the sales order progress information will be preserved, else the user will be notified that the selected sales orders have progressed to various Sales & Distribution stages and the merging cannot be completed.

Technical information

• The information on the associations between documents and stages are stored asynchronically (i.e. after having stored the documents) in order to ensure that (a) the daily document registration is not burdened (i.e. for the users not to experience any delays during document registration) and (b) the information related to Sales & Distribution is practically available at the ‘same’ time.
• Moreover, the system supports the scheduling of the calculation & storing process of information that can be directly exploited for reporting purposes (per order, item, item-dimension) through special tables that are intended for the assessment of the Sales & Distribution process (for checking the actual time that has been consumed); e.g. the provided Cubes that analyze the Sales & Distribution times. This kind of information does not necessitate real-time data.
• The primary information that is stored in the association data tables involves: Date-Time, Document, Sales & Distribution stage for both the FROM and the TO statuses but not the specific items and document lines. In order to acquire information on the item / item dimension level the system merely uses the content of the ‘initial’ (start nodes) and ‘final’ (end nodes) associations (by accessing and comparing the document lines directly). Therefore, the progress of documents lines per se is not stored; the information is automatically assembled per item, color and size with the help of appropriately constructed queries.

Attention

Take into consideration that the default system information on Sales & Distribution Stages and Statuses is Country dependent.

Invoicing policy

Commercial agreements on budget rebates

The Commercial agreements subsystem that generates budget rebates has been extended by functionality that allows you to implement scenarios common in the business environments of Super Markets, electronics etc.:

1. The return is based on the calculation of the percentage per scale level (e.g. for the first 10.000€ return 2%, for the next 10.000€ return 3% and for any greater amount return 5%). This is defined on the Commercial Agreement header as Return Type.

If the % by scale is defined as the Return type of the Commercial Agreement then the result is the calculation of the return by the corresponding share of the achieved target.

Let’s assume that the following three scales have been defined: Turnover-Target Return (%) 10,000.00€ 2% 20,000.00€ 3% 30,000.00€ 4% And that the achieved amount is 38.000,00€

If the return type is % of maximum scale then the return is going to be calculated as the 4% of the amount (38,000.00€) since the target achievement is accounted at the maximum scale. If the return type is % by scale the return is going to be calculated as the: (i) 2% for the first 20,000€, (ii) 3% for the additional 10,000€ and (iii) 4% για for the amount (8,000€) that matches the third scale (i.e. more than 30,000€).

2. The calculation of the return is in relation to budget (e.g. if the 80% of the target has been achieved then the return is 1%; i.e. instead of defining the specific target value). In order to activate this you need to:

   • Create a Budget Sheet with the following dimensions: (a) the trade account and (b) the Inventory Item Dimension(s) of the rebate agreement:

• Associate the particular Budget Sheet to the Commercial agreement through the corresponding field:

• Select as Scale amount on the Retroactive discount profile the measure of the Budget Sheet (Turnover or Quantity). The % achievement needs to be defined on the From Value column on the Scale lines.

3. Return based on a predefined scale step (for example: return of value type; e.g. 10€ per 1000 pieces or per 1000€, depending whether the scale is quantitative or refers to value-turnover). Use the new drop-down field: Application method to select the ‘per N’ option. The step is defined on scale line level.

4. Distinctive definitions of targets and rebates (E.g. Turnover target X for Item Category K and rebate: n1 for item group A, n2 for item group B, n3 for item group C and so forth).

If it is desired to:

• check the target achievement in relation to a field value (e.g. all Items in Category K are to achieve turnover X)
• and to define at some other field (that, obviously, corresponds to subsets of the products that fulfill the turnover criterion) the ‘how’ (to which items) the rebate is to be applied,

then the second level of the scale must be used.

This functionality extends the ‘item exclusion’ functionality and allows you to clearly define how and for which items the return is going to take place (always through the incorporation of some item grouping field). In this kind of scenarios, return is not defined on the 1^st level (it’s nullified).

