News from the Kore

Winter 2003 Issue

Suffering through another San Diego Winter

The brutality of the San Diego Winter is obvious! Chuck, Mark, Paul B. Rob, Ken, Eric and Paul T.  all try hard to keep from getting severe sun damage.

Tech Tip: User Alerts in DataFlo

Paul Trebbien
pault@koretech.com
Senior Support Technician
Kore Technologies, LLC

The User Alerts capability available in DataFlo is a very useful tool.  Currently, in baseline DataFlo, there are User Alerts for notifying Accounting about credit problems, and for notifying Customer Service about new calls, callbacks due, and calls going late.  There are also User Alerts for notifying engineering about change orders that need authorizing.  You can use this tech tip to add your own User Alerts!

User Alerts are defined in the System Utilities menu.  The User Alert can be defined to simply notify the target user(s) or to call another process, possibly calling a screen for inquiry or processing purposes.  Let’s take the CREDIT alert as an example.  In the AR Utilities, you can enter a list of users to be notified when there is a Credit or Aging issue.  When a sales order is entered into the system, the file time processing checks to see if this sales order plus its bill-to customer’s open AR amount will exceed the customer’s credit limit.  If it does, then a CREDIT alert is triggered.  A CREDIT alert is also triggered if that customer has an open invoice that is past due.  When a CREDIT alert is triggered, the file time process will pick up the list of users to notify and send each one an alert named CREDIT.  When one of those users chooses that Alert, the system calls the Credit Override screen and displays the Sales Order.  The user can choose (after some research) to override the hold status in that screen.  If this user, or another one, overrides the hold status, then processing in that screen will cancel the CREDIT alert to the others on the list.

How can your programmer set up a new User Alert?  Why don’t we use the Bill of Material screen as an example?  Let’s say we want to notify user PT (that’s me) when a new BOM is entered, and we want to call the Bill of Material Inquiry screen when the alert is invoked.  We also want to release the alert after PT views the Inquiry screen.

1. Define the Alert:

1. In the system utilities menu, create a new alert called, NEWBOM, and give it an appropriate description.

2. Enter PDC-04 as the Reply Process, which means the Bill of Materials Inquiry screen will be called when the Alert is invoked.

3. Enter a Y to allow the Alert to be Automatically Dismissed when the Alert is invoked (Reply Process does not have to be filed).

4. Enter PT as the User to Alert.  Note, I’m using this field to put in my list of Preview User-Ids to alert but we’re not limited to this screen for our list as AR stores it’s list in the AR-Table file and ECC has it’s list in another file.

2. Code the file time processing in the Bill of Materials Entry process (PDC-03), I added the following coding to the end of the file time coding:

     * REV KORE

 IF NFLG THEN

   CALL HW.OPEN('ALERT-CODES',F.CODES,ISA.OPEN,1)

   ALERT.CODE = "NEWBOM"

   MESSAGE = "New BOM added"

   READV U.IDS FROM F.CODES,ALERT.CODE,7 ELSE U.IDS=""

   CNT=1

   LOOP

USERID=U.IDS<1,CNT>

   WHILE USERID>"" DO

       CALL PV.POSTALERT(U.ID<1,CNT>,ALERT.CODE,MESSAGE,CID,"")

       CNT=CNT+1

   REPEAT

 END

Now, when a new Bill of Materials is entered, a User Alert will show up for me, and when I check that alert, the Bill of Materials Inquiry screen will pop up with that new Bill of Material.  The alert is dismissed automatically.  

If you like, with some software available from Kore, you can even have the alert sent out by e-mail.  Then, if PT is not logged onto DataFlo, or he spends all of his time in the middle of a single application, he will still get notified. (Drop us a note if you are interested.)

More than an Agreement:
Kore Now Functioning as a DataFlo VAR

Our relationship with Epicor (see our Holiday newsletter) is now more than just an agreement: we recently signed contracts with customers that mark Kore’s first sales of Epicor products, and have proposals out for several others.  For Kore these are landmark sales: we have often heard our customers request a single point of accountability for their technology solutions, and now we can put everything together: Kore applications, hardware and customization services, business and technical consulting, and Epicor products and IBM databases.

On a more personal note, the decade birthdays are hitting Kore hard these days: Frank Kertai and Paul Bressler have recently achieved another decade, and Ken Dickinson and Frank Busalacchi are coming up soon.  It is nice that the technical world rediscovered the value of experience over the last three years!

