This Holiday Season, EstesGroup would like to give you “12 Days of ECHO” tips and tricks for those ERP System Admins out there.
We understand this time of year there is a lot going on for companies, such as: year end preparations, budgeting for the next year, personnel changes, and company shifts, etc. So that being the case, we wanted to bring a bit of humor and help to your holiday.
When I was still part of the user community, I was involved in a planned implementation of Epicor at one my company’s divisions. The division was in the construction industry, and the ERP systems of the time routinely encountered gaps in addressing the business requirements that come out of construction management environments.This was back in the days of Vantage 803, and at the time, Epicor’s construction management capabilities were rather thin.
To address this yawning void of a gap, a large customization was in the works to allow for increased revenue recognition (or “rev rec”) functionality as part of Epicor’s Project module. This functionality would eventually find its way into Epicor’s base package, but at the time, all anyone at my company could talk about was “rev rec”…“We can’t start prototyping until rev rec is ready.” “There’s no point in testing until rev rec has been implemented.” Everywhere I went, all anyone could talk about was “rev rec.” Still rather green in general and quite new to the business models of the construction industry, such shorthand was immensely confusing: Just what exactly is revenue wrecking? Isn’t revenue a good thing? I was befuddled.
I wasn’t the only one. As is the case with many of such monumental customization projects, all of these discussions were in vain, as the division never came close to going live on Epicor—though the functionality that came out of this failed attempt was pretty cool! Many years later, I’m still quite oblivious to the intricacies of the construction industry, but I have managed to get past one annoying revenue recognition error when setting up a new company in Epicor. As part of initial company configuration, I’ve encountered the following “Default Revenue Recognition” error message a number of times:
The message reads as follows: “Default Revenue Recognition Method cannot be None or Blank when not allowed to be changed per project.” Well, that’s not especially helpful, especially given that the error normally surfaces when configurating another area of the applicant, such as the Modules > Production > Job area above.
As it turns out, the cause of this error actually resides in the JCSyst.DfltRevRecMthd field, as found on the Modules > Services > Project Billing tab:
Selecting a method is normally sufficient to get past this error, though additional setup may be required, depending on the method selected. Even if you don’t intend on using revenue recognition, this step is necessary, depending on the modules licensed. So don’t let revenue rec your company configuration—set your default revenue recognition method and move on to bigger and better things…like deciding whether or not to schedule into the past! Nowthat conversation requires three cups of eggnog and a game of twister—so I’ll save it for another day.
Have questions about Revenue Recognition Methods or Company Configuration? Let us know below or Contact Us today.
In work and in life, I find myself torn between two ambivalent instincts: the instinct for understanding and the instinct for action. It is often of great utility to understand as much of a given situation as possible—to be able to relate its causes and effects. I think back to my Six Sigma days, to years of enlightening multi-factor designed experiments. While this kind of understanding is summoning in itself, sometimes you simply don’t have the time to design an experiment to be in the know. Sometimes you need to go straight to action itself as knowledge.
The life of the ERP administrator is often torn between such directions of learning. The Epicor 10 ERP admins out in the user community that I’ve met over the years are some of the most knowledgeable people when it comes to navigating Epicor 10 ERP’s ins and outs, and I’ve learned much from their deep understanding of the application, from the end-user’s experience, all the way down to the application’s lower–level functionality. But admins also understand that if something needs to happen by morning, it needs to happen, and have therefore developed an appreciable measure of pragmatism as to be able to triage situations and “git er done” as needed.
One such circumstance occurs when importing dashboards, especially when the dashboard is coming from one company to another or from one version to another. In my own practice, I have a bundle of old favorite dashboards that I have developed over the years, going back to my own time in the user community. And over the years, I’ve doled these out to customers, to assist with issues that they are experiencing. In so doing, I have, on occasion, encountered the strange “CGCCode mismatch” error upon import. Here’s how it happens:
I follow the normal protocol of importing a dashboard definition:
But I receive this quarrelsome application error message in response: “There is CGCCode mismatch. Dashboard export created with CGCCode=US. Import cancelled.”
One could talk at length as to why this error occurs without coming to a specific answer. While I don’t have a good explanation of the source of the issue, I do know how to get rid of the error, as to allow the dashboard to be imported.
Opening the dashboard definition in Notepad, I search for the “CGCCode” tag:
I locate the nearly “PropertyValue” node and discover that the value is “US”, as was specified in the above message:
I delete this value and save the definition:
Thereafter upon subsequent import, the dashboard will load successfully. While I think it’s optimal to know a situation’s underlying causes and effects, sometimes circumstance demands simplicity. As such, if you’re in need of getting a dashboard loaded on a timeline, and need to get functionality in front of the user community in a hurry, this little hack might be just the trick for fixing your CGCCode mismatch error in Epicor 10 ERP.
Are you having issues with, or have questions about, your Epicor 10 ERP Dashboards or Technical areas? Contact Us today.
Tolstoy famously remarked that “all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Reflecting on Tolstoy’s own relations and on the kindred lives of the characters in his novels, I’ve often wondered if Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations are like families, and whether such categorical statements could be similarly applied to successful and unsuccessful families of projects. While every project has its own unique dynamics, I’m obliged to believe that roughly the inverse of Tolstoy’s statement is the case—that each happy ERP implementation isn’t alike, but rather is successful in its own way.