5. It is now feasible to define the target as ‘Pricelist turnover’ (value before discounts on invoices), by selecting the corresponding option at the Scale amount drop down field. In such a scenario, the discounts will not be accounted when calculating the target achievement; instead the sales documents’ value before discounts will be accounted (i.e. quantity x value).

6. Ready to use criterion: Main supplier (until the previous version, only grouping fields were available)

Pricelist processing tools

• The tools, available on the pricelist processing UI for readjusting prices, can henceforth incorporate the item % markup. Therefore, readjustment can be dynamic based on the markup of each time that is to be processed.
• Additionally, fields for excluding inactive pricelists and inactive items have been included among the pricelist processing criteria.

Inventory

• The Finalization of Physical Inventory process can henceforth support negative counting (for the finalization day) in order to achieve the reconciliation of differences until the actual counting day, even if this is on a previous date (usually at the end of the previous month).
• The Stock allocation to Orders process (Inventory / Distribution processes) now checks the % of order fulfillment (drop-down parameter: Calculation of % based on), out of the Order lines defined by the view (scroller) criteria (i.e. filtered orders). Until now the check was on entire orders only (i.e. Orders as a whole). Moreover, the performance of the process has been significantly improved.

• As regards the Branch replenishment proposal (Inventory / Stock Replenishment)
  • Its functionality is now enriched by allowing the selection of second level lines for which it is desired to create documents.
  • Moreover, the dialogue for adjusting the Stock limits per W/H now includes additional columns (UDFs, color, size) and you will be able to save the adjusted layout, if it is desired.
  • Finally, the entire process of generating documents (the calculation of the priority, of the stock that can be provided – surplus, of the stock that it’s needed – shortage) is implemented through an automation in order to facilitate the customization of the process. E.g. this way the stock demand can be defined as the safety stock minus the available stock minus the expected stock, while the stock that can be provided can be defined as the available stock minus any pending orders etc.

Note that…

The automation is: ESMMStockItem\InnerDistributionCreateDocument

• The appearance of Document UI Forms that contain 2 Item line tab pages (i.e. standard and reverse lines) has been modified: the two grids have been placed onto the same tab page (e.g. AMC) In order to make this new forms available, it is required to update the corresponding document types by importing the new version’s document configuration from the Entersoft XML (i.e. master config).

• A new transition rule is now available: from reserved stock to an inter-warehouse transfer 303. RCT=>TMR - Transfer intre magazii pt stoc rezervat
• The consumption and expense lines of BOMs have been extended by 10 new UDFs: 5 numeric fields and 5 tables. The values of the five tables are those of the document item lines. When e.g. issuing a Production Order, i.e. on BOM explosion, the UD tables of the consumption lines are updated with the corresponding values of the BOM, if these are not empty.

Fiscal year closing processes and Inventory reconciliation

If when issuing transit documents that include stock items with dimensions (Color, Size, Lot, Dimension 1, Dimension 2), the item dimensions are not at all or fully defined (which can happen in case of missing or misconfigured Control policies) then quantitative inaccuracies are expected when comparing the stock balance at item level and the stock balance at item dimension level.

In such cases, the Inventory performed during Fiscal period closing processes (per Warehouse) is based on the recorded dimension-level balances and the system automatically adds a new analysis line with undefined dimension combination; this line is intended to inform the users about the corrections that need to be made. This ‘undefined value’ is specified in the following new company parameter:

Additionally, in order to facilitate the identification and the correction of such cases, a new view has been added under the menu: Inventory/Stock entry: “Problematic Inventory due to dimension mismatch”, which presents such differences grouped by Warehouse and Inventory date.

For each item the report presents the quantity at item level (and a on the dimensions that were accounted, i.e. those activated per item if no changes have occurred in the item’s lifetime) and the calculated difference. Based on this info, one can make the necessary adjustment on the inventory records by replacing the non-defined dimension values with the correct dimensions and the correct quantities.

Stock valuation

If the inventory costing period is annual, but the cost of some item categories needs to be “locked” (e.g. raw materials in a production), as defined by activating the flag “Valuation Analysis per Period”, the number of periods for this special costing period is henceforth configurable on the fiscal year info.

