The documentation, and any subsequent revisions of major business processes, is always deemed a sound and proactive business practice. Illustrating or “drawing a picture” often simplifies complex business processes allowing management a more detailed operational view into the organization’s inner workings and providing the ‘rank & file’ a look where they fit into to overall picture or business process. Often overlooked, yet essential to more effectively managing an organization, is documenting the business process of system interfaces – between QAD and other business systems. It is very important that these activities are visible, understood and documented. The documentation can be managed, depending upon your organization’s QAD investment and infrastructure, outside of QAD by way of an easily accessible company intranet site or a network folder or directly in QAD Enterprise via Process Maps. When managing the process and operational flows outside of QAD, the documentation will typically be stored as a Visio...

Within QAD’s Enterprise Applications, General Ledger transactions are created as un-posted transactions. Un-posted transactions are not visible in the general ledger trial balance and therefore would not be included in the financial statements. The operation modules in QAD generate un-posted transactions when financial events occur. 

Once again Steve Jobs and Apple have made quite a splash with a new product announcement. The new iPad will undoubtedly have tech geeks and those who flash technology for status in quite a state of excitement. One can remember when the iPhone came out and the business technical world thought it had nothing to do with them. Now how many road warriors run through airports with those ubiquitous iPhones connected to their Corporate Email servers and to other business Web applications? I’ve talked to many that claim that they don’t even have to boot up their laptops in their hotel rooms – the iPhone gives them everything that they need. So what impact will the iPad have?First of all, will it replace laptops? Its virtual keyboard certainly doesn’t appeal to those of us that can still remember doing college term papers on an old Royal typewriter. But what of the under 30 workforce, have you seen them type their texts at warp speed without a second thought? They can’t see the reason for the traditional keyboard....

Accounts Receivable collections are a process fraught with telephone conversations and follow-up activities.   An effective collector makes timely calls, sends timely emails and sends statements of accounts to customers where accounts are past due.  

In the latest version of QAD, a new browse called Work Order Comp Status Browse let’s you easily find which work orders you have inventory to build and which ones are short. The browse works by running through an available to promise calculation for all work orders in the system based on work order due date.

The browse is able to be sorted based on “status” of the work order inventory. There are several status flags used, such as:
1. Available – There is enough component inventory to build the entire Work Order
2. Shortage – Part of the Work Order can be built
3. Scheduled Receipts – Purchase Order (or lower level work order) receipts are expected and required to completely build this item

Are your customers disappointed by late shipments? Are you frustrated by freight expedites? Is your production schedule frequently interrupted because of unrealistic due dates? You may find relief by incorporating Available to Promise Enforcement into your order entry process.Available to Promise is the uncommitted portion of inventory and planned production. ATP calculations can be a valuable addition to a solid inventory management and planning program. By using the ATP enforcement settings in the Sales Order Control file and the Item Master, the system can calculate whether an order quantity is projected to be available by the requested due date. This applies to Sales Orders, Material Orders, and RMAs.The enforcement levels can be set to either a warning level, which can be bypassed by the users during order entry. Or, to an error level, which forces the user to either change the due date or reduce the order quantity to within the calculated ATP quantity in order to complete order entry. Additionally,...

Enterprise Material Transfer or EMT is an excellent solution for anyone looking to fulfill an end customer’s demand through 2 levels or multi-level organizations. EMT is the process of automatically creating a purchase order to a supply base whether they are an internal or external source via the creation of a sales order from an end customers purchase order. When you combine EMT with QAD’s EDI ECommerce module you have a very slick process flow that manages your entire order fulfillment.EMT supports two types of shipping practices; direct shipments where the secondary business unit ships to the end customer and trans-shipments where the primary ships to the end customer. Regardless of which is right for you the EDI documents flow the same. In a multi-level EMT environment all you really are doing is adding another layer in the process that will have an additional business unit(s) to include in your setups resulting in the transmitting of that many more EDI transactions. When fully setup via EDI ECommerce...

Data validation for an implementation or in everyday business can be a very painful and time consuming endeavor. One way to simplify this process is to write custom browses that pull specific data in the various functional areas. You can add only the specific fields of data that need to reviewed, which greatly simplifies things for users. These browses can then be run by each individual user that is required to validate specific data. Writing custom browses allows end users to access MFG/Pro at their own convenience and run the specific browse that you have created just for them. You could even name it after them to further simplify things. Once they’ve run their browse they can validate the necessary data that exists within the database. The file can also be exported to excel for further review. Once thoroughly reviewed, any necessary changes can then be made directly in the database or the exported and cleansed spreadsheet can be used as a template to load via the normal CIM process.This process can...