That is, I’ve seen successful ERP implementation projects that have differed from one another in surprisingly significant ways. As such, it might be best to review successful ERP projects individually and try to understand what it is among them that made them successful. Anyone can wax eloquent on the generic platitudes that lead to a successful implementation, but in practice, when the time comes to make tradeoffs between platitudes, it’s helpful to know how companies work through challenges and finally arrive at successful implementations.
One project that we recently completed fit such a mold. While not free of obstacles, the end-product was immensely successful. A number of key factors led to the ERP implementation’s success:
All of the team members were engaged and onboard. Getting the team to buy into the project’s mission, and actively support that mission, was never a problem.
The project team did a large amount of their own end-to-end testing. Unlike some projects, where the team only tests while the consultants are onsite, the team verified their system configuration and business processes whenever possible, leading to a rock-solid business process at cutover.
The team took ownership of issue resolution. The team dug in, tried things out, and came to solutions. This served to greatly shorten certain phases of the project.
The team made decisions quickly, collaboratively. The project was rarely, if ever, waiting on a key decision, and nobody on the team could have been accused of analysis paralysis.
The team took responsibility for their roles and did the work on time, and on schedule. Schedule attainment was a high priority, and the team put the necessary work in to make things happen.
The team displayed a culture of respect, staying respectful during difficult conversations and decisions. The stresses involved in an ERP project can at times encourage dysfunctional or toxic behaviors, but this team treated each other with a high degree of respect, even when working through the toughest decisions.
The team’s project management was of the highest capabilities, displaying excellent collaboration and communication with the core team, and with the EstesGroup team as well.
The net result was a successful ERP implementation project on-time and on-budget, with the expected level of system capabilities. The team experienced a clean and quiet cutover, and quickly stabilized. Within a short time, the company had moved onto managing daily operations and planning for the future.
Every project has its wayward sheep, be they executive sponsorship, excessive customization, inadequate team investment, or challenges with data conversion. No project ever checks all the happy boxes.
But in spite of challenges, the best companies still manage to successfully implement their enterprise systems, keeping their team engaged, committed, and dependable—regardless of all the unique twists in their project’s DNA.
Are you ready for your company to create its own exceptional implementation story?
Come talk to us, and we’ll share some of the greatest success stories of ERP history—prosperous implementations similar in success, yet nuanced in achievement—stories that can inspire your own project to be a story with a happy ending.
To Rent or To Buy – More and More Often, It’s To Rent.
In some ways distribution has not changed over the past 50 years; but in other ways it really has morphed – I know, that statement was non-committal. But take for example product Rental Management. Your customers still want your fantastic product whether that’s cars, industrial equipment, cylinders, furniture, etc. and there is a paper trail to track those rentals and bill appropriately. Unfortunately not many Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems easily track rental products so distributors are forced to look for standalone products and old fashioned paper trails – either way, creating a lot of work arounds or duplication efforts for a company. Epicor recently released a new application for distributors, and I for one, am extremely excited about it.
The new Epicor Rentals Management (ERM) solution makes tracking rentals within the Epicor Prophet 21 ERP (P21) simpler and more efficient. ERM handles the actual rental transaction while the P21 application holds all other data like customers, items, accounting, inventory, etc.
P21 Rental Management Tracking
Some of the primary benefits of Epicor P21 Rental Management (ERM) are:
Efficient Rental Transaction Processing
Manages Scheduling and Assignment Processes
Flexibility in Pricing Rental Designs
Flexibility in Product rentals for day, week, month, mileage, hours used, etc.
Simplified contract maintenance
Automatic Rental Billing
Rental Availability
What is really nice about the ERM module is that when your customer service or sales team goes to enter in a new rental order, the process is just like any other order in P21 – using the Order Entry Window. With everything setup, the sales associate just enters in the a rental item and P21 switches the order to a Rental Order vs standard Sales Order. Switching to a Rental Order will cause the ERM module to open up and finish the rental processing; with information like state, dates, duration, even serial and lot tracking information.
A few of my favorites I’ve seen so far are:
Simplified Contract Maintenance
Contracts. Need I say much more before the room starts to groan? Usually contracts are done on paper – sometimes with carbon copies – though often times it’s a matter or printing, signing, and scanning. Thankfully ERM has helped simplify that painful (and let’s face it) rather wasteful process. Within ERM the sales agent can input the data, customer can review the contract and sign for it – making the entire process much simpler. This allows the final contract to be stored electronically with ease, or print or email once finished.
Automatic Rental Billing
The Finance department is going to love this feature. No more grabbing that monthly billing folder / file cabinet / or excel list with customer names and billing frequencies. ERM has automated rental billing which allows finance to set billing intervals and then generate the invoices according to your business schedule.
Tracking
Every one loves tracking – dashboards, look up, quick reference, you name it. Having the ability to quickly find the data you need when the customer needs it. The ERM module makes it easy to see rentals by customer, rental product type, etc.
Let’s face it, at the end of the day, being a rental business is hard work. Unlike most manufacturers and non-rental distributors – who have little need to track their products once the item has shipped – you need to know who, where, how long, at what price, etc. and then rinse-and-repeat for the next customer. Epicor’s Prophet 21 Rental Management solution solves a large functionality gap for distributors.
To end this on a light note; I recently heard a funny rental joke:
Why was the mole’s rental fee so costly?
Because he burrowed and never returned
Questions or feedback on this article? Wanting more information on Prophet 21 ERP or P21 Rental Management? Let us know.