When the Valuation process uses one of the following methods: FiFo, LiFo and FCP where the Purchases (and acquisitions in general) are auto-corrected by allocating the value e.g. of rebates etc., which is applied before the Inventory Costing, then the Trade Account is available as an additional allocation criterion in order to ensure that the acquisition cost is not affected by corrective entries that concern some other Supplier in case of items that can be acquired from various suppliers.

Trade accounts

• The UI form of Trade Accounts, on the Communication tab, two fields related to the facebook & twitter account of the Trade Account are now available. Here, you may type the User Name or User ID of the corresponding account. By clicking on the buttons next to the fields, the ES Application opens the default web browser on your PC on the specific account.

• In the privilege definition system it is henceforth possible to define privileges that concern the club card number of customers.
• From the UI Form of the Trade Account Distribution Data (Sales / Distribution Data) it is now feasible to directly access the Trade account UI Form by clicking on the button, which can be found next to the Trade Account code.
• Moreover, when attempting to delete a record from the Distribution Data view (Sales / Distribution Data) the system returns a dialogue for selecting whether it is desired to delete the address – branch or specifically the Distribution Data (i.e. Distribution Data per Trade Account Address).

Financials

• The system henceforth guarantees that pay-offs in cash have the same due date (for updating the cash flow) with the registration date:
  • When issuing a document “by copy” the due date on liquidity & trade account lines are note copied anymore but instead these are recalculated based on the date the new document is issued on.
  • Similarly is the logic of document cancellation when the document includes pay-offs in cash (forecasts on dates later that the date of cancellation are still copied from the cancelled document).
  • It is recommended that the default value of the new company parameter “Cash transaction valeur must match registration date” is preserved (i.e. YES) in order to ensure that neither a user action nor any other procedure (e.g. applying the wrong payment method) will result the registration of a pay-off in cash on a later or earlier valeur date that the date of the registration (i.e. posting to accounting).

Attention

In order to ensure that this preventive control is not applied due to misconfigurations (but exclusively to protect from user mistakes) you need to make sure that:
(a) Cash payment methods do not have any calculations related to the due date OR any working days shifts. This way the due date will always be the same with the registration date, when applying manually or automatically a payment method.
(b) The number of valeur days on cash liquidity accounts needs to be equal to zero.

• The UI of documents’ Matching is now enriched by two columns: Branch closing/opening entry; these are available at the Add/remove Columns dialogue. Moreover a User Access Privilege is now available for the particular UI.

• A new option is now available under the menu Financials / Portfolio: “New note document…” This allows you to issue a new document of any document type that has been marked as “Note transaction” (i.e. Document Type Field: Menu/Order).
• The Bank and the Note type can be optionally included at any grid layout for Notes (use Add/remove Columns).

Fixed assets

• The report Fixed asset details by position now supports grouping by Trade Account. This information is available for 3rd party warehouses / to Third parties, while in any other case (when the fixed asset position is a standard Warehouse) the specific info-level is empty.
• When changing the start date of depreciations and depreciation entries already exist a warning will, henceforth, appear in order to user errors.
• The fixed asset profile now includes the Accounting category.

Documents and Series

• It is henceforth feasible to partially (or entirely) cancel a purchase order, using the new Document Type ACA and the corresponding transition 417. COC=>ACA Anulare comanda de achizitie.
• The dialogue that the system displays when waiting for the completion of a transition is not modal anymore, in order to allow the user to continue with any other tasks that need to be done.
• The Task field, that is available on every Document Header, is henceforth controlled through the option: “Informative Data” (Data Category column of the User privilege profile in documents, available under the Customization node: “Documents and Series”); this way it is now feasible to assign the appropriate privilege to users for the particular field.
• The system henceforth checks whether an automatic forecast (liquidity) account exists in the documents that use it (e.g. SDV, SCN, CVR).
• In order to improve the performance of the bulk insertion of Serial Numbers in Documents, it is now possible to deactivate the exclusion of Serial Numbers that have already been selected in the document. The specific system’s behavior is there to help avoid user mistakes; however it can negatively affect the system performance as the number of the selected SNs in a document increases. In order to deactivate the default system check, set the company parameter “Documents and S/N administration: Search within the non-selected only” to “NO”.
• The List of Document Series that is available on the Document Type UI form has been improved by: adding an auto-filter line, new columns with information related to whether each series is a cancellation series etc. Moreover, you may use the Add/remove Columns functionality to include any of the Document Series Fields.
• Moreover, the administration list of document series (in Customization) has been enriched with functionality that allows you to add/modify or even delete user groups from the selected Document Series.

