Sometimes you post an A/P Invoice, but then have a reason to put that invoice ‘on-hold’ so it won’t be paid with A/P Checks. Later on, you may resolve the problem and want to take the A/P Invoice off hold. Here is how to do that in Sage Mas 90 and Mas 200.

To place a posted invoice on hold, use A/P Invoice Data Entry.
Select the vendor and the “posted” invoice number. The ‘Adjust invoice on file’ message displays.
Check the ‘Invoice on Hold’ check box, and click ‘OK’. Note that the invoice is now ‘on hold’ without requiring you to run an Invoice Register or update. If you use batches in AP Invoice Entry and started a new batch for this entry, you may want to delete the newly created batch, unless you have other invoices to enter, adjust or change.

Releasing an invoice from being ‘on hold’:
To release an invoice from being ‘on hold, use A/P Invoice Data Entry.
Select the vendor and the “posted” invoice number. The ‘Adjust invoice on file’ message displays.
Clear the ‘Invoice on Hold’ check box, and click ‘OK’. Note that the invoice is now ‘off hold’ without requiring you to run an Invoice Register or update.
If you use batches in AP Invoice Entry and started a new batch for this entry, you may want to delete the newly created batch, unless you have other invoices to enter, adjust or change.

Sage Mas 90 and Mas 200 Paperless Office offers both time and paper-saving features. We have found one “gotcha” that may result in you missing some registers or journals in modules where you are using Paperless Office. When you “Print” a Journal or Register from one of these modules, the system will create a PDF document for that document – however when you “Preview” the document, and then update the document from preview, the system will NOT create a pdf-copy of that document. Solution: Go to Role Maintenance in the Library Master module. For all users who can update Journals or Registers, go to their roles and make the following change. Under Security Events, go to each of the modules you are running as “paperless”, and un-check the option to Allow Updating of Journals from Preview. This will insure that you “Print” (paper or pdf or both) all Journals and Registers from that module before updating. If you are using Paperless Office, please make this change. Call our support-line at 678-273-4010 ext 2 if you have questions.

Mas 90 & Mas 200 up to version 3.71 called this System Activity Log and is on the Library Master Utilities menu. Mas90 4.x versions call this the Activity Log and is on the Library Master Reports menu. If you have the E-Business Manager modules, use Web Error Log on the E-Business Manager Main menu to view a continuous record of significant Web Engine error events.

Use the Activity Log to view a continuous record of significant operating events (installing applications, or performing system startup, file maintenance, module period-end processing, Visual Integrator Import and Export Jobs run including #-records imported/exported.). This log also lists any error conditions that have occurred.

The log prints up to the last 999 events, deleting the oldest activity from the list as each new activity is added. Friendly Systems technical support often refers to this log when researching any system problems you may encounter.

Some of these errors are cryptic and often non-consequential errors, but major events such as module period-closings, company copies, GL Account and other renumberings and changes made with Utilities that may help you when researching those issues. It also lists the user-code to tell you what user initiated the event. Each of these logs includes a search-feature that allows you to locate events by date, user, company or event type.

How the ‘Use Shipping Code to Calculate Freight’ option in Sales Order Options works.

The option to ‘Use Shipping Code to Calculate Freight’ has three settings: ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘Actual’.

Select ‘Yes’ to use preset the Shipping Codes set up in Shipping Rate Maintenance to calculate freight charges. A Freight Charge Table is created for each shipping code, with shipping rates determined by ship weight and, optionally, by ship zone.

Select ‘No’ to manually enter all freight charges, or if freight charges are not required.

Select ‘Actual’ to calculate freight charges using the total weight of all items ordered; this option allows you to use Ship Codes and the actual weights from the Inventory Master File (IM1). Individual shipping codes are defined in Shipping Rate Maintenance.

Note: When using Actual, and the freight amount is manually overridden in Sales Order Entry, the system will recalculate the freight amount based on the rates setup in Shipping Rate Maintenance. In other words, changes made to the freight in Sales Order Entry will be changed back when the sales order is invoiced. Additionally, any typed-in freight amount will not carry over from the order into Shipping Data Entry. When setting the option to use ‘Actual’ as the Shipping Rate, the system assumes the freight will be either entering during Shipping Data Entry, or the freight amount from StarShip will be used.

There are three ways to calculate the freight amount:

Weight – By weight using shipping codes
Product Line – On a price per quantity or weight by product line
Amount – On the invoice amount

Sage MAS 90 and 200 have this option on the Inventory Main menu. It allows you to change either Prices or Standard Costs or both.
Select a Range of item numbers.
Change costs for a vendor
Change prices for an entire product line
Change prices for a price-code

Change prices by:
percent +/- of price change
percent +/- of cost
add or subtract $$ amount to price
add or subtract $$ amount to cost

Change Standard costs by:
percent change
added $$ amount
set to average cost
set to last cost

…but the update doesn’t affect GL, so if you are changing standard cost, you would need to correct the GL. The Inventory Valuation Report should be printed before and after the change and then used to make adjustments in the General Ledger.

If you are using Mas90/200 Paperless Office for Sales Order Invoices,
there is a potential bug that might cause problems. If you invoice a customer
with “ALL” in the customer account number, Invoice PDFs and entries in the PDF log are deleted after running the Daily Sales Order Update.

Two solutions exist:
1) Get Mas90/200 service update 14 and install on your system.
If you have 3rd party or customized Mas90/200 programs, check with
us before installing any upgrades.
2) Renumber any customers whose customer-numbers include “ALL” to
some other letters. If the customer has no open invoices, you can use the
“renumber” button in customer maintenance. Otherwise, use the Delete
and Change utility from the AR Utilities menu, to change the customer’s
account number.

Let us know if we can help, call our support-line at 678-273-4010 ext 2.