Liquid Controls Automates Lockbox Cash Receipts with Kourier

Chicago, IL – January 13, 2003 – When Liquid Controls evaluated the purchase of Kourier to address some integration and automation needs, David Bobo, the Application Development Manager at Liquid, had a number of specific applications in mind. Automating the posting of lockbox cash receipts was just one of them.  “The tight integration of the Kourier product with the Preview and DataFlo environment made the automating of lockbox cash receipts a logical choice for one of their first Kourier-based applications. We are always looking for ways to make the user’s jobs easier and more efficient”, noted David.

“That’s it?” queried Stephanie Johnson, Liquid Controls Accountant in charge of cash receipts application, the first time she initiated the Automated Lockbox Cash Receipts Application. “That’s it,” replied Frank Kertai, Managing Partner at Kore Technologies. “Wow! That was fast!” commented Ms. Johnson. “It sure was!” echoed Marilyn Tillman, Liquid Controls Supervisor of Accounts Receivable. What used to take Ms. Johnson hours, now takes just a few minutes to accomplish, thanks to the automated Lockbox Cash Receipts Application developed by Kore Technologies using the Kourier application suite.

“Our Kourier technology is like an integration Swiss Army knife,” noted Frank Kertai, Managing Partner of Kore Technologies.  “It is a wonderful generalized package that can solve a myriad of integration problems. Automating Lockbox Cash Receipts is just one shining example of the use of this tool.”

After two months using the Automated Lockbox Cash Receipts Application, Liquid Controls estimates that on average they save one to three hours per day in applying cash receipts.

“The payback on this application was less than two months -- we like these kinds of projects!"
-- Rick Simmons, Manager of Finance at Liquid Controls

With their new Kourier capabilities, Liquid Controls is now looking to meet more of the integration challenges posed by corporate initiatives in progress.  As the Lockbox application showed, sometimes the difference between the difficult and the easy is simply the right tool.

About Liquid Cotrols: Liquid Controls is a part of the Pump Products Group of IDEX, Corp. Liquid Controls products includes positive displacement, turbine, electromagnetic and coriolis mass flowmeters, Electronic registration and Control systems, Positive displacement rotary vane pumps, side-channel pumps, regenerative turbine pumps, and small horsepower reciprocating piston compressors. IDEX (NYSE IEX), is a global leader fluid-handling technologies for pump products, dispensing equipment and other industrial products www.idexcorp.com.

For most manufacturing companies direct inventory purchases are either the largest or second largest expenditure (after salaries) they make during the year.  Unfortunately, for many companies these expenditures aren’t pulling their weight!  How can you tell if you have lazy inventory?  The traditional measure is inventory turns (although that method has its limitations).  For virtually every manufacturing company, inventory turns of less than two (2) are a strong indication that inventory is taking too much time off!  For MRP users, the excess and obsolete inventory reports can also provide a strong indication of inventory “shiftlessness”.  However, even companies with better than two inventory turns, and little excess and obsolete inventory, may be carrying far too much inventory.

Decreasing overall inventory investment can have a dramatic impact on the bottom line.  Shifting from 1.5 to 3 inventory turns can increase overall profitability by as much as 2%*!  For a manufacturing company with $20 Million in sales, bottom line performance improvements of $400,000 are usually viewed very favorably by management and owners!

If you suspect your inventory has been taking too many coffee breaks, give us a call at 805-678-0030 or send us an e-mail.  We can put together a no risk program that will have your inventory working as hard as you do!

*Here is the calculation: Typically, manufacturing companies have a 50% cost of sales, and most manufacturing companies in the US today have a relatively high percentage of that cost in direct inventory.  For a company with 84% direct inventory content in cost of sales, inventory purchases represent 42% of sales.  1.5 inventory turns means an inventory on hand of 28% of sales.  Shifting to 3 inventory turns means decreasing inventory to 14%, or a decrease of 14%.  Traditionally, inventory carrying cost has been shown to be about 20%.  Even with today’s low interest rates, the cost of counting and storing inventory, coupled with the cost of obsolescence and lost working capital makes a 15% figure conservative.  Thus, the profit to be generated by increasing turns from 1.5 to 3 is about 2.1% (15% inventory carrying cost times 14% decrease in overall inventory on hand).

Product and Service News

Pauls Corner

For Valentines Day, my wife and I decided we’d get-away for the evening, a nice little ‘quiet’ break just for the two of us, an escape from kids for an evening.  She found a hotel about half way between our offices so we did not have to go home, just straight to the hotel.  While we were getting ready for dinner we heard a lot of commotion in the hallway – lots of running up/down the hallway and some giggling.  When we left our room, we found that the hotel was filled with 10-year-old girls!  It seems that several teams were staying at the hotel because of a regional swim meet.  So our “escape from kids” including lots of young girls talking, giggling, and exploring the hotel until about 10pm, when the coaches rounded them up!  Actually, we had a really nice time, as the kids seemed to stay out of our way except at the elevators, which always were busy.  Well, what sticks out in my mind – besides lots of kids – from that Friday night?  The hotels ‘newly’ opened restaurant – wow, did we luck out, the service was great and the food was spectacular.  Ah ha, great service is always remembered!

