Accounts provide a mechanism for you to manage potential customers and suppliers. You assign Contacts to these prospective accounts which can later be converted into Customers and Suppliers.

Activities provide a mechanism to record events against your contacts. These events range from phone calls and emails to meetings and tasks.

An alternate stock code is an item that can be used as a substitute for a similar, but different item.

Within SYSPRO, assigning alternate stock codes enables you to offer the customer a similar item as a substitute when there is a shortage of the required item.

If a shortage of an item occurs at the time of entering detail lines in Sales Order Entry or Quick Entry, you can query the stock availability of the alternate stock codes and offer the customer the choice of items with available stock instead.

You query alternate stock code information in the Inventory Query program. In addition, you can print the alternate stock codes on the Purchasing Work Sheet report.

An alternate supplier is a supplier that can be used instead of the supplier normally used for the specific product or service.

Within SYSPRO, assigning alternate suppliers to stock codes enables you to raise requisitions and purchase orders from alternative sources of supply when your normal supplier is unable to accommodate your requirements.

You query alternate supplier information in the Inventory Query, Purchase Order Entry and Requisition Entry programs. In addition, you can print the first three alternate suppliers on the Purchasing Work Sheet report. When entering detail purchase order lines or additional information for requisition lines, you can query and select to assign an alternative supplier.

SYSPRO enables you to record a list of manufacturers whose parts you are prepared to accept when ordering a specific SYSPRO part. You define (per stock item) the specific manufacturers' part numbers that are acceptable. This ensures accurate purchasing, and provides the facility to link a specific supplier to a preferred manufacturer.

When ordering parts, you can show a list of alternatives, based on the approved manufacturers' list. These can be restricted by supplier, if required. Search options are available to enable the SYSPRO equivalent stock code to be located from a manufacturer's part number.

An assembly placement refers to an additional sequence or reference for the placement of a component within an assembly. This free format field is mainly used for importing from CAD (Computer Aided Design) systems, and can also be used in conjunction with the Reference Designator.

The Back order function in SYSPRO enables you to manage customer orders for items for which you have insufficient stock to satisfy the demand.

You can configure each customer to allow the entry of back order quantities when processing sales orders for the customer. In addition, you can select whether to allow partial shipments for the customer, or whether the full order must be shipped.

Within SYSPRO, banks represent your company's bank accounts. They record financial transactions such as deposits received and payments made and enable Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable and Cash Book to integrate to General Ledger.

A local currency bank can process both foreign and local currency transactions, while a foreign currency bank can only process transactions in the currency of the bank. Foreign currency transactions are converted to local currency before being posted to General Ledger. Any variance (arising from adjustments made to the exchange rate of foreign currency transactions) is posted to an exchange rate variance account defined against each bank.

You maintain banks using the Banks program.

In SYSPRO, backflushing enables you to receipt a finished product into stock based on the bill of materials of the finished product and optionally to post the relevant labor transactions and deplete inventory of production materials, without having to use Work in Progress jobs.

This is particularly relevant in situations where the benefits derived from creating a job to track the activity on the job floor do not justify the cost of processing all the data normally required for a job. The system uses the manufactured item's bill of materials to determine the material and labor charges to be included.

A buying rule is typically applied to bought-out items while a batch rule is applied to made-in items. However, these terms are interchangeable within SYSPRO's Requirements Planning system - they indicate how you want to address quantity shortages encountered for a stock item. The rule defined against each stock item is used to modify the actual shortage quantity in order to calculate an order quantity.

Within SYSPRO, branches are used for reporting and analysis purposes and as a means of integrating transactions to General Ledger for balancing and control purposes.

Business Objects are COM-based components that allow third party developers to access the rich functionality of the SYSPRO core product. They are installed when SYSPRO is installed. They accept XML in, process the request and supply XML as the result.

Each third party application typically uses a number of e.net Business Objects that are licensed at functional area level. Functional areas are merely a grouping of Business Objects.

Buyers are those people in a company who are responsible for identifying sources of supply and for the purchasing of product or services from these sources. Within SYSPRO, the buyer code assigned to a stock code indicates the person responsible for purchasing the item.

You typically assign buyers to stock codes when you have more than one person in the company responsible for purchasing product or services.

