Personalization, Customization and Productivity Tools

[SDG]

Please offer any tools utilized with MAS90 to create Forecasting data.

For e.g. need to be able to take actual expense of 180,000 compared to Projected data of 200,000 monthly and each month move the excess to the next period. So in this case move the excess 20,000 to the next period.

Thanks!

[bbalser]

Sage actually has a product to do this...Sage Active Planner.  It competes directly with FRx Forecaster.  However, most people I know use Excel in conjunction with other reporting tools to get what they want.

In reference to the example you gave, I find most people use YTD budgets to handle underages and overages from month to month.  In your case you mention wanting to take the 20K to the next month.  Should it really do this or should the 20K be spread over the remaining months of the year.  Either way, the YTD budget vs. actual takes care of this by simply looking at a cumulative effect.  My $0.02 anyway.

[SDG · Accepted solution]

That helps a great deal.....certainly worth far more than the .02....Thanks again

[johnfesp]

The Sage FRx price list effective 10/1/09 has a footnote stating that FRx Forecaster has been officially retired as of 9/30/09.  Microsoft has already announced that FRx Designer is slated to be discontinued and has released an announcement about their Management Reporter product beta, which will eventually replace FRx.

Does anyone know Sage's stance on FRx for MAS90/200?  Active Planner info talks only about MAS500 and PFW.

[rmikolainis]

---

johnfesp wrote:

The Sage FRx price list effective 10/1/09 has a footnote stating that FRx Forecaster has been officially retired as of 9/30/09.  Microsoft has already announced that FRx Designer is slated to be discontinued and has released an announcement about their Management Reporter product beta, which will eventually replace FRx.

Does anyone know Sage's stance on FRx for MAS90/200?  Active Planner info talks only about MAS500 and PFW.

---

Product Update: FRx Reporting Software Beyond Version 6.7

Sage has been advised that Microsoft has made a decision against further enhancement or development of their FRx reporting software beyond version 6.7. Microsoft agreed to continue supporting the current version of FRx through December 31, 2012, thereby enabling Sage adequate opportunity to evaluate suitable alternatives. As a part of the evaluation process, Sage will also assess Microsoft's Management Reporter; Management Reporter has been described as the next generation FRx and is equipped with full migration capability.  

Microsoft's decision affects not only Sage, but also other competitive ERP solution providers. In response, Sage remains committed to supporting the integrity of our products and your customer's Sage MAS 90, Sage MAS 200, and Sage MAS 500 ERP, and Sage PFW ERP business software solutions. As a part of our go-forward strategy, we have actively initiated the process of determining what option(s) will provide the most effective solution regarding your customer's financial report-writing needs. We will inform you of our progress as updates are available. A copy of this notification will be posted on the Partner File Center under the Product Information & Tools category.

[rmikolainis]

Also, this was sent as an email:

Financial Reporting and FRx Replacement  

The final questions involved our Financial Reporting strategy and FRx Replacement. Although we are committed to ensuring compatibility with FRx Desktop, Microsoft has announced an end of support date of December 31, 2012. As a result, Sage will provide an alternative solution for Financial Reporting within our Sage MAS products. (As a reminder, FRx Forecaster has been discontinued by Microsoft and is no longer available for sale. It will continue to be supported directly by Microsoft through September 30, 2010.) We have a two-pronged approach to provide financial reporting for Sage MAS customers in the future.

 1.       We are building an Excel-based financial reporting tool based on the existing Sage Financial Reporter module within Sage Accpac. Sage Financial Reporter will be made compatible with Sage MAS and will provide basic financial reporting capabilities free of charge to all Sage MAS customers.

 2.       We are also establishing an OEM relationship with a business intelligence (BI) vendor that offers advanced financial reporting, operational reporting, and advanced OLAP analysis capabilities. Sage MAS customers will be provided with one free user license for this product with the option of purchasing additional licenses.These two solutions will provide robust financial reporting out of the box and will complement the already very strong tools in Sage MAS, including Business Insights Explorer and Dashboard. The release timing of these two financial reporting solutions will be aligned to a future release of Sage MAS, which has not been determined. We will notify you of our timeframe as we progress further with this project. Please don’t hesitate to contact me or anyone on my team, should you have additional questions or concerns. I look forward to speaking with you.

 Best regards, 

Scott Zandbergen
Vice President Product Management
Sage Business Solutions

Message Edited by rmikolainis on 10-28-2009 02:58 PM

[zimmy]

I know this is a really old post, but are there any options for Inventory Forecasting for MAS90?  Looking for something to anlayze purchase history from customers by item as well as forecast replenishment for warehouses.  Custom reports out of MAS90 works too slow and still doesn't give us much flexibility to see statitical data. 

Thanks!

[rmikolainis]

---

zimmy wrote:

I know this is a really old post, but are there any options for Inventory Forecasting for MAS90?  Looking for something to anlayze purchase history from customers by item as well as forecast replenishment for warehouses.  Custom reports out of MAS90 works too slow and still doesn't give us much flexibility to see statitical data. 

Thanks!

---

I would check out Planning Maestro from Centage. It might be able to do that, not 100% sure though.