sage 100cloud | Schulz Consulting

How to enable Sage 100 wave picking and wave receiving in your warehouse

August 28, 2019 by Darcy Boerio Leave a Comment

Warehouses aren’t for storing inventory, they’re for moving inventory.

Efficient warehouses will find the fastest path to keep inventory flowing. There are a number of different strategies to accomplish this, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Some of the commonly used procedures include split picking, bin allocations for direct picking, zone picking, and of course, the topic of this article, which is wave picking/receiving.

Wave picking and receiving are processes that pre-determine the way you move throughout the warehouse to maximize productivity. Items for multiple orders are picked in one pass, minimizing pickers’ “footprints” and keeping inventory on the move.

Let’s break down the two sides to the wave concept. You may find that both are options that could streamline your operations, or perhaps just one or the other. Every warehouse is different.

Wave Receiving

Waves allow you to group multiple POs together to receive by item. For example, if you receive a large shipment that has multiple items for multiple POs, there’s no need to sort items by purchase order before recording receipts. Simply scan the items in, and they’ll be allocated to the appropriate PO.

Related and based on the wave receiving concept is ScanForce’s new Container Receipt Management (CRM) offering, which is the answer to efficiently receiving items from multiple POs that all arrive together unsorted in a single container. CRM allows you to receive items in a container while it’s still in transit, then verify contents once it arrives, as well as track container details such as container ID numbers and other shipment related info.

Wave Picking

For Picking, waves allow you to pick multiple orders at one time using the most efficient path through the warehouse. With wave picking, your picking order is sorted by bin location rather than SO. This lets you walk the warehouse ONE TIME, rather than duplicating efforts and making multiple trips to the same locations.

A simple analogy for wave picking involves going grocery shopping armed with a shopping list. If your list is in alphabetical order, you will end up going back and forth through aisles, hitting some aisles multiple times. You might go to the produce section for bananas, then over to the meat department for chicken, then back to product for grapes. And so on. Not very efficient!

Scanforce integrated to Sage 100cloud enableds improved wholesale, logistic, loading, shipment and processing within your warehouse

But if your list is sorted by aisle, and the aisles are sorted in location order on your list, you’ll achieve a seamless single path through the store and be on your way!

Read more on this concept here: A Warehouse Nightmare

Fully integrated with Sage 100 / Sage 100cloud

As with all ScanForce solutions, wave picking and receiving in ScanForce are seamlessly integrated with Sage 100, including Sage 100cloud Multi-Bin Basic if you have items in multiple bin locations. Information about quantities picked and received populate the inventory records in Sage for full visibility into whats been picked or received.

Want to learn more? Watch this 20-minute recorded webinar, and we’ll explain what wave picking/receiving is, and what types of warehouse operations can benefit from it. And we’ll show you how easy it is to implement in ScanForce and Sage 100.

Watch “Ride the Warehouse Wave: Wave Picking and Receiving for Sage 100

How To Add Tariffs To Sage 100cloud Purchase Orders and Sales Orders

August 13, 2019 by Wayne Schulz

Tariff Management With Sage 100cloud

The recent governmental activity has increased the likelihood that distributors who import goods from certain overseas countries will be assessed with a tariff.

While Sage 100cloud doesn’t have a native way to handle the tariffs your business may pay we have discovered the three most common methods consultants use to capture this new tax.

A tariff is a tax on imports or exports between sovereign states. It is a form of regulation of foreign trade and a policy that taxes foreign products to encourage or safeguard domestic industry.

Option 1: Use Sage 100cloud Landed Cost

The first option for managing tariff charges is to apply them using the native landed cost within Sage 100cloud.

Sage has a set of instructions on how to set up landed cost in Sage 100. This can be a quick and easy way to make sure all extra costs of import – including tariffs – are added to your product costs.

Using the standard Sage landed cost functionality you are able to allocate costs across your purchased items in one of four methods:

Weight
Cost
Quantity
Volume

Option 2: Use Scripting With Purchase Order

The second option which some companies have used is to create customization within their inventory items to:

Add a checkbox for “subject to tariff”
Add a field for “tariff percentage”

Then, using scripting, whenever an inventory item is placed onto a purchase order the system adds a separate miscellaneous code which contains the computed tariff for the line item.

Some companies have asked for this enhancement to make it easier to view the total tariffs charged.

Option 3: Use Scripting with Purchase Order and Sales Order

Lastly, a number of companies are using option 2 as well as creating a separate line charge on the sales order invoice to pass along the tariff amount to customers.

This separate line charge is similarly created using scripting which automatically adds a miscellaneous charge to any inventory item flagged as subject to the tariff.

The benefit of this method is the charge is separately stated so a customer can see that there wasn’t a random price increase.

Lastly, instead of using scripting to add a separate line item some users have opted to simply increase prices of the items subject to a tariff.

There are also various third-party solutions which can enhance the Sage 100cloud landed cost functionality.

No matter how complex your Sage 100cloud tariff situation, there are solutions – either built-in or custom – which can save you time processing shipments that include this new tax.

For more information on Sage 100 Tariff Management contact us here.