Buyers can be used as a selection criterion in a number of SYSPRO reports.

You assign buyer codes to bought-out stock items using the Stock Codes program.

Buying groups enable you to classify a number of contract customers into a common group for use within the Contract Pricing programs.

Buying groups can also be defined for Trade Promotions customers.

Buying groups are maintained using the Buying Groups program.

The term collation refers to a set of rules that determine how data is compared and sorted.

Besides determining the alphabet, the collation order also determines whether accents, case and other alphabet properties are considered in the sort order. For example, if the collation is case sensitive, the uppercase letters are sorted before the lowercase letters.

Binary sort order is case-sensitive, that is lowercase precedes uppercase, and accent-sensitive. This is the fastest sorting order.

SYSPRO's Contact Management System enables you to store and query information about the people with whom you interact in the business environment. It assists you in tracking communications, appointments, activities, etc., between the touchpoints of an organization.

Contacts provide a mechanism for you to associate customers, suppliers, and accounts to organizations with which you conduct business.

A cost center is the smallest segment of an organization for which costs are collected and formally reported; typically a department.

The criteria for defining a cost center are that the costs are significant and the area of responsibility clearly defined.

A cost center is not necessarily identical to a work center; normally, a cost center encompasses more than one work center, but this may not always be the case.

At least one cost center must be defined in the system because work centers must be attached to cost centers.

A currency refers to the monetary unit in which a country processes financial transactions. It enables you to conduct business with foreign currency customers or suppliers by converting values to the local currency equivalent.

You maintain currencies using the Currencies program.

Currency exchange rates are used to convert foreign currency transactions (entered in the Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Sales Order and Purchase Order modules) to your local currency equivalent. The applicable exchange rate is established by matching the currency code used in the transaction to the code defined in this table.

You maintain currency exchange rates using the Currencies program.

Customers provide a mechanism for you to raise sales orders within SYSPRO. The static information configured against a customer is used to determine applicable tax, discounts, etc., when processing sales transactions.

The documents you receive from a customer (e.g. invoices, credit notes, debit notes, etc.,) are stored against the customer code and enable you to keep track of the company's assets.

You can use the customer as a report selection criterion and for subtotalling and sequencing a number of reports within SYSPRO.

You maintain customers using the Customers program.

Customer classes can be used to classify customers according to your requirements.

Once a customer is assigned a particular classification, you can generate reports and analyze sales history selectively by customer class.

You maintain customer classes using the Customer Classes program.

Date entry fields within SYSPRO were traditionally defined as 9(6) which allowed for a day, month and year of two digits to be entered. All these dates assume that a date with a year greater than 50 is 19xx and any date with a year less that 50 is 20xx.

This is true for all versions of SYSPRO and older versions (Encore and Award).

In addition, all the date routines that work with 6 digit dates make the same assumption - this is ''by design''.

More recent programs can use 8 digit dates in Display and Entry Forms and these are always stored as CCYYMMDD internally, in C-ISAM files and when passed to any of the standard date routines that work with 8 digit dates.

Programs in SYSPRO can conform to either the old style 6 digit dates or the new style 8 digit dates.

This means that when a date greater than 31 December 2049 (e.g. 01/01/2050) is entered in any program with a 6 digit date format, the system will store the date to 01/01/1950. This is true even if the program itself initially allowed the date of 01/01/2050 to be entered on the screen.

For example, in Sales Order Entry, you can enter the order date as 30/05/2088 and successfully process the order. However, when you maintain the order, the system will have changed the order date to 30/05/1988.

In SYSPRO, a dispatch note is essentially a delivery note for combined sales order lines.

The Dispatch Note system allows you to combine selected sales order lines from individual sales orders before they are shipped. This allows you to produce a single delivery note for these order lines and subsequently to produce a single invoice for the dispatch.

This is unlike the Consolidate Orders program which only allows you to combine sales orders already delivered to a customer for the purpose of produce a single invoice for these orders.

To facilitate consolidation and dispatch, sales order lines can be reviewed according to the warehouse from which the goods will be shipped, the geographic area, the customer, the stock code, or the ship date.

European community

An engineering user is one or more operators in an Engineering Change Control environment who have been designated a specific function (e.g. engineering design, marketing, etc.).