How do you know item what price will be used for a customer? How can you fine-tune your pricing by customer, by volume, by season?

Each time a sales order or invoice is entered, the system checks the customer, date, item, and quantity to determine which pricing method to use.
The following hierarchy shows you all the possible mechanisms and how they are applied:
Promotion pricing if a sales promotion is in effect for the current date and the promotion price is less than the calculated price. (See the Sale Info tab in Inventory Maintenance).
Contract pricing may apply for the customer for this item.
Item pricing for this item based on the customer price level.
Item pricing for this item based on the standard price level.
Pricing for the item price code based on the customer price level.
Pricing for the item price code based on the standard price level .
Sage MAS 90/200 gives you many tools to help you refine your pricing structure! Call our support-line at 678-273-4010 ext 2 if we can help.

Sometimes it may be necessary to adjust the unit cost information for items already recorded into inventory.
Standard Cost:
For Standard Cost items, although the standard cost can be manually changed within Inventory Maintenance, this change will not update the inventory value in General Ledger. Using an adjustment to bring the total quantity (for all warehouses) to 0 at the current (incorrect) standard cost will bring the total quantity and total value in inventory to 0. At that time, you can manually change the standard cost within the Inventory Masterfile and adjust the total quantity back in at the new standard cost. This transaction will update General Ledger with the new inventory value.
The Automatic Cost/Price Change utility can also be used to update the standard cost for ranges of items. This utility does not update the general ledger. A G/L Journal Entry will need to be made for the difference in inventory value. The Inventory Valuation Report should be printed before and after the change and then used to make adjustments in General Ledger.
The ‘Cost Roll up Register’ can also be used to change the Standard cost if the item has a bill of material.
Average Cost:
To change average cost, the total quantity in all warehouses needs to first be adjusted out at the current (incorrect) average cost. This adjustment will reduce the inventory quantity and value to 0. Once the inventory has a $0 value, the same quantity can be adjusted back in at the correct average cost. This transaction will update General Ledger with the new inventory value.
LIFO, FIFO, Lot, and Serial:
The negative and positive adjustments must be made to the same cost tier (i.e. the receipt date and reference for LIFO/FIFO or lot/serial number for lot/serial items) by clicking the distribute (‘Distrib’) button on the Transaction Entry Lines tab and distributing the quantities to the correct cost tier. In other words, for a FIFO item, if the cost was incorrect on a particular FIFO tier, the negative adjustment would be entered for the quantity in that tier at the current (incorrect) cost and then distributed back to that tier with the correct cost

Note: For Serial / Lot items, you must first update the negative adjustment before entering the positive adjustment. For the other valuation methods, the negative adjustment and positive adjustment can be within the same update.

When entering the Inventory Adjustment transactions:
On the ‘Lines’ tab, select the ‘Item Number’ to be corrected.
Enter ‘Quantity’ as a negative number that will relieve the total quantity on hand for the warehouse selected.
If the items has LIFO, FIFO, Lot, or Serial valuation, select the tier to be adjusted.
The old (incorrect) cost will populate the ‘Unit Cost’. Click ‘OK’.
Create a 2nd entry by selecting the same ‘Item Number’ to be corrected.
Enter ‘Quantity’ but as a positive number that will add the same quantity back to the total quantity on hand for the warehouse selected.
If the items has LIFO, FIFO, Lot, or Serial valuation, select the tier to be adjusted (or a new tier can be created).
Enter the new (correct) cost for the ‘Unit Cost’. Click ‘OK’.
Print the Inventory Transaction Journal, confirming the correct Inventory Management Posting Date before printing.
Update the Inventory Transaction Journal.
Print the Daily Transaction Register. Note: the difference between the original cost and the new cost is posted to the Inventory Adjustments G/L account for the product line in Inventory Management / Setup / Product Line Maintenance.
Update the Daily Transaction Register.
For additional info, see Sage Knowledgebase Resolution ID: 405107

Sage Mas90/200 has some nice lookup features accessed by the magnifying-glass to the right of fields like items, customers, vendors, invoices, etc. If a file gets very large, (like invoice history), you click the magnifying-glass and the system freezes while it loads a huge number of records into the viewer. You have to wait. Nuisance! Aggravating! Especially if you had planned to do a selective search anyway, like all invoices for a customer or vendor, or all customers with “United” in the name. While you are reading this, your system is still looking-up all those records while-you-wait. If your MAS version is at least 4.10, you can remedy this by asking your MAS90/200 administrator to go to User Maintenance and change your User Preferences field for Lookup Limit for Initial Display to a non-zero number. This figure applies to all lookups in all modules for Mas90/200 for you only. I’d recommend the number be at least 1000, but no more that 3000 since the system handles that number of records fairly quickly, and will load all of the records for smaller files (like vendors or customers) completely. For those huge files like invoice history, the system will immediately tell you Lookup Limit Exceeded, then allow you to immediately choose the search settings you were going to enter anyway. The advantage is that you don’t have to wait while those long, long, lookups are loading. Call Friendly Systems support if we can help. 689-273-4010 ext 2

Slow performance, hanging, Error 12, Error 0, or “Invalid Handles” in Sage MAS 90 or 200 may be caused by your anti-virus programs. Have your system administrator check your anti-virus program settings.

Data files used for Mas90/200 business framework modules have been converted to a new file structure beginning with Mas90/200 Version 4.00. The Data File names now end with a suffix of .M4T as the standard file type. File types .SOA still exist.

If running anti-virus software on either the client workstation or the server, configure the anti-virus software to exclude all files with .SOA, .M4T, .M4T, .M4L, and .PVC extensions.

Some anti-virus software programs have a setting to scan network files. If so, deselect ‘Network Scanning’ of files on all workstations and the server.