Keeping inventory levels and obsolescence to a minimum, while continuing to offer superior customer service, entails achieving the right product mix, as well as the continual balancing of supply and demand. Understanding and tracking the relevant measures of risk which impact the balance is critical for reducing stocks, improving availability and increasing turnover.

Through the powerful tools in the Inventory Optimization suite of modules, SYSPRO enables you to better understand and quantify your risk profile, thereby assisting you to reduce your safety stocks and free up working capital, without compromising your reputation as a reliable supplier in the market place. Key elements that drive inventory across the supply chain are coordinated, tracked and controlled to optimize inventory. Standard analysis of slow-moving, excess, active and static stocks enables targeted promotional and product rationalization programs, as well as accurate obsolescence provisioning. Further benefits include improved warehouse utilization and fewer headaches for the procurement and production scheduling teams.

The Families and Groupings and Forecasting modules enable you to minimize forecast error and manage seasonality, thereby improving order fulfilment performance. This functionality is complemented by features such as available-to-promise and various time fence indicators, which give sales and production staff a reliable view of what they can promise to customers and when.

SYSPRO's material requirements planning gives you clear visibility to the integrated effect of current and future supply and demand, thereby enabling you to make better purchasing and production decisions and reduce excess and obsolete inventories. The inclusion of sources of supply and demand is configurable and various reports and related review programs enable easy identification of potential oversupplies and seamless execution of suggested actions. Order policies by stock code at warehouse level enable you to implement lot-sizing rules for purchased and manufactured items. Standard reports such as the Inventory Exception and the MRP Potential Oversupplies reports help you identify excess inventories and possible problems with your lot-sizing techniques.

Regardless of the framework of General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) within which you operate, no software solution can guarantee compliance; nevertheless, the features that your Enterprise Resource Planning system offers, can have a significant impact on your ability to attain such compliance. SYSPRO adheres to International Accounting Standards (IAS) and can assist you in implementing tighter control and regulation, through a number of powerful features, thereby helping you to protect the rights of your business stakeholders.

SYSPRO's electronic signatures (ES) give you the tools to meet the Sarbanes-Oxley requirement for the creation of detailed audit logs of who is doing what in your ERP system. Not only do the ES features enable logging of all activity in SYSPRO, but they also give you the tools to define rules around who is allowed to process specific transactions, and under what conditions. ES also enable you to configure notifications and other triggers to be fired off in the case of specific events. This improves transparency and accountability in business transaction processing, giving you strict authorization and access control at a granular level in addition to SYSPRO's general system security. Role Conflicts are another Sarbanes-Oxley target area for which SYSPRO provides controls, giving you a customizable template to help you define and report on such conflicts within the system.

The Assets Register module allows for a variety of depreciation methods, models, basis and start dates, as well as enabling you to temporarily suspend depreciation of an asset if required. Master/sub asset functionality allows depreciation of assets and its components at different rates. The Capex system allows for the capitalization of all the costs incurred in the creation/dismantling or refurbishing of an asset, through integration to purchase orders, jobs and the cash book. Comprehensive auditability of your assets is facilitated through a number of reports and queries, as well as the Asset Count feature.

SYSPRO's powerful General Ledger query enables you to drill down from the ledger to original source transactions. General ledger journal authorization enables distributed journal input, with centralized checking, authorization and posting, thereby enhancing transactional integrity. In addition, other SYSPRO features such as the revaluation of outstanding accounts payable and accounts receivable foreign invoices at an appropriate exchange rate contribute to IAS compliance.

Reporting features in SYSPRO are extensive including the ability to output reports and documents in many different formats or standards such as XML. Full audit trails are provided for all master data changes, as well as for all financial transaction activity in the system at sub-ledger and general ledger level. Transaction history reporting is available throughout the system, along with on-line archiving of data and reports.

You can produce secure PDF format stationery, such as invoices, purchase orders and statements, for electronic transmission using SYSPRO Reporting Services (SRS). SRS also enables the production of exception reports, as well as boardroom-quality operational and financial reports directly from your integrated data. In addition, SYSPRO Analytics gives you real-time executive dashboard capability that enables informed decision making and the highlighting of inconsistencies.

