Period Usage Summary

 

Usage and Forms Management totals are stored on a period by period basis, much like the General Ledger. Each product can store a beginning and ending balance, usage and value for each period at each Site. And each product can store an unlimited number of periods of summary information. Also, each period’s information can be locked. What it all means:

a. You can store and review an unlimited number of periods of summary information for each Product and Site. There is no more two year limitation on usage reports.

b. Product Usage can be locked for any customer’s items on any day of the month, thus closing their F/M Period. Any inventory activity after a period is locked is then forced into the next F/M Period for that particular customer (again: just like the G/L for accounting transactions).

c. And again, like in the G/L you can make adjustments to prior periods, but only if the period is unlocked. When a period is locked/unlocked is tracked by TransLog (you do have Translog, right? 😉 )

d. Business Reminders now not only warns you that a customer’s F/M Period requires closing, it also lets you close and lock the period as well!

 

Practical Advantages

Obviously one main advantage is repeatability: you can prevent transactions transactions which affect inventory from affecting reports you have previously printed. In other words, you can be sure now that the F/M reports you print six months from now will be exactly the same.

Another is speed: since this summary information is stored in the database and does not need to be recalculated for each report, you can information much faster.

And finally, you get more information, because you can now compare different ranges of periods at will (as you can with the General Ledger). For example, you can print a report comparing the past six months of usage, month by month, rather than being limited to just pre-defined report ranges, such as This Year Vs. Last Year.

 

Procedure

Activating

Activating this ability is actually a two step process.

1. Enable Period Usage Management for your company. This is done in Setup|Inventory Options.

 

2. To activate individual Customers for Period Usage, you must then enable Forms Management in the Customer Master.

 

3. Once a Customer is activated, SAFE automatically creates the periods for their account, based on their Starting Financial Day Of Month and Starting Financial Period.

Ex: If the customer’s financial calendar begins in July and their count day is the 25th of every month, SAFE will create their periods such that Period 1 begins July 25th, Period 2 begins August 25th and so on…

 

Monitoring/Editing For Individual Products and Sites

You can view the Usage Totals for a Product at any given Site by clicking on the Period Usage button in the Linked Sites Browse for a given Product. You can access this browse by:

1. Open the Products Browse and select the Product you wish to review

 

2. Click the Linked Sites button.  

 

 

3. Click the Period Summary button at lower right.

 

Locking Periods

You can lock (or unlock) any Forms Managment Period for any Customer. When a Period is locked, the totals of all Products assigned to that customer are then frozen; that is they will not be affected by any changes to existing transactions. You can

 

There are three ways to lock an F/M Period for a customer:

 

From The Customer’s F/M Period Browse 1. Open the Customer Browse and select the Customer.

2. Right click on the Customer and select F/M Periods. (If this is the first time you have opened this screen, there will be a slight delay as SAFE creates the Periods for you.)

3. Double click on the Lock column (second from the left). When a Period is locked

 

From Business Reminders SAFE can automatically remind you that it is the end of a customer’s F/M Period when you scan for things to do in the Business Reminders Browse. By tagging customers whose F/M Period has ended, SAFE can automatically lock their period.

 

From the Value Status Forms Management Report Finally, you can run the Value Status Report with the Update Period option checked. This will automatically update that period’s totals with those on the report and lock the period in one step.

 

When a Period is locked or unlocked, this event is tracked in Translog.