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.

If you’ve upgraded to Sage MAS 90/200 4.40 and are having trouble reconciling the Open PO Report, be sure to take ”Completed” Orders into consideration.  It appears this report in 4.30 (and likely prior versions) displays actual $$ for Completed Orders, whereas 4.40 shows $0.    

© 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.

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.

Are you considering upgrading your Sage MAS 90/200 system?  Well here’s a great resource which details the major functionality and enhancements incorporated in the software since v3.50.   

© 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.

Have you noticed in Sage MAS 90/200 4.40 that you are likely unable to edit the Standard Cost field in Item Maintenance?  It’s grayed out.

That’s because there’s now a new Standard Cost Adjustment Utility.  http://infosource.sagesoftwareonline.com/infasp/kdb.asp?isresolutionconceptid=523315

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.

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.

Sage was dodgy when we grilled them questioned them last year at the annual Sage Insights 2010 reseller conference about the plans for payroll in the upcoming Sage MAS 200 SQL 4.5 re-write. The concerns then (and now) are that non-framework modules (namely Payroll, Job Cost, Work Order, and MRP) will NOT integrate to the new MAS 200 SQL 4.5 release.

We spoke to the product managers who didn’t have much information about what options would be available for payroll users – potentially the most popular of the non-framework MAS90/MAS200 modules.

Potentially the lack of integration to Payroll would have kept some users from being able to adopt MAS 200 SQL (may we suggest that for many of those users that 90 Minds member DSD Business Systems SQL Mirroring is a kick ass solution) . Now Sage has just released information on their new Common Payroll initiative.

Sage is using Accpac SQL as a common payroll module to be shared by several other different SQL ERP packages. By sharing the one Payroll (aka common) module Sage hopes to reduce development time during the busy year end tax season when most states and governments work overtime to release tax changes (not always as quickly as we’d like).

There will be some limitations – and Sage has released a chart that ranks the level of integration on a scale from 1 to 3.

Level 1 = General Ledger  (aka journal entry only)

Level 2 = General Ledger, Job Cost, Bank Reconciliation

Level 3 = Tight integration -contains the look and feel of the entire ERP system

Initially look for Common Payroll to roll out to the products identified above. Existing users of payroll will NOT have to switch – this announcement is only for the relatively newer versions — such as MAS 200 SQL 4.5 — which were previously lacking any payroll functionality.

Sage Common Payroll Announced

© 2010, 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.

This standard MAS 90/200 Utility allows you to easily convert selected data/files to all Uppercase (e.g., Customers, Ship-To Addresses, Vendors, Purchase Addresses).  And you can choose to update all Address Fields or just the City.  (Maybe you forgot about the “Return City Names in ALL CAPS” setting in L/M > Company Maintenance.)

This is a permanent change that affects all companies and cannot be reversed. Make a full backup before proceeding.

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.