Each member of an engineering user is identified by a SYSPRO operator code and the same operator code can belong to more than one engineering user. An engineering user can comprise a single operator or a number of different operators (e.g. a department).

Events relating to engineering change orders are routed to an engineering user. These events require decisions or actions from the operators assigned to the engineering user. Depending on the decisions taken (e.g. accept or reject) the engineering change order moves to a different status in the workflow process.

Within SYSPRO, a geographic area represents a specific region in which your customer or supplier resides.

You assign customers to geographic areas and configure your system to apply the rate of tax for a stocked order line according to the customer's geographic area.

You use geographic areas to integrate sales and payments to General Ledger.

You use the geographic area as a report selection criterion and for subtotalling and sequencing a number of reports within SYSPRO.

You capture geographic area details using the Browse on Geographic Areas program.

This is a SYSPRO operator code that allows more than one e.net user to logon at the same time.

Against the operator code you configure the number of logons that must be allowed within a 30 minute time period. This effectively becomes the number of concurrent users (i.e. the number of licenses consumed when the operator is licensed to use a functional area).

Guest/anonymous user licensing is available for business objects and Web-based Applications. The idea of the guest/anonymous user is that you do not need one SYSPRO operator for each person that requires the same access to e.net Solutions. For example: if a SYSPRO company wants to provide an application to 300 customers that allows them to capture sales orders remotely and upload them using web services, they may not want to provide a license for each one, particularly since some order daily, some only order monthly and some order infrequently. By establishing how often their customers order they can work out the maximum number that could logon during any 30 minute time period. They could then create an operator to process these orders and set it to be a guest/anonymous user. Against this they can set the number of concurrent users during a 30 minute time period.

International Commercial Terms are pre-defined terms published by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), that are widely used in international commercial transactions.

Incoterms comprise of a series of three-letter trade terms related to common contractual sales practices, and the rules of each are intended primarily to communicate the ownership of costs and risks associated with the transportation and delivery of goods.

These rules are accepted by governments, legal authorities, and practitioners worldwide, as they are intended to reduce uncertainties arising from different interpretation in different countries. As such they are regularly incorporated into sales contracts worldwide.

This is the name given to the method of collecting information and producing statistics on the export and import of goods between the countries of the European Union (EU).

Intrastat came into existence in 1993 as the source of trade statistics within the EU and the requirements are similar in all member states of the EU.

Invoice terms enable the system to calculate discount amounts as well as discount dates and due dates of supplier and customer documents processed using the AP Invoice Posting, AP Permanent Entries Posting and AR Invoice Terms programs.

You maintain invoice terms for suppliers using the AP Invoice Terms program.

You maintain invoice terms for customers using the AR Invoice Terms program.

This free format field refers to an item's number, description and reference on an assembly drawing. It is mainly used for importing from CAD (Computer Aided Design), EPC (Electronic Parts Catalogue) or EPL (Engineering Parts List) systems, and can also be used in conjunction with the Reference Designator and Assembly Placement fields.

Within SYSPRO a job is equivalent to a works order. Against each job you record what material is required and what operations/instructions must be performed to complete/convert the raw materials into the finished product.

When recording activities within the Contact Management System this indicates the where the activity took place.

Milestone operations are used when machines operate in tandem and bookings are made only after a series of operations.

Setting an operation as a milestone enables you to post labor to key operations and update all prior operations with labor postings.

A quantity made, or scrapped, at a milestone operation is assumed to have been made at standard for prior operations up until the previous milestone.

For each prior operation to be updated:

Although Subcontract operations are always marked as milestone operations, they are not used as a trigger to post to previous non-milestone operations (unlike the equivalent internal operation marked as a milestones). It is assumed that the operation immediately prior to a subcontract operation would be set as a milestone to allow for some control over materials leaving to be worked on by the subcontractor.

Milestone operations are used when Structure sequencing required is enabled (Bill of Materials Setup). In this case, SYSPRO always assumes that there should be at least one milestone operation in the Bill of Materials and that labor is typically posted to that operation.

Multi-period accounting enables you to finalize, in your current period, transactions that occurred in a previous period. This is in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) that assumes that business operations are recorded and separated into different periods and that transactions are recorded in the period in which they occur.

