You’ve received the upgrade disks in the mail. Now comes decision time. Should you upgrade? And what new features are people getting the most use from?

via Wayne Schulz - Schulz Consulting – Glastonbury CT:

This really depends on the version that you are moving from.
First, I recommend you review this list of all the new features added to Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200 since version 3.50.

http://services.sagesoftware.com/mas/whatsnew/what400.asp

Second, here’s the top features based on the enthusiasm of user reactions:

Paperless Office – both saving and emailing documents
Keep window open after printing
Elimination of “buckets” in AP and AR
Attaching UDF fields to core tables
Allowing all “canned” reports to be modified with Crystal

via: Dawn Anastasi

Business Insights Explorer – for users who are uncomfortable or not used to working with Crystal Reports.

via: Robert Wood – DDF Consulting – Ocala Florida:

Adding Inventory to the Business Framework. This also makes the inventory reports customizable. I don’t know how many times I’ve created Crystal Reports from scratch just because someone wants to add or remove a field from an inventory report.

There is the option to expand the item number to 30 characters.

Positive Pay, Automatic Check Reconciliation in Bank Reconciliation and ACH Payments for AP are included with service update 2. These were paid enhancements that have been rolled into the core product.

© 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.

What’s the largest number of users you’ve seen on Sage ERP MAS 90 or 200? Were there any issues and if so how did you overcome them? Do you have a “rule of thumb” about the number of users that MAS 90 will support – and if so what is the magic number?

What Is The Average Number of Users that Can Run Under Sage ERP MAS 90 or MAS 200?

via Ed Wlodarczyk :

I’ve got a client with 80 users on MAS 200 – no issues at all. They are connected both via LAN and WAN in two different buildings that are across the street from one another. Largest MAS 90 I’ve seen is 20 users, again, no issues. I remember back when I first started that they pushed CS for over 20 users and 90 would handle up to 25.

via 90 Minds member Mark Chinsky – Clients First Business Solutions – Holmdel NJ, Birmingham, AL, Pleasant Hill, CA, Minneapolis, MN, Nashville, TN, Arlington, TX:

I have to imagine the 80 user site is running as an application and not a service. That’s the biggest problem is the too many files issue that relates to running as a service.

The biggest issue and the reason I typically don’t recommend either MAS over 25 users is the record locking architecture that doesn’t look like its going to change in our lifetimes.

Too many problems, especially with companies spread out over multiple states with the ‘can everybody exit the system so I can post XYZ” or whatever.

via 90 Minds Member Wayne Schulz – Schulz Consulting LLC – Glastonbury CT:

Agree with Mark – we’ve found the speed of MAS 90 really depends on concurrent users in the system as opposed to total license count.

Over about 15 concurrent users with Inventory and Order entry we’ll generally recommend MAS200.

We also have found that for any sized MAS 200 organization you have to run the server component as an application or risk freezing as the number of users in the system tends to produce random lockups as the MAS 200 server runs out of resources.

Sage publishes guidelines on changing registry options (actually I think this is Microsoft’s KB article) but I don’t go anywhere near making registry changes on a company server and many IT people don’t want to monkey with it either.
My experience is that somewhere around the 20 to 25 heavy user Sales Order / Inventory mark you run into maintenance issues on MAS 200 similar to what Mark mentions. Everyone needs to exit the system (no practical for multi-office locations).

Via Ed Wlodarczyk:

The 80 user site is running as an application, but there are no issues. This is a heavy SO user, with over 1000 invoices on a light day. Granted, of the 80 users maybe 30 are inquiry only users in the warehouse and the lab.

However, the sales staff has 25 users entering orders and invoicing all day. Accounting staff has 10-12 users, and Purchasing 5. I agree that this is the exception rather than the rule, but it works for them.

Via Dawn Anastasi:

We have one MAS 200 that has 100 users. All in one building. 20 of those users are shipping personnel. They are running a very beefy virtualized server and are running MAS 200 host as an application. They are testing the upgrade from 4.10 to 4.40 currently; they had not upgraded previously as you can imagine it’s quite an undertaking. They have generally about 2000 – 2500 invoices per day (and growing).

via 90 Minds Member Robert Wood – DDF Consulting – Ocala,FL:

We have one who is running a 50 seat MAS 200. At any given time there’s normally at least 35 people in it at a time. They’re running as an application. They have over 1,000,000 invoices a year.
They purge AR Invoice History 3 to 4 times a year.

How about you? What’s the largest number of MAS 200 (or MAS90) users you’ve run across?

© 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.

Product Update 3 for Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200 was just released on September 27, 2010. If you haven’t already downloaded and applied it then you might want to wait a little while longer.

So far our group has spotted and logged two critical software bugs with Sage:

1. When entering a Sales Order that has a comment line — that comment is not copied over when an invoice is created from the order. Robert Wood over at DDFCGI – a 90 Minds member and Florida MAS 90 Consultant has some screen shots.

Sage Community Post

2. If you have Kit Bills, they will not pull into the materials tab of Work Order Processing if you do not have a routing.

Sage write-up (flagged critical)

If you have not already installed the Sage ERP MAS 90 and MAS 200 Product Update 3 then you should check with your Sage Business Partner for their advice on how to proceed.

Update: 9-30-2010 — we’ve talked to Sage on this and they are working on a patch to fix both issues. As soon as we see it posted online we’ll provide a link.

Update 10-1-2010 — we continue to watch for a fix on this and until one is posted we recommend Sales Order users not download and apply Service Update 3.

Update 10-1-2010 — we’ve spoken to Sage first thing this morning. Looks as if this bug related only to the use of /C lines and did not impact any totals on the invoice. They have a fix ready and it is going through quality control. This should be out sometime today or tomorrow and you will see it appear on their product update web site.

Via: Dawn Anastasi

© 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.

Suggest a feature for MAS90 , MAS 200 or MAS 500 now live

Thanks to Dawn Anastasi for passing along the tip that Sage’s new Ideascope suggestion box is now live on the web.

You can use Ideascope as a way to communicate product suggestions directly to Sage. While the concept of “suggest a feature” is not new – the way that Sage is implementing the collection is new.

Previously you had to log into the Sage site using a username and password. Then you’d submit your suggestion without knowing if anyone else had made a similar suggestion.

With Ideascope you have the ability to enter ideas/suggestions directly on the web (watch for this to be embedded into a future product release) and also check to see if anyone else has already made the same (or similar) suggestion.

Hopefully this new tool will allow Sage to more efficiently manage the large numbers of suggestions for product enhancements and focus in on the highest value (aka – most requested).

Now everyone please go tell Sage that the ability to delete/renumber/merge RANGES of items should be protected by role maintenance while renumbering/merging single items should continue as it.

Suggest a MAS90 or MAS200 feature via C&G Consulting

© 2009, 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.