Statistical analysis & Reporting

Profit Margin Analytics

Eight new fully interactive dashboards are provided to give you a deeper profit margin insight. These analytical pages were designed from scratch. They provide a simpler dataset design, which means that they can be customized much more easily. Moreover, they introduce a cleaner and a much more minimal canvas design. Most of these dashboards share the following common features:

• They provide a consolidated and an analytic page.
• The consolidated page gives a quick snapshot of the performance of a selected business dimension.
• The analytic page gives you a deep insight of a selected business dimension in terms of the time dimension (month & quarter) and two freely selectable standard context dimensions.
• All charts that provide interactive context analysis are styled with a brief note “click a data point to see context data…”
• All the provided dashboards include two context charts that can be used for advanced cross content analysis. Each chart provides a drop down combo selector to select the dimensions (1 & 2) you wish to analyze. Moreover, you can use the data of a dimension chart (dimension 1) to filter the data presented by the other context dimension chart (dimension 2). In this way, you can get various complex business answers by selecting the business dimensions you need.

The following dashboards are included:

• Company fiscal year comparative profit margin structure (versus the prior year)

• Company dimension analytics

• Product category analytics
• Customer category analytics
• Recent period analytics (this is a new dashboard that gives you for all standard business dimensions profit margin analysis for the last rolling eight quarters – including the current one)
• Fiscal year comparative analytics
• Top profit dimensions comparison of two fiscal year
• Geographical region target analytics
• Sales representative target analytics

All the old profitability (Business Intelligence Menu\Dashboards\Profitability Analysis) dashboards are obsoleted (before this version of Entersoft Business Suite).

Cross-dimensional Sales

This new Sales analysis dashboard is particularly easy to use and utilize. It is available under the Business Intelligence menu and it provides a direct, graphical overview of the Sales progress by any dimension. By selecting one sales dimension and the desired period of time, the progress graphs (by month or quarter) are presented in comparison to the exact previous period of time; one graph per dimension value. E.g. if the Geo Zone is selected, one graph by Geo Zone is presented. Similarly, if the Business Unit is selected, then one graph by Business Unit is presented and so forth. The available dimensions are: Business dimensions, Customer and Item dimensions (i.e. classifications/categorizations).

When the Cross analytics checkbox is activated, then a second selector becomes available for selecting another dimension. Then the analysis involves all combinations of the two dimensions. E.g. if the first dimension is the Geo Zone and the second dimension is the Company Branch, then the dashboard will return a series of bar charts that will present the share of each branch to the turnover per Geo Zone for the selected period of time.

Sales Current Insight

The dashboard current sales insight has been re-redesigned to give you a clearer overview of your current sales performance. Some of the new features are the following:

• Sales central budget sheet as been included in the calculation of sales revenue versus sales target for the following:
  • Current year up to current month gauge.
  • Current quarter up to current month
  • Current month
  • Last twelve closed months comparison chart

• All business dimension charts (company dimensions, customer & product attributes) are comparative. In this way, you can compare the revenue performance of the selected period with the same previous period. You can use the provided tooltips to see comparative key figures related to sales effectiveness.
• Item analysis chart is now interactive. This means that you can perform top ten item analysis for a selected item attribute value.
• A new bullet graph has been introduced. Is shows the target achievement rate for the last closed 12 months (rolling period). It also features a tooltip with following consolidated key figures:
  • Last 12 Months Revenue
  • Last 12 Months Target
  • Variance from target
  • Achievement rate (%)
  • Previous 12 Months Revenue
  • Variance from Previous 12 months revenue
• The last vs. previous 12 months chart is now interactive. You can click to the revenue data points to see context analysis for customer, product and company business dimensions.
• Company Dimensions 1 and 2 have been introduced. Moreover, when you select business activity, dimension 1 or 2 for analysis then a business unit combo selector dynamically appears. In this way, you can filter the selected company dimension using a business unit attribute value.