A named user is a SYSPRO operator code. The business logic components of e.net Solutions are referred to as business objects. These are subdivided into functional areas (e.g. Requisition System functional area) and it is these functional areas that are licensed for the number of named users that will use them.

Unlike the core SYSPRO product, the different functional areas can be licensed for different numbers of users. For example: you could have 150 users of the Requisition System functional area and 10 users of the Purchase Order Primary Posting functional area.

Against the functional area you specify which named users can use the functional area. This allows the named user to have one concurrent logon to e.net Solutions. If another user attempts to logon to e.net Solutions (using the same operator code) while the initial user is still logged on, the existing user will either be logged off and the new user logged on, or the new user will be prevented from logging on, depending on XML parameters passed during the second logon attempt.

You can prevent the second user from logging on by supplying the following XML entry during the logon process:

<logon><FailWhenAlreadyLoggedIn>Y</FailWhenAlreadyLoggedIn></logon>

Within SYSPRO, the nationality code identifies the country in which your local site is located. This is configured at the time of setting up the system for the first time.

It influences how transactions are processed when raising sales orders for a customer in an EC Member State (e.g. ensuring that the correct EC information is captured) and affects the display of tax fields (e.g. the fields displayed for the Canadian Tax System differ vastly from the fields displayed for the EC Vat system).

The nationality code also identify the countries in which your suppliers and customers are located, determining the applicable the tariff codes for suppliers (if using Landed Cost Tracking).

A standard list of nationality codes is defined against ISO 3166-1. The IMPNAT.IMP (located in the \Programs folder of your SYSPRO installation) contains a list of these countries together with their 2 or 3-digit codes. We recommend that you use these codes (except for the reserved nationality codes: CAN, USA, AUS, RSA and UK).

You maintain nationalities using the Browse on Nationalities program.

An order type assists in classifying sales orders according to the type of sale (e.g. service revenue or product revenue).

You can print the order type on your sales order documents and also use it as a selection criterion for printing a number of Sales Order reports. The order type can also be used within the Sales Analysis module to provide a breakdown of the salesperson, product class and sales history reports.

Organizations provide a mechanism for you to group your customers, suppliers and accounts either separately or in different combinations.

You can assign a structure (or hierarchy) to the organizations in your lists to provide an understanding of the company, groups, divisions, etc. This does not affect any financial processes within SYSPRO.

You maintain organization lists using the Organization Lists program.

A planner is a person who is responsible for ensuring that all the details relating to a specific event (or project) are catered for so that the event takes place on time and without incident. Within SYSPRO, a planner indicates the person in a company responsible for planning the manufacture of made-in stock items.

You would assign planners to stock codes when you have more than one person in the company who is responsible for planning the manufacture of made-in stock items.

Planners can be used as a selection criterion in a number of SYSPRO reports.

You maintain planners using the Planners program.

You assign planner codes to made-in stock items using the Stock Codes program.

Within SYSPRO, product classes group together merchandise items (i.e. stocked and non-stocked) that you sell.

Product classes enable you to integrate sales to General Ledger (if linked to a branch) and cater for multiple account distributions of sales revenue and cost of sales expenses.

You can measure sales performance by product class by assigning targets and budgets to a product class.

You can use the product class as a selection criterion when generating reports.

You can only maintain and play multimedia for a product class that is linked to a branch.

You maintain product classes using the Product Classes program.

A reference designator unambiguously identifies a component in an electrical schematic (circuit diagram) or on a printed circuit board (PCB).

This free format field usually consists of one or two letters followed by a number, and that number is then sometimes followed by a letter indicating that components are grouped or matched with each other.

When recording activities within the Contact Management System, this indicates the category against which the activity must be recorded.

A routing describes the information that is required to manufacture a particular item. It includes details of what operations must be performed in which sequence, what components are required in which quantities, etc.

Within SYSPRO you associate a routing to a parent part when you define a bill of materials. It is within the bill of materials that you configure the various operation and component requirements. By manipulating these requirements and assigning them to different routes you are able to perform extensive what-if costing scenarios.

Within SYSPRO, a salesperson serves as a mandatory link for customers (i.e. a customer must be assigned to a valid salesperson).

You can use salespersons as a selection criterion within various reports, as well as for subtotalling and sequencing purposes.

