Clear Out the Clutter
While much of the country is experiencing record cold, spring is only weeks away! In that spirit, it's time for spring cleaning. Just like a good spring cleaning freshens up your home, decluttering your database can dramatically improve performance and help you maintain an efficient workflow.
- Old Transactions
Historical transactions that no longer serve an operational purpose can slow down daily processing. Archiving or removing them helps your system run more efficiently and reduces processing delays. See related article. - Inactive Customers and Vendors
Outdated or unused customer and vendor records clutter reports and make analysis harder than it needs to be. 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.
- Item Status Codes
Many PowerShift reports and inquiries have options to include only active items and/or enable you to exclude items with particular status codes. You can use item status codes to 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 Inventory Activity History (IAHR) and Inventory Sales/Usage (IHUR) reports are useful in helping to determine whether an item's status should be changed. - Stale Orders
Old orders -- POs, manufacturing orders, sales orders, RMAs -- that should be closed often linger in the system. Closing them out reduces noise, improves reporting, and ensures open order balances reflect reality. These reports and inquiries offer date options that can be especially useful in identifying stale orders:
- VPL: Parts On Order Listing
- MOOL: Open Manufacturing Order List
- OL: Sales Order Listing
- OSAQ: Shipment Inquiry
"Mass close" apps enable you to close multiple orders/lines in a single process based on diverse selection criteria. For sales and purchasing related transactions, these programs are available:
- BLC: Bill of Lading Close
- NPX: AP Paid Status Close
- RMACL: RMA Mass Close
- SCLO: Sales Order Line Close
- VCLO: PO Line Close
Once closed, orders can be archived to history and selectively included in inquiries and reports. - Lingering AP and AR Invoices
Unresolved accounts payable and accounts receivable invoices create confusion and distort financial visibility. Addressing these items—whether by resolving, writing off, or reclassifying—helps maintain clean ledgers and accurate aging reports. Date options in the AP Aged Trial Balance (NTB) and AR Aged Trial Balance (RT) reports make them particularly useful.
Taking measures to keep your data current and relevant streamlines operations and boosts productivity. If you have any questions or comments, contact helpdesk.