Top Revenue Dimensions Comparison of Two Fiscal Years

This dashboard has been re-designed to give you a more deep knowledge of top revenue performers. You can compare the top performers for any standard business dimension. Moreover, the dashboard provides an advanced cross context analysis. In this way, you can filter the top performers of a selected dimension using a value of the other selected business dimension.

Sales statistics - Salespersons

• The ΒΙΤ “Sales statistics – Salespersons” has been improved by:
  • adding as groupings the business dimensions
  • including the Initial Turnover column (the actual turnover BEFORE the discounts on the invoice)
  • changing the default grouping (by branch, sales representative and customer)

Financial reporting

• The names of the files in the e-Portfolio have changed; now the names also include the Branch code, if the Branch is defined on the report criteria. This way it is now possible to acquire as many reports as the number of branches; the reports will be distinctly presented (one per line) in the e-Portfolio.
• It is henceforth feasible to define additional file types to be exported and attached (word and excel) when creating official report data files for the e-Portfolio.
• The Fiscal Year-End entries (‘closing’ period entries) can now be included in all of the Fixed Asset & Liquidity financial reports (Liquidity Accounts Trial Balance, Fixed Assets Trial Balance, Detailed Fixed Asset Registry, Fixed assets by position, Registers, Depreciation Analysis, Statements by I.A.S.), by using the corresponding criterion, which was already available on the financial reports of all other subsystems. It is required to configure the appropriate Document Types (e.g. MFA, with period type = closing). Such document types are not included in the default system configuration.

Accounting

• According to the new requirements of the fiscal law, the number of transactions per trader and type of transaction must be displayed. The new version of the Statement meets that requirement into the list and the file’s structure.

• In VAT journals, it is henceforth feasible to restrict the period of time in the past in which the application searches for and displays Inflow/Outflow VAT clearance entries under the ‘VAT on Payment’ regime through the following two new Company Parameters: “VAT on payments – Number of days for Outflow Clearance” and “VAT on payments – Allowed period time for Inflow VAT Clearance”. The default period of time is 90 days both for Sales, as required by the law, and for Purchases. This configuration significantly improves the performance of the related reports.

Note that…

The number of days is available for modification on the views (for advanced users).

International Accounting Standards (IAS)

• The Accounting reports on Fiscal year closing are now available under the menu Business Intelligence / IAS Financials where the entries of the IAS Journal of Differences are also accounted.
• The NAS & IAS Fixed Asset Comparative statement now includes the Ledger Account as criterion.

Miscellaneous

• It is now feasible to schedule the Closing process of an Imports Folder through new specialized actions in Automations.
• The assignment of user privileges on various Contract fields is now feasible (description, alternative description, sales representative, comments, project, activity, business unit, dimension 1 & 2)
• The SMS provider SMSLink is henceforth available.
• In the privilege definition system it is henceforth possible to define privileges that concern the following Inventory Item info:
  • Detailed description
  • Property set
  • Typical order
  • Season
  • Measurement/packaging unit administration
  • Multiple item codes
  • Allowed WH and safety stock limits
  • Item relations

Entersoft framework

Image columns in Views (Scrollers)

It is henceforth feasible to include the presentation of photos/images directly from a provided image path or URL, in standard Entersoft Views (Scrollers). In order to achieve this, the following needs to be implemented:

• Let’s assume that there is a column that contains the image path or URL.
• Open the View Designer and name this column as: ESIMGURLOF_[column name]; e.g. ESIMGURLOF_PhotoOfRecord. There is no reason to make this column visible.
• Still in the View Designer, it is required to create an expression-column as cast(null as image) as PHOTO. The name of this new column must be the name of the previously described column without the ESIMGURLOF_ prefix. For the above given example, the column name must be defined as: PhotoOfRecord. Make sure that at the scroller layout (use the layout designer to define this) the column type must be: Column type=BoundImage.
• The Key of each one of these two columns must be the same with the DataMember of each column. This is expected to be ready by default, due to the default designer behavior. However, this is something that should be checked when you include this feature into a scroller.

