Dear Clients,
One of the most important things to keep track of in your business is YOUR CASH—which surprisingly few businesses do a really good job of—so am highlighting the tools at your fingertips for clarity on your past, present and future cash positions.
➤ I Have Profit But Where Did My Cash Go?
Even beginning businesses know to keep a close eye on the Income Statement to see if they’re turning a profit. But turning a profit doesn’t mean you immediately have that profit as money in the bank. Could be some profit is still owed to you and in your receivables… Could be you used the cash for inventory or capital equipment… Could be you paid down debt… Could be it leaked out of the company as a draw on equity…
The built-in Statement of Cash Flow report provides a complete picture on where your profit went and helps you understand if you’ll see it in the bank in the future.
➤ How Much Cash Do I Really Have Right Now?
If you’re using the built-in Bank Reconciliation functionality, the answer is at your fingertips as you always have up-to-the-nanosecond visibility to each individual bank account and even loan/note account balances. The built-in reports are also invaluable for validating the Balance Sheet at the end of every month.
➤ Where Does My Cash Need to Go and How Much Do I Need?
It’s also possible, in the short term, to have cash and no profit as perhaps your customers have paid you, but you haven’t paid your vendors.
So, before making that equity draw to splurge US$500K on a space flight with Captain Kirk… er… William Shatner, be sure to check out the built-in Projected Cash Flow functionality. It starts with your current bank account balances, then adds in expected customer collections and subtracts expected vendor payments on a day-by-day basis, to provide a detailed rolling balance of your cash position.
Summary
All of the above requires configuration, which we’re pretty good at and are happy to assist with. As always, NexLAN is standing by in the cornfields to assist with visibility to your cash position and live long and prosper!
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AccountMate Payroll Update for 2025
Annual payroll updates are required each year and will be available for AccountMate/SQL versions 11, 12 and 13 in very late December for US Federal, plus all 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico.
A discount applies if paid by the end of November and we’ve already contacted all our direct clients. Gentle reminder to get that payment in if you haven’t already so you save a few dollars!
Regards,
Kevin E. Stroud
kestrou@nexlan.com
NexLAN, LLC
https://nexlan.com
AccountMate: Did You See These Nuggets in v13.2?
Here are four quick, valuable features from the current AccountMate SQL/Express release, in case you missed them:
1. New: 401K Plan Census function
This one’s been a regular NexLAN client request from Payroll Module users who are doing their annual compliance and nondiscrimination testing as required by the IRS and the U.S. Dept. of Labor, to ensure that their 401K plan remains qualified.
The new 401K Plan Census function lets you do an Excel export of the relevant personal, employment, and 401K contribution details for your company’s 401K plan participants. This gives you the plan information that’s needed to complete the 401K plan census and satisfy the filing requirements for the plan year.
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2. New: MFA security feature for user logins
Does your company want to add another level of authentication for your AccountMate system logins, to help prevent unauthorized access? Or maybe you’re required to do so for SOX or other regulations?
MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) is now available as an optional or mandatory login step. With this feature, once a user has successfully entered their username and password, AccountMate will send a six-digit verification code to the user’s registered email address. The user then must enter the verification code to log in. This applies to desktop remote logins and VPN connections as well.
Set up the Multi-Factor Authentication feature in the Password Policy function. There’s a new System E-mail Account Setup function as well, to designate a company email account as the sender of the verification codes.
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3. New: Change a customer’s parent account number
Another regular client request! This is handy after one of your customers has an ownership change or spins off as a standalone company without a parent. Until now you could neither change nor delete the originally assigned parent account number once the customer record was saved.
Now authorized users can edit the Customer Maintenance Parent Acct # field to replace or delete the parent account assigned to a customer record, anytime, as often as needed.
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4. New: Better Physical Count Variance Reporting
You can now quickly preview, print, export, and/or email the Physical Count Variance Report directly from the Input Physical Count screen, right when you need it—instead of having to go to the report in the Reports menu. Also available is the new Physical Count Log to show the last time each item was counted and by whom.
Have questions on any of these? Email support@nexlan.com.
You can also send us feature enhancement requests, and we’ll get those routed to the right team at AccountMate for you—they’re always eager to hear what improvements you’d like to see.
Acumatica 2024 R2: New Anomaly Detection Feature
Have you ever discovered a problem much too late (or overlooked it entirely), when you could have saved headaches and cost if you’d noticed it sooner?
Your Acumatica system can now promptly alert you of outliers in your data so that you can review them for any needed action. The Anomaly Detection feature recognizes patterns and contexts, based on your historical data and trends, that a simple “sort” cannot—bringing errors and other problems to your attention.
Where can you use anomaly detection to catch potential issues?
Here are some examples that show the range of anomaly detection possibilities, including some new built-in generic inquiries that are ideal for it:
- The Analyze Accounting Transactions inquiry
- An anomaly was detected, showing that your office supplies account is sky high this month. When you review it, it turns out your rent expense accidentally got booked to your office supplies GL account, so it needs to be reclassified to the rent GL account.
