If you’ve ever wanted to restrict any Date fields in Sage MAS 90/200 (e.g., Invoice Date) so that only certain dates were allowed, there’s an easy solution.  (For example, if users are occasionally making keying errors.)

Assuming you have the Custom Office module, and depending what version of MAS 90/200 you’re running, you can go into the Advanced Field Settings for the Date field (Custom Office > Main > User-Defined Field and Table Maintenance:  then select the appropriate Module, double-click the appropriate Table > Advanced Field Settings) - and specify a Range of Values for the Validation (e.g., 20111201 through 20111231 – or whatever make sense).  And of course going forward you’ll need to edit this Validation Range as needed.

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© 2011, Brett Zimmerman. All rights reserved. Formed in 2005. the 90 Minds Consulting Group is a collaboration of 100 Sage partners who independently join together online in a 24 x 7 private communication network to solve difficult issues for their customers. The group is not affiliated with Sage and our collaboration provides for unparalleled member access to early warnings of bugs and other issues which members in turn are encouraged to use to provide an exceptional customer experience.

In previous versions of Sage MAS 90/200, you couldn’t simply search Item Extended Descriptions (1 option was to create a User-Defined field to additionally hold this data for being able to search via an Item lookup).  Well now it’s a snap.  At your Item lookup, click the Custom button to personalize your lookup.  In the Available Fields list, scroll down to the CI_ExtendedDescription file and add the ExtendedDescriptionText field.  That’s it!

© 2011, Brett Zimmerman. All rights reserved. Formed in 2005. the 90 Minds Consulting Group is a collaboration of 100 Sage partners who independently join together online in a 24 x 7 private communication network to solve difficult issues for their customers. The group is not affiliated with Sage and our collaboration provides for unparalleled member access to early warnings of bugs and other issues which members in turn are encouraged to use to provide an exceptional customer experience.

Looking for a phone number to call Sage for technical support on one of their products? I’ve just stumbled across a great list of every product offered by Sage(well technically not every since Sage’s flagship ERP X3 is not on their) along with the phone number, direct link to the knowledgebase and a link to the Sage Community (when it exists) for the respective product.

We think your best resource continues to be your local Sage Business Partner. However for those users without a partner or who prefer to self-support the link below can be very helpful.

Sage Support Phone Numbers via Schulz Consulting

© 2011, Wayne Schulz. All rights reserved. Formed in 2005. the 90 Minds Consulting Group is a collaboration of 100 Sage partners who independently join together online in a 24 x 7 private communication network to solve difficult issues for their customers. The group is not affiliated with Sage and our collaboration provides for unparalleled member access to early warnings of bugs and other issues which members in turn are encouraged to use to provide an exceptional customer experience.

Photo via psanford

How can I add the user who printed a report to a custom report I added to the menu in Sage MAS 90 / 200?

In order to print the User ID on any Crystal Report being run from the MAS 90 menu, you have to create a new formula in the Crystal Report named PrintedByUser. Using Basic Syntax the formula would be: Formula=””’ (and using Crystal Syntax would be: “”).

You can use this tip on custom reports for both business framework modules and legacy modules.

There are number of variables that MAS 90 passes through to Crystal Reports that are run from within MAS 90 and can be used in the same manner:
CompanyCode
CompanyName
CompanyAddress1
CompanyAddress2
CompanyAddress3
CompanyAddress4
CompanyPhone
CompanyFax
CompanyFederalID
CompanyStateID
CompanyURL
ModuleDate
CompanyNameCode (CompanyName + CompanyCode)

That’s great, but I want the user name on my custom report.

OK, that’s a little trickier. You still need to create the PrintedByUser field as above, however to get the user name you’re going to need to create a subreport.

Creating a Subreport to Add the User Name to a Custom Report

You have to use a subreport because you’re going to have to join the SY_User table by the PrintedByUser formula field you created.

From the Crystal Report, go to Insert | Subreport.

Create a name in New Report Name; I’m calling mine UserNameSub and click Report Wizard.

Using the Report Wizard you’re going to create a new report based on the SY_User table. Add the First Name and the Last Name to the subreport and click Finish.

On the Link tab, select the PrintedByUser formula as the field to link by and from the dropdown select UserLogon. Click OK.

Drop the subreport on your main report.

Now for a little cleanup. Right click the subreport and select Edit Subreport. I’d suggest suppressing any Headers or Footers in the subreport and if you want instead of having the FirstName and LastName fields, you can create a formula combining the two into one field.

Close the Subreport and save your report and run from the MAS 90 menu and you should get the user name on your report.

© 2011, Robert Wood. All rights reserved. Formed in 2005. the 90 Minds Consulting Group is a collaboration of 100 Sage partners who independently join together online in a 24 x 7 private communication network to solve difficult issues for their customers. The group is not affiliated with Sage and our collaboration provides for unparalleled member access to early warnings of bugs and other issues which members in turn are encouraged to use to provide an exceptional customer experience.

Courtesy of Jeff Schwenk of Bottomline Software, here is a nice detailed overview document (with screen-shots, graphics, etc.) that explains what’s included in the latest Product Update 5 (PU5) for Sage MAS 90/200.  Enjoy!

         What’s New in PU 4.40.0.5?

© 2011, Brett Zimmerman. All rights reserved. Formed in 2005. the 90 Minds Consulting Group is a collaboration of 100 Sage partners who independently join together online in a 24 x 7 private communication network to solve difficult issues for their customers. The group is not affiliated with Sage and our collaboration provides for unparalleled member access to early warnings of bugs and other issues which members in turn are encouraged to use to provide an exceptional customer experience.

