Please don't groan, I apologize in advance.
First, I have seen this philosophy many times. People do not want to change
what they were have been doing even though the method you have been using
was designed because they could not get the information from their previous
system otherwise. That system was based on old technology that was not very
flexible. The invest a considerable amount of money in a product, such as
Vantage because it is easier and there is more information available. Then
they decide not to use the system as it was designed, because they do not
want to change the old procedure. The continue to do things in Vantage the
old way, get some distance down the implementation line and all the sudden
have other things that do not work properly, such as inventory, job
creation/tracking, customer history information, shipping/receiving,
whatever. They are then told that is because of that decision. They have
now created a system with bad information.
I don't know how far along you are with you Vantage implementation or who
advised you on your implementation, but it is very important to learn how to
use the system as it was designed before you start changing it. Either
through out moded processes or programming changes. In a system such as
Vantage their in a lot of interconnectivity between all the modules. Some
of this interconnectivity is not readily apparent to the user. Especially
the new user that doesn't understand the system and how it works.
Vantage, like most systems is designed with a activity flow from which all
things fall. Now the activities are designed to accommodate a variety of
business types and allow for a lot of flexibility. Not all of the features
are required and their is room all different business models, but it is hard
to ascertain what is important and what is not until you understand how
things work. This would be like saying all the wheels on a roller skate
have to be two in the front and two in the back because that is the way they
have always been, but once you learn to ride on skates where the wheels are
in a straight line you find out there are some advantages to this model.
You may then decide which type of skate you like or create a different
pattern entirely, but you don't know this until you try it.
Vantage activity flow assumes you start with either a Quote or an Order.
This is based on a PO from your customer. The Order should match the
Customer PO and yes this then becomes your Acknowledgement to the customer.
The PO from your customer is a contract for goods or services, you
acknowledgement is the acceptance of that contract. From their the Order
either draws on items from your stock or creates a demand for production.
That demand for production creates one or more jobs depending on how many
items are on your Order and how many sub-components you have in your
production process.
Once a Job is create that creates demand on raw materials either from stock
or that have to be ordered from you Vendors/Suppliers. If the raw materials
are in stock fine if not then Purchase Order suggestions are created within
the system and you may elect to issues a Purchase Order. A Purchase Order
to your Vendor will consist of many items that you needs. Some cause by job
needs, some cause by inventory needs, and any combination thereof. The Job
will also have labor requirements and possibly tooling.
You will issue the appropriate Purchase Orders. All of this information
comes together to determine how much time is needed to complete the job by
the customers required delivery date, which is located in the Order you
previously entered. The system takes all these time requirements into
consideration and creates job start suggestions. It advises you when you
need to start the Job to have it completed on time. It tells you when
purchased items have to be received by in order to enter the production
process in time to complete the job and ship to your customer within the
time constraint.
Finally, you issue material to the job or receive material from Purchase
Orders to the job and commence production. You have people work on the Job
and they charge time to the Job. The accumulation of material and time
creates the job costs. When the job is complete you indicate how many
pieces were completed, the job costs a divided amount the number of complete
pieces to give you a per piece cost. When the material and labor are
reported to the job the associated costs are moved from inventory,
receiving, and labor to WIP (work in process). When the job is complete the
WIP costs are moved to the AR Clearing account, waiting to be shipped.
The product is then shipped to you customer. This is done by creating a
shipping document (packing slip). You then invoice against items that were
shipped. This brings forward what was shipped, when and any other
information required. When you print and post the invoice the dollars go to
Sales and the Costs go to Cost of Goods. The invoice is based on the Sales
Order, the results of Job Production, and finally the Packing Slip. If you
do ship the amount required by the order then you will see an Open Order
amount if you shipped less. This will tell you that more is required. If
you ship more that is ok. This is the activity flow. Epicor has created a
fully integrated system to keep track of the entire process from beginning
to end. A considerable amount of software to let you see dynamically at any
given point where you are in the process and how much has to be completed.
When you work outside that process the financial information may not flow
properly and you put yourself in position where now you have to do extra
work to complete steps that should be completed automatically when certain
activities are done.
