Out With The Old as the New Year Unfolds
Are old transactions slowing down daily processing? Are inactive customers and vendors cluttering reports? Do you have old orders "hanging around" that you can close and be done with? Maybe some lingering AP or AR invoices that should be addressed?
The beginning of the year is a great time to apply the "out with the old" concept to your data!
- Move older transactions to history files. PowerShift archive programs move data from active transaction files to history files. Archiving can significantly speed day-to-day processing because it reduces the size of transaction files. See related article.
- Review the active status of customers and vendors. Customers and vendors that you no longer do business with clutter files and cause confusion. By making them inactive, you can exclude them from lookups and many reports and inquiries.
To help determine whether an account is active:
- Use the Customer Credit Report (CCR) to review sales activity
- Use the Vendor Listing (VL) to review last PO and payment dates
You can quickly update customer and vendor records by exporting them (using CMXML and VMXML) to Excel, making changes, and importing the updated records back into PowerShift. Stale Data? Use Excel to Bring it Up-to-Date! provides a detailed example of the import and export process.
- Review item status codes. Many PowerShift reports and inquiries enable you to include active items only. But rather than simply being active or inactive, items can be active (status code 0) or have a user-defined item status.
Different item status codes can identify samples, prototypes, items you're phasing out, and so forth -- and control whether or not an item can be purchased, sold, manufactured or have its inventory adjusted.
The Intentory Activity History (IAHR) and Inventory Sales/Usage (IHUR) reports are useful in helping to determine whether an item's status should be changed. - Sales orders, shipments, purchase orders, manufacturing orders, invoices... Identify lingering transactions that need to be closed out or followed up. These reports and inquiries offer date options that can be especially helpful:
- OL: Sales Order Listing
- OSAQ: Shipment Inquiry
- VPL: Parts On Order Listing
- MOOL: Open Manufacturing Order List
- NTB: AP Aged Trial Balance Report
- RTB: AR Aged Trial Balance Report
Taking measures to keep your data current streamlines operations and boosts productivity. If you have any questions or comments, contact helpdesk.