Sage 100 Work Order vs Production Management

May 22, 2019 by Wayne Schulz

Sage released their Production Management module for Sage 100 on May 14, 2019. This module is the replacement for their Work Order module. It is feature comparable and also includes significant new enhancement ( see PDF below).

During 2019 Sage has committed to also releasing MRP and an updated Sage 100 Manufacturing which will work with Sage Production Management to extend manufacturing capabilities for Sage 100 and Sage 100cloud.

This handy comparison chart has been updated to show the difference in features between Sage 100 Work Order and the new Production Management Module.

Download a PDF copy of the differences between Sage 100 Work Order and Production Management here.

Sage 100cloud Support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Ending January 14, 2020

March 27, 2019 by Wayne Schulz

As previously announced, on January 14, 2020, Microsoft will cease support for both Windows 7 on the desktop and Windows Server 2008 – including R2.

After January 2020 Microsoft will no longer issue security updates for either operating system. Once the official Microsoft support ends so will Sage support for Sage 100cloud running on either operating system (server or desktop).

These operating systems are over 10 years old (Both Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 were released in October 2009) and if your company is using either (or both) the time to upgrade is now.

With the next release of Sage 100cloud due in April 2019, if your operating system is either Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2 then please plan to upgrade your server to become compliant with the latest Microsoft supported operating environments.

Windows 7 users can upgrade to Window 10, provided your workstations meet the Microsoft OS requirements.

Windows Server 2008 R2 users have a slightly different set of options. Many companies have started moving their servers to the cloud. In that case, you typically connect with a hosting company specializing in Sage 100cloud for assistance with the cloud migration.

If you are using Windows Server 2008 R2 and wish to upgrade your server and stay on-premises then Microsoft has this guide to various different options available.

We always advise you adequately plan out your next upgrade so there are no surprises during your next Sage upgrade.

How To Backup Sage 100 and Sage 100cloud

March 21, 2019 by Wayne Schulz

A common question that we hear from users of Sage 100 or Sage 100cloud is “How should we backup our accounting data?”.

For Sage 100 / Sage 100cloud Standard and Advanced, you can expect your underlying data to be stored under a top-level \MAS90 folder.

This \MAS90 folder is set by Sage and cannot be renamed. The folder name refers to the prior brand name of Sage 100 which was MAS90.

Tip: If you are not sure where your server is located, navigate within Sage 100 to the File menu. Select run and type *INFO.

This will provide you with a list of information which includes the installation path of your Sage 100 as well as any subscription info related to your payroll module.

Underneath the \MAS90 folder you will see the following data structure for both the Standard and Advanced versions of Sage 100 and Sage 100cloud.

In most cases, you’ll be protected if you take a full backup of the \MAS90 folder and all subfolders. This is the most popular method for backing up Sage data.

If you are using the Premium (SQL) version of Sage 100cloud then you’ll want to backup your Sage 100 as per these instructions PLUS also backup your Microsoft SQL Server Sage tables including the MAS_SYSTEM and MAS_XXX (where XXX is equal to each company code setup in Sage 100).

Some companies make use of alternate directories and securely store their data in a folder other than one beneath the \MAS90 folder.

How To Know If Your Sage 100 or Sage 100cloud Uses Alternate Directories

If you’ve been using Sage 100 for many years you may not be the original person who configured the system and therefore you may not know if your Sage 100 data is stored in an alternate directory.

Here’s how you can tell where your Sage 100 data is stored – including if it’s been custom configured to use an alternate directory.

From within Sage 100 Library Master navigate to company maintenance, enter your company code then click the preferences tab. The resulting screen will display a path to both your main Sage data as well as your payroll data (if any).

If your data location is outside the installed directory path (as shown by the *INFO command above) you will need to separately backup the data location as well.

In most cases Sage users are not using alternate directories. However, it is an option so before you plan your backup process please ensure alternate directories are not in use at your company.

How To Find The Path To Paperless Office Files

Paperless Office is a feature within Sage 100 which, when enabled, will print certain documents to a PDF file. These files are stored in user-defined locations which most likely will NOT be under the \MAS90 folder.

You can verify if Paperless Office is enabled by navigating to Sage 100 – Paperless Office – Setup – Paperless Office Options.

If any of the four options in the upper left are checked, then you are likely using (and storing) paperless office documents.

If you see that Paperless Office is enabled, you will need to review each of the four types of documents to see where each are stored as the path for each is completely user configurable.

To review the location of where paperless forms are stored, navigate to Paperless Office – Setup – Form Maintenance.

You’ll need to collect a list of all the PDF Directory paths shown for each type of paperless document your company is saving.

Most frequently you’ll find these documents are stored under a common folder and once you find the folder you can backup the entire contents.

Should You Perform a Full or Selective Backup of Sage 100 or Sage 100cloud?

Whether you backup all data files (full) or just files that have changed (selective) is up to your IT department.

In most cases we advocate for a full system backup since this can make your system restore much easier.

When restoring data files you generally cannot restore just one module due to the integrated nature of the accounting system.

If you are in the situation where you need to restore data please consult with your IT or Sage partner for guidance on best practices.