I know this was a long explanation, but I hope it will help you have
meaningful discussion with the people you need to talk to. It is important
that you convince them to use the system as it was intended first. It is
really hard to predict what problems will be encountered down the road if
you do not follow the system. Maybe none, maybe you just spend many tens of
thousands of dollars on a piece of junk, just because you didn't understand
how the system work. Let me know if there is anything else I can tell you
that will help. Also thanks for your patience, I know I get real windy
sometimes.
Cameron A. Janish
Misha1 cameron@...
Toll Free: 866-464-7421
Office: 708-445-7509
Cell: 630-712-9520
Office Fax: 630-893-1307
Direct Fax: 443-638-0489
-----Original Message-----
From: LISA RICCI [mailto:lricci@...]
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2001 09:16 AM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Sales Orders
Good Morning,
I am the Project Leader for the implementation of Vantage at our Job
Shop. In the past (using a different software package) we have not used
Sales Orders. A new job was created for each item that a customer
ordered. Because the Jobs were serving as both a Sales Order and a
Production Order we are accustomed to the need for one "order" per
customer part ordere
I have been trying to introduce the Sales Order in Vantage as being our
acknowledgement of the Customer's PO. I believe that our Sales Order
should represent the customer's request and match up line for line.
But, because we did not have Sales Orders in the past, I am having
trouble selling the fact that we do not need to create a new Sales Order
for each item the customer orders on their PO. The Sales Group here
would like to create a new Sales Order for each line of a PO. Even
though we can use the Sales Order Release Number as the Job Number, I
have not been able to convince the group that they do not need a new
Sales Order for each item, but that multiple lines on one Sales Order
will be sufficient.
I was wondering if maybe there are other companies who prefer to use
Sales Orders in this fashion. Maybe I am missing something and someone
can explain if there are benefits to creating a new sales order instead
of using multiple lines. Any insight regarding the benefits or
drawbacks of either method will be appreciated.
As always,
Thank you,
Lisa Ricci
PS- Happy New Year!
Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
ADVERTISEMENT
Useful links for the Yahoo!Groups Vantage Board are: ( Note: You must
have already linked your email address to a yahoo id to enable access. )
(1) To access the Files Section of our Yahoo!Group for Report Builder and
Crystal Reports and other 'goodies', please goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/files/.
(2) To search through old msg's goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/messages
(3) To view links to Vendors that provide Vantage services goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/links
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
First, I have seen this philosophy many times. People do not want to change
what they were have been doing even though the method you have been using
was designed because they could not get the information from their previous
system otherwise. That system was based on old technology that was not very
flexible. The invest a considerable amount of money in a product, such as
Vantage because it is easier and there is more information available. Then
they decide not to use the system as it was designed, because they do not
want to change the old procedure. The continue to do things in Vantage the
old way, get some distance down the implementation line and all the sudden
have other things that do not work properly, such as inventory, job
creation/tracking, customer history information, shipping/receiving,
whatever. They are then told that is because of that decision. They have
now created a system with bad information.
I don't know how far along you are with you Vantage implementation or who
advised you on your implementation, but it is very important to learn how to
use the system as it was designed before you start changing it. Either
through out moded processes or programming changes. In a system such as
Vantage their in a lot of interconnectivity between all the modules. Some
of this interconnectivity is not readily apparent to the user. Especially
the new user that doesn't understand the system and how it works.
Vantage, like most systems is designed with a activity flow from which all
things fall. Now the activities are designed to accommodate a variety of
business types and allow for a lot of flexibility. Not all of the features
are required and their is room all different business models, but it is hard
to ascertain what is important and what is not until you understand how
things work. This would be like saying all the wheels on a roller skate
have to be two in the front and two in the back because that is the way they
have always been, but once you learn to ride on skates where the wheels are
in a straight line you find out there are some advantages to this model.
You may then decide which type of skate you like or create a different
pattern entirely, but you don't know this until you try it.
Vantage activity flow assumes you start with either a Quote or an Order.
This is based on a PO from your customer. The Order should match the
Customer PO and yes this then becomes your Acknowledgement to the customer.
The PO from your customer is a contract for goods or services, you
acknowledgement is the acceptance of that contract. From their the Order
either draws on items from your stock or creates a demand for production.
That demand for production creates one or more jobs depending on how many
items are on your Order and how many sub-components you have in your
production process.
