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Warehouse Wizard Series Parts 4 – 6

July 9, 2019 by Darcy Boerio Leave a Comment

Last month we brought you parts 1 – 3 of the six-part “Warehouse Wizard Series”, a joint effort by ScanForce and Sage Inventory Advisor to provide educational content for Sage 100 users who operate warehouses.

Read Parts 1 – 3 of the Warehouse Wizard Series

And now for parts 4 – 6:

Part 4: Incorrect Levels Drive Excess Inventory

While having excess inventory on hand can seem like a safe bet to make sure you can meet demand, it is not cost-effective and can stunt your business’ growth.

On the other hand, you can have the best methodology imaginable in place to optimize replenishment and avoid excess inventory, but if your inputs are wrong, you will still fail. Good decisions start with accurate data.

Read Reducing Excess Inventory to learn about how to address the complexities associated with not having a source of truth for your levels.

Part 5: The Advantages of ABC Analysis

Ranking your items lets you focus on the ones that really matter. Whether they’re high velocity/high value or slow moving/low value or anywhere in between, these criteria can help you make better decisions about where to focus your time and working capital.

Read up on The 5 Advantages of an Effective ABC Analysis to learn how these classifications can lead to increased profits.

Part 6: Free Tools for Sage 100cloud to Optimize Inventory

Your Sage 100cloud subscription comes with a number of free tools that were previously only available for purchase. Two of these products that are included “out of the box” are:

DSD/ScanForce Multi-Bin Basic by ScanForce
Sage Inventory Advisor Basics by Sage Inventory Advisor

Are you taking advantage of these features you already own? The infographic shows some of the functionality available to help you optimize inventory without purchasing any additional software.

That’s it for the series. Thanks for reading along! You’re a Warehouse Wizard!

Contact ScanForce or Sage Inventory Advisor if we can be of assistance with any of the initiatives you learned about in the series.

5 reasons NOW is the time to move Sage 100cloud to the cloud

April 3, 2019 by Darcy Boerio

If you’re still running Sage 100 or Sage 100cloud on a local server, here are five reasons why you might not want to wait any longer to move Sage to the cloud:

#1. Mother Nature.

Following a disaster, 90% of smaller companies fail within a year unless they can resume operations within 5 days.
FEMA (read more)

Flooding, fires, tropical storms. All of these unexpected events can put your business at risk. Don’t wait until Mother Nature is at the door to try to come up with a continuity plan. Having your applications and data hosted in a secure data center allows you to continue operations even if your offices become inaccessible.

Actual LinkedIn post from March, 2019 by a company hit by the massive flooding in Nebraska.

#2. Support for Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 will be ending on January 14, 2020. Read more on this here.

If you’re currently using one of these versions, you will no longer receive regular security updates. And once Microsoft support ends for these operations systems, Sage will also stop supporting Sage 100 and Sage 100cloud running on these unsupported platforms.

If you’re faced with a server upgrade, it’s a great time to consider cloud hosting. Summit Hosting can provide you with a modern server environment with minimal IT effort on your end.

Chances are you aren’t the only one facing this deadline, so don’t wait until the last minute to ask for help! Contact Summit Hosting today.

#3. Remote work is becoming the norm, but some IT departments aren’t prepared for it.

Are you seeing an increase in requests from your team to work remotely? As remote work becomes more commonplace, some argue that remote workers are outperforming office workers. As the trend continues to grow and the workforce becomes accustomed to remote work, companies will find that offering some level of flexibility on this will be key to attracting and retaining talent.

Even if your business isn’t conducive to remote work on a large scale, there is still great benefit to providing employees with the tools they need to be productive while traveling for work.

But with it comes a whole new set of technology and security concerns that go beyond what you need to manage when your server resides down the hall in your own building. Hosting companies like Summit Hosting understand the infrastructure necessary to keep your data secure, yet easily accessible.

Hosting also solves the problem of “BYOD”. Users, remote or on site, can run Sage on a mobile device, iPad, or even on a Mac, if that’s their device of choice. You can also give access to your Sage partner, making it that much easier for them to provide remote assistance.

#4. “Right size” your IT.

Hosting allows you to scale your IT as your company’s needs change. Planning on a growth spurt? With hosting, you don’t have to worry whether or not your IT infrastructure can accommodate it. Or if you’re facing a potential downsizing situation, you don’t need to overspend on technology that is overkill for your future situation.

With hosting, you can easily add and remove users and storage space as needed.

And that 3rd party add-on that you’ve been eyeing? No need to stretch your existing servers to accommodate it. Because they specialize in Sage hosting, Summit Hosting has experience hosting all the major third party solutions for Sage 100.

#5. Cybersecurity is a moving target for your IT people.

More than 50% (of Chief Information Security Officers) believe they don’t have enough budget or do not have the resources to deal with the growing threat of cybersecurity attacks as they struggle to spot existing vulnerabilities within their business.”
Forbes.com – Cybersecurity Fears Drive CISOs to Drink Amid Serious Mental Health Concerns

Hosting companies like Summit Hosting are dedicated to keeping up with the latest cyberthreats. You can rest easy knowing that the burden of preventing cyberattacks isn’t on you or your team. Your hosting company has you covered.

While 62% of IT people believe that the biggest security threat comes from “well meaning but negligent end users”, hosting still helps mitigate that risk by offering an additional layer of security called 2 Factor Authentication that can prevent breaches even if passwords have been compromised.