- Your sales tax liability account didn’t “go to zero” at the end of the period this time. You didn’t pay (or at least record payment of) sales tax to the state.
- The Sales Order Margin Analysis inquiry
- The margin on one order was abnormally low. You investigate and find that there was a price increase in one component which hasn’t been communicated to your sales team.
- Uh oh, an unprofitable sales order lost your company money. Turns out the milling machine malfunctioned and messed up the first batch, so you used more time and materials. You’ve seen this anomaly a couple of times now; let’s ask if a maintenance tech was scheduled for a closer look at that machine.
- The Costs in Purchase Orders inquiry
- The anomaly detector flagged an item on a PO that had a 20 cent cost when the item is typically ordered for 10 cents. You look into it and find that a more expensive finish was ordered on that item. Was that on purpose or was it an error?
- Whoa, an order for 100 of an item was found when you typically order 10 of that item at a time. A typo was made on the PO—maybe it’s not too late to change the order with your vendor.
- The Costs in AP Documents inquiry
- There’s a large cost variance between an AP bill you received from your vendor and the PO you sent. Sounds like you need to call your vendor to review your agreed-upon prices.
- The water bill shot way up this month compared to the expected amount. You discover that a faucet in the warehouse is heavily dripping and needs to be fixed.
- Any of your own Generic Inquiries!
- Perhaps you have a custom sales commission inquiry, and anomaly detection finds a recent order where you paid 20% commission when you’d typically pay 5-10%. With some digging, you discover that your highly complex commission calculations produced an unanticipated effect, and the formula needs to be adjusted.
Anomaly detection setup and options
Each generic inquiry (the built-in ones and your custom ones) has a setup tab where you choose what data you would like the anomaly tool to analyze. You select how often the anomaly detector runs (daily/weekly/monthly/manually), the date range of data you want it to assess (perhaps the last 6 months of your vendor’s invoices), any sub-groups you want to see (maybe you want it to analyze your wholesale customer margins separately from your retail customers), and more.
Later, you can also add a Business Event so that it will alert you of anomolies by email. Or you can add a widget to a dashboard to display all significant anomalies.
Using the rules you set up, the anomaly detector will analyze and classify each line item as “normal,”, “medium,” or “significant” deviations from the expected values. After you’ve looked into an anomaly that was found, you can enter a comment with your findings and mark the Reviewed checkbox to have that line excluded from subsequent analysis. See the screenshot for an example.
Give it a try—what anomalies are hidden in your data?
Ask an administrator user to turn on Anomaly Detection on your system’s enable/disable feature page. Then use the resulting new Anomaly Detection setup tab on any generic inquiry. Set up your first one, or contact NexLAN with your setup questions. This feature is slated to become a paid feature later as its capabilities continue to expand; so now is a great time to experiment with it for free to assess what it can do for you—the sky’s the limit.
Acumatica: Upcoming Webinars
These two webinars are an easy way to get an overview of the capabilities that the Manufacturing and Distribution editions could add to your existing Acumatica system.
Watch them live, or register and receive a link to the recording after the event. Or check out the other upcoming and recorded webinars at the same registration link.
➤ 3 Manufacturing Features for Achieving Streamlined Processes and Real-Time Insights
November 7, 12:00 – 1:00 CST
See the Acumatica Manufacturing Edition in action during a demo of these recently added features:
- Estimate Worksheets
- Improved Production Order Linking
- Enhanced Production Performance Reports
Register for the Manufacturing Edition webinar
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➤ Key Tools to Strive for Better Distribution Strategy and Operations with Acumatica
November 20, 12:00 – 12:45 CST
You’ll see some of the streamlining that’s possible when it comes to managing your inventory, sales orders, and purchase orders:
- Omnichannel sales to meet your customers wherever they are when they’re buying
- Easy cross-selling, upselling, and line discounts
- Simplified product returns for your customers
- Optimization to prevent stockouts and overstocking
- Role-based dashboards for your team
AccountMate Tech Note: How GL Account Segment Redefinition Affects AccountMate Records
There may be instances when the company’s GL account segments must be changed. Using the Redefine GL Account Segment function, you can change the GL account segments after transactions are recorded in AccountMate. GL account segment redefinition changes the Chart of Accounts and this impacts the financial reports; thus, you must understand the effects before making the changes.
Article #1267: How GL Account Segment Redefinition Affects AccountMate Records discusses how changing the GL account segments affects AccountMate records. It also explains the limitations for each type of GL account segment change.
AccountMate Tech Note: Understanding Multi-Step Manufacturing Work Order Processing
AccountMate provides users with the option to set up bills of material in multiple steps. It also enables users to post into work-in-process all the steps in a work order at one time or post the manufacturing components only up to a certain step. This allows users to track a work order or a job as it goes through the different phases of the work-in-process cycle.