Current Year Profit G/L Account

I wanted to try and clarify exactly what the ‘Current Year Profit’ G/L account is, how it is defined, and how it updates your ‘Prior Year Retained Earnings’ account.  The Current Year Profit is simply a calculated number.  It is calculated by the Month End Process, MGL-08, and is equal to the difference between the expenses accounts total and the income accounts total for each period.  The Current Year Profit period dollars should match your Income Statement.  In the Chart of Accounts, the Current Year Profit should be defined as a “M”aster type account with a normal Credit balance (it can have a Debit balance, just depends on how you wish to report it).  It must distribute 100% to the Prior Year Retained Earnings account.  On your Balance Sheet you would include the Current Profit Account in the Owner Equity area, as it’s the number that will bring you into balance.  When the MGL Year End process is run, one of the jobs is to setup the GL for the New Year by initializing the Beginning Balances for the Assets, Liabilities, and Owner Equity accounts and by closing the Expenses and Income.  When closing the Expense and Income accounts, the process calculates the Current Profit for the year, which it will use to update the Beginning Balance of the Retained Earnings in the New Year.  (Note: there should never be any journal adjustments to the Current Profit account.)  What if there are multiple Prior Year Retained Earnings accounts?  Generally, after the MGL Year End, a manual journal is entered to re-distribute the Year End profit appropriately.  One of my customers has a modification to update multiple Retained Earnings in the Year End process.  Another customer ‘zeroes’ the Current Profit monthly by using a ‘clearing’ type account and then prior to MGL Year End closes the ‘clearing’ account, which essentially will add the numbers back into the Current Profit so that Retained Earnings will be updated.

A quick reminder: now is the time to start planning that trip to the Epicor Users Group meeting in Las Vegas this April.  I’ll be there!

Please remember, “Great Service to your Customer is always rewarded”.

Paul’s Questions and Answers

I am always ready to answer questions.  I enjoy answering them.  So everyone, if there’s a question you have on how something works, email it to me – pault@koretech.com.  I hope you find these useful:

Question:  We have the Multi-Plant DataFlo module but cannot seem to log to another plant from the Preview Explorer (PREVIEW.EXE).  It seems the screen just hangs.  Why is this happening?

Answer:  On systems running UniVerse, it appears that the Preview Explorer will go into a loop if the UPPERCASE version of the UV.ACCOUNT entry is missing.  Another symptom of the problem shows up when you use the PLANT command and see three copies of each plant in the drop down list.

Question:  What DataFlo report will show those Customers exceeding their Credit Limit?

Answer:  DataFlo does not specifically have that report.  There are a couple of reports that will possibly show you some of those customers and they are the Open Sales Orders On Hold and the Collection Report By Customer.  You can run the Sales Orders on Hold and the Orders that have a Hold Code of “C” are the ones that have exceeded the Customers Credit limit.  The Collection Report by Customer is the closest and it reports on all Customers who have any open balances in the 30-60-90-120 days old.  I would say this report would be the one to modify (or clone) to give a new screen option to show only customers whose Open Balance exceeds their Credit Limit.

Question:  How do I automate the Kore Technologies File Resizing procedure, say to run every Sunday morning?

Answer:  I’d use Kore’s “Schedule a Recurring Process”, it’s on the KMK menu.  You need to tell the screen what to process, where to send any output (Preview Printer Driver name), that you wish it to run on Sunday’s, and the specific time to start (like 2am).  Now it will run forevermore.  I would have the output go to a printer rather than a hold file so you would know your files were resized on Monday when you came in.  You may change or cancel this schedule anytime.

Question:  I’m trying to modify a Search on the Customer file to eliminate the Inactive Customers.  In the search CUSTOMER*2 there does not seem to be a way to exclude those with F59#”S” (59 is a User Defined field we use to flag customers as Inactive).  How can we do this?

Answer:  I’d create a custom index in the CUSTOMER file.  Here, I created a new index in the CUSTOMER file called ACTIVE and set the “Index Edits” field to X59,#,'S' which, when being updated, will update the index with only those CUSTOMERS whose attribute 59 is not equal an S.  I then created a new search called CUSTOMER*ACTIVE which is really a copy of the CUSTOMER*2 search and changed the “Search Criteria” field to ACTIVE (our index name).  Of course, you’ll need to rebuild the Customer Indexes.  Now, add that search to a field on one of your screens…

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