You can measure salesperson performance against actual sales by assigning monthly budgets to salesperson which can be compared to actual sales made.

You maintain salespersons using the Salespersons program.

This file defines the characteristics of a valid XML document that can be supplied to a business object. SYSPRO supplies the schema's.

This file defines the XML that can be received from a business object and supplied to a report template. SYSPRO supplies the schema's.

Scrap is material outside of specifications and possessing characteristics that make rework impractical. Within SYSPRO, you can associate a description to a code describing the reason you need to scrap the material.

These are free format or coded instructions (configured within the Sales Order Setup program) which are entered at the time of capturing orders to indicate how the order needs to be sent to the customer.

Free format instructions are entered manually, while coded instructions enable you to associate your shipping messages with a shipping code. When entering shipping instructions for an order, you only need to enter the code linked to the shipping instruction to retrieve the associated text into the order automatically.

These instructions can be printed on invoices and delivery notes.

A stock code is a number that uniquely identifies an inventory item that is bought or manufactured and which is typically stored in one or more warehouses.

All activity relating to the forecasting, purchasing, manufacturing, stocking and selling of a stocked item is tracked by means of the stock code.

A stock code can be linked to one or more lot numbers if the item is defined as lot traceable. If there is a warranty, the stock code can be defined as serialized and linked to one or more serial numbers.

If the Bill of Materials module is installed, stocked items may be linked in a parent/component relationship for use in Work In Progress and Sales Orders (Kit sales).

You can use the stock code as a selection criterion when generating reports.

You maintain stock codes using the Stock Codes program.

Suppliers provide a mechanism for you to raise purchase orders within SYSPRO. The static information configured against a supplier is used to determine applicable tax, discounts, etc., when processing purchasing transactions.

The documents received from a supplier (e.g. invoices, credit notes, debit notes, etc.,) are stored against the supplier and enable you to keep track of the company's liabilities.

You can use the supplier as a selection criterion when generating reports.

You maintain suppliers using the Suppliers program.

Trade Promotions refers to the management and control of special deals you offer to your customers. These deals include promotions, special offers and rebates.

The Trade Promotions module is integrated to the Sales Order Module.

Unknown attendees are email addresses that you have recorded in SYSPRO's Contact Management system but which are not linked to any of your contacts.

Within SYSPRO, a warehouse can represent an actual warehouse containing your inventory items (i.e. a physical warehouse) or it can represent a grouping of your inventory according to specific characteristics of the item (i.e. a logical warehouse). For example: You may want to split your inventory raw materials and finished goods into different logical warehouses even though they are located in the same physical warehouse.

You can define a default warehouse to use for transactions at company level as well as at operator level (this overrides the company default).

At warehouse level you can enter a default warehouse to use for components to indicate the warehouse from which material allocations must be allocated to suggested jobs created from running a requirements calculation.

At job entry level, you can define a default warehouse to use from which material allocations must be made when creating a job and when issuing material to a job.

You can define numbering by warehouse for goods in transit, goods in transit reference numbers, purchase orders and goods received notes.

Inventory integration to General Ledger is mandatory at warehouse level and optional at product class and/or transaction type level.

Sales integration to General Ledger is mandatory at branch level and optional at product class, geographic area and warehouse.

You can use the warehouse as a report selection criterion and for subtotaling and sequencing a number of reports within SYSPRO.

You maintain warehouses using the Warehouses program.

These are out-of-the-box solutions that provide web access to the core SYSPRO product. They use e.net Business Objects to access SYSPRO ERP functionality.

Withholding tax is an advance payment of company tax that is collected by the customer when paying a supplier. It is typically used in countries such as the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore.

For example: Company A sells a computer to Company B for $1000.00. When Company B pays for the computer they deduct withholding tax from the payment and send it to the tax office. The full $1000 is credited against the account, but the payment is split into one portion that is paid to the tax office and the remaining portion that is paid to the supplier.

A work center is a specific production facility comprising one or more people/machines that can be considered as a unit for the purposes of capacity requirements planning and detailed scheduling (e.g. Drilling; Assembly; Quality and Inspection).

Although work centers derive their default costing rates, units of measure, run time calculation methods and General Ledger productive and non-productive codes from the Cost Center to which they are assigned, these can be overridden at the Work center level.