Article #1307: Understanding Multi-Step MI Work Order Processing discusses the multiple steps in MI work order processing including its effect on the inventory quantities.
Acumatica Technical Tips
How to Exclude Weekends in Automation Schedules
Q: I do not want to bog down my salespersons’ email inboxes with their Daily Sales Reports on the weekends but the Automation schedule for the report is set to Daily. How can I exclude the weekends in my Automation Schedules for my reports?
A: On the Automation Schedule for the report, go to the Schedule tab and select the Schedule Type of Weekly, only checking the boxes for the days you do want the report sent to your salespeople and not for Saturday and Sunday.
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How to Set Up Parent-Child Relationships in Acumatica
Q: Where do I go to assign a parent-child relationship between my customers?
A: Here are the steps:
1. Set up a customer account that represents the parent company. In the Parent Info section on the Billing tab, specify whether or not you need the companies to have a consolidated balance, consolidated statements, and a shared credit policy by selecting or clearing the Consolidate Balance, Consolidate Statements, and Share Credit Policy check boxes. The values of these check boxes will provide the default values for the corresponding check boxes of the child customer accounts.
2. Set up customer accounts for the child companies. For each child company, specify the parent account in the Parent Account box. In the Parent Info section of the Billing tab, adjust the values of the Consolidate Balance, Consolidate Statements, and Share Credit Policy check boxes, if needed.
For each parent account, you can view the list of its child accounts on the Child Accounts tab of the Customers form.
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What Is the Locations Field Used for on the Payments and Applications Screen?
Q: When entering a customer’s payment on the Payments and Applications screen, there is a required field for Location. What is that field used for?
A: This field is used when a customer has multiple locations, so you need to note which location has made the payment you are recording. Locations are set up in the Customer Profile on the Locations tab.
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How Do I Change the Inventory ID on My Items?
Q: We want to change some of the Inventory IDs of the Stock and Non-Stock Items in our system to follow a more consistent naming structure. How do I change the Inventory IDs of my existing items so I can retain the history of these items?
A: On the Item Profile for each item, click the three dots in the toolbar along the top of the screen and select Change ID. In the small pop-up that appears, enter the new Inventory ID for the item and select OK. Click the Save icon along the top toolbar. The Item Profile will now show the new Inventory ID that you entered.
You can map the original ID to the new ID as a Global Alternate ID, so that when the original ID is entered on a sales order it switches over to the new one.
AccountMate Technical Tips
Writing Off Customer Open Credits
Versions: AM10 for SQL and Express (and higher versions)
Module: AR
Q: What GL Account is used when I write off open credit from customers?
A: AccountMate uses the GL Account ID entered in AR Module Setup ► GL Accounts (2) tab in the Open Credit Write-off field.
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I’m Getting a Message “Maximum Number of Users Allowed”
Versions: AM10 for SQL and Express (and higher versions)
Module: SM
Q: Why am I getting the message, “The maximum number of users allowed in this system is xxx.” when I attempt to log in to AccountMate?
A: The message is displayed when the total number of users currently logged into AccountMate has already reached the maximum. To verify, you may ask a user who is already running AccountMate to check the number of users currently in the system through the Current Login User List function.
You can view the maximum number of users allowed in AccountMate by accessing Help ► About AcccountMate ► System Information ► Max Licensed Users. Alternatively, you can run the AccountMate Administrator program and access the Setup ► Licensing ► Activate Module function to view the number of users that your company has licensed.
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Why Can’t I Ship This Open Sales Order?
Versions: AM10 for SQL and Express (and higher versions)
Module: SO
Q: I attempted to ship an item from a sales order; however, the item’s Open Qty shows zero. The sales order and the item are still in the Open Sales Order Report. Nothing is in the Shipment Report. Why can’t I ship the item from the sales order?
A: This happens if an advanced bill has been created for the item. You may verify by generating any of the advanced billing reports. In this case, you must use the Approve Advanced Billing function. This function has the same effect on the sales order and line items as shipping the sales order. To void the advanced bill, use the Create Advanced Billing (Amend mode) function.
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Using AccountMate’s Built-In Multi-Lingualism
Versions: AM10 for SQL and Express (and higher versions)
Modules: AP, AR, PO, SM, SO
Q: Our company is a French company; however, we have both French and English users. When a French user prints special reports (e.g., invoices, sales orders, purchase orders), the form is printed in French; however, when an English user prints the report, it prints in English. How can the English user print the report in French?
A: The forms, by default, are printed using the user’s language. Use the Customer and Vendor language feature to print special reports in your desired language. The language is set up in Vendor/Customer Maintenance ► Settings ► Language field. If a user (e.g., the English user) prints special reports and you want the form to be printed in the vendor/customer language (e.g., French), then mark the Use Vendor/Customer Language checkbox in the report interface and select the language from the drop-down list.
Note: The Use Vendor/Customer Language checkbox is only available in Special Reports and only if the Access Bilingual Fields feature is activated in Company Setup.
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