Ready to move Sage 100 / Sage 100cloud to the cloud? Contact Summit Hosting to learn more. Don’t forget to mention “Schulz Says” for special pricing!

www.summithosting.com

ScanForce Brings Their Popular Sage 100 Warehouse Management to Sage Intacct

April 3, 2019 by Darcy Boerio

It’s not just the ERP software resellers who are expanding to offer multiple ERP solutions. So, too, are the publishers of 3rd party add-on solutions.

Who Is ScanForce?

A “household name” in the Sage 100 world, ScanForce has been providing barcode scanning and mobile warehouse & sales automation solutions for over 16 years. With hundreds of customers and a large, loyal partner channel, they’ve had great success with Sage 100 over the years. And now they’re expanding their market by releasing a version of their warehouse automation tool set that integrates with Sage Intacct.

Cloud Warehouse Management Backed By 16 Years Experience

As you may know, Sage acquired cloud-based financial management software provider Intacct in 2017. At that time, several of ScanForce’s Sage 100 partners had already started supporting Intacct, and since then, many more have chosen to enter the Sage Intacct market. It was based on demand from these partners for a trusted warehouse management provider to help them get more Sage Intacct business that the decision to build the integration originated.

ScanForce At Sage Intacct Business Building Conference 2019

Steve Showalter (l) and Dan Rodriguez (r) of ScanForce at Sage Intacct conference

ScanForce recently attending the Sage Intacct Business Building Conference in Dallas, TX, an invitation-only event for Sage Intacct partners, where their entry into the community was welcomed with much enthusiasm. They also said that the team at Sage Intacct has been incredibly supportive of their efforts, as they’re excited to add solutions that can help them expand their reach in their growing market segment of distribution companies.

Read the full press release here.

ScanForce offers Warehouse Management, Mobile Sales, Manufacturing Automation, Label Printing, and more.

From simple mobile inventory tools to full-blown WMS (and everything in between) your ScanForce solution expands to your needs. Learn more at https://www.scanforce.com/.

Sage Time and Billing Professional (T2) and Timekeeper Slated For 2018 Upgrades

January 11, 2018 by Wayne Schulz

I just received this email from Mark Janecek, Direct of Product Management and Development for SWK Technologies, Inc.

We hope you are enjoying 2018 so far! We can’t wait to show you what we’ve got in store this year. The holidays might be over but that doesn’t mean SWK couldn’t sneak in one last gift for our partners!

In 2018, SWK is putting a renewed focus on the Time and Billing Professional (T2) and TimeKeeper (TK) solutions for Sage 100. We will be making these solutions available for new license sales after continuous calls for their return. We’ve heard a lot of positive feedback about our Time and Billing Suite, and we want to let you know first that in 2018 you will see a new direction for these solutions.

These are the only time and billing tools fully integrated into Sage 100, and we understand they are valuable additions to your customers’ operations. That is why, in addition to relaunching Time and Billing Professional and Timekeeper for new license sales, we are expanding and improving upon the software!

It appears that 2018 will bring an upgrade for Time and Billing Professional (T2) to the business framework file structure defined by Sage 100 v4.0 applications.

We heard in April 2017 that SWK Technologies had halted new sales of Time and Billing with consultants reporting in June 2017 that their maintenance was not being renewed.

It appears the company has taken a fresh look at the landscape for Time and Billing and decided to redouble efforts on their existing Sage 100 based Time and Billing.

If your customer’s maintenance is expired, we encourage you to reach out to Stella Chammas at 973.251.0072 to see how your clients can get back on active maintenance to qualify for this update.

Sage Fixed Assets 2018.1 Set To Include Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 Changes

January 6, 2018 by Wayne Schulz

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 introduced a significant amount of change for income tax regulations. The changes include new rules applying to the treatment of fixed assets.

A new update for Sage Fixed Assets, version 2018.1, is due late January or early February 2018.

The program will be enhanced to include (via Sage KB) :

Bonus Depreciation (Section 168(k) Allowance): In general, for qualified property acquired after 9/27/2017 and placed in service by 12/31/2022, the 50% bonus rate is increased to 100%, and then phased-out over the following years.
Section 179 Expensing expands for business property placed in service in taxable years beginning on or after 1/1/2018 limit to $1,000,000

Recovery Period for Real Property Effective for property placed in service 1/1/2018 and later:

Eliminated the 15-year qualified leasehold, retail, and restaurant improvement property classes
Assigned a 15-year recovery period to qualified improvement property, assuming a technical correction is made.

Additional Rules:

Auto Limits increased for vehicles placed in service after 12/31/2017 – 2017 current year limits on depreciation for vehicles is $3,160, with an additional allowance of $8,000 for the 168 Allowance. The new limit will be $10,000 with no change on the 168 Allowance.

Depreciation of Farm Property placed in service after 12/31/2017 A decrease in the 7-year recovery period for new farming machinery and equipment to 5 years, and elimination of the rule requiring use of the 150 declining balance percentage on property used in a farming business thus 200% DB can be used

Like-kind exchange treatment is no longer allowed for depreciable tangible personal property, and intangible and non-depreciable personal property, Like-kind exchanges are limited to real property

Please consult your financial advisor prior to implementing any new tax regulation. The above information may change from time to time. Always verify with your advisor and the official IRS website prior to implementing.

More information can be found on Sage City.