You may include more than one photo columns per view (scroller); moreover, photo columns can be presented in any level of a hierarchical view.

Entersoft Migration (EMIs): Import data (advanced mode)

• Henceforth, before execution the system asks for the user’s confirmation.
• Most importantly, four new types of steps are available:

run application
Add EMI execution step
Add automation execution step
Add matching completion step

Dynamic UI Forms

• It is now possible to hide the toolbar action: “New by copy…” using:
  • the Layout modifier (right click on a UI form and: Modify layout)
  • or the UI form Designer (top level node properties / hide menu items property).

• The Context Web Browser control has been extended to support in total:
  • Static URLs; e.g. http://www.mysite.com
  • Company parameters; e.g. http://www.mysite.com/{##(PARAM)}
  • Master fields (dataset); e.g. http://www.mysite.com/{column}
  • Table fields (dataset); e.g. http://www.mysite.com/{table.column}
  • Relational fields (dataset); e.g. http://www.mysite.com/{table.relation.column}

Entity lists

• When adding a new entity to a Static Entity List, this is appended at the end of the list.

• Activating the new flag “Modeling completed” on an entity list allows you to protect the list contents (its definition) from any modification. In order to allow modifications, the flag needs to be deactivated. The system allows you to define user privileges on this flag; i.e. allow the (de)activation of the flag by a specific user group only.

Miscellaneous

• All Business Dimension tables (i.e. Business Unit, Business Activity, Dimension 1, Dimension 2) have been extended by:
  • 5 new User Definable (UDFs) checkboxes
  • A Timestamp field.
• It is now possible to reorder (i.e. move UP or DOWN and, therefore, automatically re-assign sequence numbers) Property Set lines using the corresponding buttons on the vertical toolbar.
• The Online Users view now includes the column “Company”.

Appendix

Specifically, the transition rules that support the default Sales & Distribution configuration are:

100. CREDIT CONTROL	Verificare credit control comanda de vanzare	COV
101. APROBARE	Aprobare comanda	COV
102. APROBARE	Aprobare aviz	AEV
103. APROBARE	Aprobare factura	FAV
104. COV-COC (furnizor de bază)	Comandă de vânzare din Comandă client (la furnizorul de bază a articolului)	COV
104. COV-CTM (din depozitul diferite)	Comanda de Transfer intern din Comanda de Vanzare	COV
105. LIVRARE TRANSPORTATOR	Livrare catre transportator	FAV
106. PREGATIRE	Finalizare pregatire marfa	COV
107. IMPACHETARE	Finalizare impachetare marfa	COV
107. RECEPTIE TRANSPORTATOR	Receptie marfa de catre transportator	FAV
109. TRANSPORTATOR - CLIENT	Livrare de la transportator catre client	FAV
110. CONFIRMARE PRIMIRE CLIENT	Confirmare receptie marfa de catre client	FAV
113. PREGATIRE	Finalizare pregatire marfa	RIC
115. LIVRARE TRANSPORTATOR	Livrare catre transportator	AEV
117. RECEPTIE TRANSPORTATOR	Receptie marfa de catre transportator	AEV
119. TRANSPORTATOR - CLIENT	Livrare de la transportator catre client	AEV
120. CONFIRMARE PRIMIRE CLIENT	Confirmare receptie marfa de catre client	AEV
123. IMPACHETARE	Finalizare impachetare marfa	RIC
203. APROBARE	Aprobare factura vanzare cu amanuntul	FRV
204. LIVRARE TRANSPORTATOR	Livrare catre transportator	FRV
205. RECEPTIE TRANSPORTATOR	Receptie marfa de catre transportator	FRV
206. TRANSPORTATOR - CLIENT	Livrare de la transportator catre client	FRV
207. CONFIRMARE PRIMIRE CLIENT	Confirmare receptie marfa de catre client	FRV

Release Document for EXP-RO01-4.0.22.0