Once a Job is create that creates demand on raw materials either from stock
or that have to be ordered from you Vendors/Suppliers. If the raw materials
are in stock fine if not then Purchase Order suggestions are created within
the system and you may elect to issues a Purchase Order. A Purchase Order
to your Vendor will consist of many items that you needs. Some cause by job
needs, some cause by inventory needs, and any combination thereof. The Job
will also have labor requirements and possibly tooling.
You will issue the appropriate Purchase Orders. All of this information
comes together to determine how much time is needed to complete the job by
the customers required delivery date, which is located in the Order you
previously entered. The system takes all these time requirements into
consideration and creates job start suggestions. It advises you when you
need to start the Job to have it completed on time. It tells you when
purchased items have to be received by in order to enter the production
process in time to complete the job and ship to your customer within the
time constraint.
Finally, you issue material to the job or receive material from Purchase
Orders to the job and commence production. You have people work on the Job
and they charge time to the Job. The accumulation of material and time
creates the job costs. When the job is complete you indicate how many
pieces were completed, the job costs a divided amount the number of complete
pieces to give you a per piece cost. When the material and labor are
reported to the job the associated costs are moved from inventory,
receiving, and labor to WIP (work in process). When the job is complete the
WIP costs are moved to the AR Clearing account, waiting to be shipped.
The product is then shipped to you customer. This is done by creating a
shipping document (packing slip). You then invoice against items that were
shipped. This brings forward what was shipped, when and any other
information required. When you print and post the invoice the dollars go to
Sales and the Costs go to Cost of Goods. The invoice is based on the Sales
Order, the results of Job Production, and finally the Packing Slip. If you
do ship the amount required by the order then you will see an Open Order
amount if you shipped less. This will tell you that more is required. If
you ship more that is ok. This is the activity flow. Epicor has created a
fully integrated system to keep track of the entire process from beginning
to end. A considerable amount of software to let you see dynamically at any
given point where you are in the process and how much has to be completed.
When you work outside that process the financial information may not flow
properly and you put yourself in position where now you have to do extra
work to complete steps that should be completed automatically when certain
activities are done.
I know this was a long explanation, but I hope it will help you have
meaningful discussion with the people you need to talk to. It is important
that you convince them to use the system as it was intended first. It is
really hard to predict what problems will be encountered down the road if
you do not follow the system. Maybe none, maybe you just spend many tens of
thousands of dollars on a piece of junk, just because you didn't understand
how the system work. Let me know if there is anything else I can tell you
that will help. Also thanks for your patience, I know I get real windy
sometimes.
Cameron A. Janish
Misha1 cameron@...
Toll Free: 866-464-7421
Office: 708-445-7509
Cell: 630-712-9520
Office Fax: 630-893-1307
Direct Fax: 443-638-0489
-----Original Message-----
From: LISA RICCI [mailto:lricci@...]
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2001 09:16 AM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Sales Orders
Good Morning,
I am the Project Leader for the implementation of Vantage at our Job
Shop. In the past (using a different software package) we have not used
Sales Orders. A new job was created for each item that a customer
ordered. Because the Jobs were serving as both a Sales Order and a
Production Order we are accustomed to the need for one "order" per
customer part ordere
I have been trying to introduce the Sales Order in Vantage as being our
acknowledgement of the Customer's PO. I believe that our Sales Order
should represent the customer's request and match up line for line.
But, because we did not have Sales Orders in the past, I am having
trouble selling the fact that we do not need to create a new Sales Order
for each item the customer orders on their PO. The Sales Group here
would like to create a new Sales Order for each line of a PO. Even
though we can use the Sales Order Release Number as the Job Number, I
have not been able to convince the group that they do not need a new
Sales Order for each item, but that multiple lines on one Sales Order
will be sufficient.
I was wondering if maybe there are other companies who prefer to use
Sales Orders in this fashion. Maybe I am missing something and someone
can explain if there are benefits to creating a new sales order instead
of using multiple lines. Any insight regarding the benefits or
drawbacks of either method will be appreciated.
As always,
Thank you,
Lisa Ricci
PS- Happy New Year!
Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
ADVERTISEMENT
Useful links for the Yahoo!Groups Vantage Board are: ( Note: You must
have already linked your email address to a yahoo id to enable access. )
(1) To access the Files Section of our Yahoo!Group for Report Builder and
Crystal Reports and other 'goodies', please goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/files/.
(2) To search through old msg's goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/messages
(3) To view links to Vendors that provide Vantage services goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/links
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]