Did you know that there’s a logical explanation behind all the funky characters that appear in the various Sage MAS 90/200 date fields (when viewing the data via Data File Display & Maintenace for example)?  These are called Compacted Dates – where the 2-character values represent 4-digit years ( e.g., 2011 = ?; ).  

         Compacted Date Table

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Posted by Brett A. Zimmerman - www.brettzimmerman.com – Twitter: MAS90_Zip

© 2011, Brett Zimmerman. All rights reserved. Formed in 2005. the 90 Minds Consulting Group is a collaboration of 100 Sage partners who independently join together online in a 24 x 7 private communication network to solve difficult issues for their customers. The group is not affiliated with Sage and our collaboration provides for unparalleled member access to early warnings of bugs and other issues which members in turn are encouraged to use to provide an exceptional customer experience.

Looking for the latest service pack for FRX? If you’ve tried searching the Sage site you probably noticed that the releases have all been pulled.

The removal of FRX service packs is because Microsoft have eliminated the FRX product as of January 31, 2011. There can be no more sales of FRX licenses after this date. Full support for FRX is slated to expire at the end of 2012.

For Sage’s part they’ve pledged to maintain backwards compatibility with FRX through at least version 4.5 of Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200.

If you’ve been searching for the latest FRX Service Packs for MAS 90 or MAS 200 — see the links below. These go directly to the Microsoft site where you can download MAS 90 or MAS 200 specific versions of the service packs.

Microsoft FRX 6.7 – Service Pack 11 for Sage MAS 90/MAS200

via: Schulz Consulting

© 2011, Wayne Schulz. All rights reserved. Formed in 2005. the 90 Minds Consulting Group is a collaboration of 100 Sage partners who independently join together online in a 24 x 7 private communication network to solve difficult issues for their customers. The group is not affiliated with Sage and our collaboration provides for unparalleled member access to early warnings of bugs and other issues which members in turn are encouraged to use to provide an exceptional customer experience.

Sage have just updated their latest tax tables for Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200. This updated, dated 1/11/11, adds the states of Missouri and the unincorporated territory of the United States – Puerto Rico.

In addition, if you have not downloaded the latest IRS Tax Guide for 2011 – you should also visit the IRS site and obtain the payroll tax booklet for use in manually computing the first payroll run of the year. Ensuring that you have the proper tax table update also requires that you check these computations manually against what the latest IRS guide offers as the proper withholding.

Latest Sage ERP MAS 90 or 200 Tax Tables for 2011

© 2011, Wayne Schulz. All rights reserved. Formed in 2005. the 90 Minds Consulting Group is a collaboration of 100 Sage partners who independently join together online in a 24 x 7 private communication network to solve difficult issues for their customers. The group is not affiliated with Sage and our collaboration provides for unparalleled member access to early warnings of bugs and other issues which members in turn are encouraged to use to provide an exceptional customer experience.

1. Open a blank Excel document.
2. On the Data menu, select “Import External Data”, then “New Database Query”.  (The Excel Data Query function doesn’t always get installed by default, so you may need to install it on certain workstations.)
3. Pick the SOTAMAS90 odbc driver.  Typically it’s the one without an asterisk (*).
4. Enter your MAS 90/200 login info, including the appropriate Company Code.
5. You’ll then be presented with all your MAS 90/200 data files.  You can choose an entire data file or individual data fields within a file.
6. Once you select your data file/fields, click Next.
7. You can now specify 1 or more filters, or not.  Click Next.
8. Now you can specify 1 or more Sort, or not.  Of course you can easily sort within Excel once your data is brought into the spreadsheet.  Click Next.
9. Then you would typically have the data “returned to Excel”.  Click Finish.
10. You can choose to put the data in your current spreadsheet, which is the typical method (into cell A1), or into a new Worksheet.  Click OK.  (If you click Properties, you’ll see the Options you have available.)
11. You’ll then be prompted again for the Company Code and your MAS 90/200 login info. 
12. Your data will appear.  Depending on the amount of data being Queried, it may take a short moment.

You can also pull your data into Access and lots of other applications that can utilize an ODBC data source.

Posted by Brett A. Zimmerman - www.brettzimmerman.com – Twitter: MAS90_Zip

© 2010, Brett Zimmerman. All rights reserved. Formed in 2005. the 90 Minds Consulting Group is a collaboration of 100 Sage partners who independently join together online in a 24 x 7 private communication network to solve difficult issues for their customers. The group is not affiliated with Sage and our collaboration provides for unparalleled member access to early warnings of bugs and other issues which members in turn are encouraged to use to provide an exceptional customer experience.

      A/P > Vendor Maintenance > Items > Pricing > tab, tab (dsct %, 0), Accept.     
        (Note:  This can easily be automated via Visual Integrator.)

Here’s a link that explains how the item cost hierarchy works in MAS 90/200:
http://infosource.sagesoftwareonline.com/infasp/kdb.asp?isresolutionconceptid=638

Posted by Brett A. Zimmerman - www.brettzimmerman.com – Twitter: MAS90_Zip

© 2010, Brett Zimmerman. All rights reserved. Formed in 2005. the 90 Minds Consulting Group is a collaboration of 100 Sage partners who independently join together online in a 24 x 7 private communication network to solve difficult issues for their customers. The group is not affiliated with Sage and our collaboration provides for unparalleled member access to early warnings of bugs and other issues which members in turn are encouraged to use to provide an exceptional customer experience.