Adherence to stringent EU/ MHRA /FDA/TGA/HACCP regulations in terms of traceability and recall procedures in industries, such as food and pharmaceuticals, is facilitated through SYSPRO's lot traceability and serial tracking features, including the ability to trace from source to finished product batches and vice versa. Furthermore, SYSPRO's extensive security and customization features enable you to fine-tune the protection of your data to meet validation requirements laid down by compliance bodies, such as Good Automated Manufacturing Practice (GAMP).

While forecasting is, by definition, an inexact science, its purpose is to improve the quality of predictions and thereby enable the fine-tuning of the balance between supply and demand. In forecasting environments where product ranges and configurations are extensive, bills of material are complex and raw material and component lead times are long, improved forecast accuracy is essential to minimizing inventory holding and obsolescence costs without compromising customer service and brand loyalty.

SYSPRO provides tools to enable you to track and evaluate your forecasts, as well as to identify the possible causes of forecast errors. These tools assist you in optimizing your forecasts to produce the best possible outcome with minimum forecast error. The Inventory Optimization suite of modules enables the entry of manual forecasts, as well as the automatic generation of forecasts via a variety of forecast algorithms, including those that compute for trends, seasonality and cyclical events. In addition, the module provides a competition forecasting method (also known as focus forecasting or the tournament method) which attempts to select the most suitable forecast algorithm, based on a selected error measurement and your SYSPRO sales history data. This enables you to compare results to determine which method is the most suitable for any particular item, whether you forecast products at code, revision, release, or warehouse level. A tracking signal is used to indicate when the validity of the forecast might be in doubt; those items with high forecast errors are highlighted and can be reviewed and adjusted as required.

Forecast accuracy depends not only on the regular evaluation of the forecast error, but also on the integrity and nature of the source data. In SYSPRO, forecast accuracy is enhanced through the ability to automatically filter and adjust outliers, as well as to manually adjust forecast base data for quantitative and qualitative factors. Lost sales can also be included in the demand profile.

Furthermore, SYSPRO's proxy functionality enables the forecasting of new products based on the sales history of similar superseded products which is useful in industries where product life cycles are short.

In custom-build, as well as project and service environments, job cost accuracy is essential in attaining correct pricing and profitability, as well as to assess the reliability of the quoting process, while in standard costing environments, it is essential for tracking the validity of current standard costs.

For custom-build environments, SYSPRO's Quotations module enables detailed estimates based on all aspects of the job (or jobs) and the automatic creation of jobs, purchase orders and sales orders based on approved quotes. This ensures the integrity of the quoted and margin information throughout the system. For project and service environments, this same functionality is available, with the added benefits of hierarchical analysis of costs and margins per head and section.

SYSPRO's fully integrated solution enables the capture, tracking and analyzing of job and product costs, and profitability in real-time. Details of expected versus actual costs for material and scrap, internal and external labor, fixed and overhead costs per job, or group of jobs, is available through SYSPRO's querying and reporting features. This enables the identification of exceptions and problems as they occur, such as areas of high cost expenditure, production scrap and rework, and problems in the quoting process. Furthermore, for those businesses wishing to take advantage of government and private enterprise grant programs, detailed R&D job data is easily extracted for regulatory reporting requirements.

With SYSPRO's visibility to product cost details and profit margins, including for co- and by-products, you can evaluate job cost performance, margin analysis and pricing with confidence.

Whether you supply pharmaceuticals, food or other fast moving consumer goods, your pricing strategies are built to accommodate a wide variety of customer types in wholesale and retail environments. SYSPRO enables you optimize pricing for a heterogeneous customer base, providing you with the tools to implement and manage your global pricing requirements, and to minimize the costs and effort associated with the administration of trade promotions and deductions.

Comprehensive sales data, along with powerful analysis, querying and reporting tools provide multi-dimensional analysis of product profitability to inform the pricing strategy process, whether it is cost-based, performance-based, market-based, or a mix. In addition, deriving accurate and competitive pricing for commodity or customizable products is easily facilitated by SYSPRO's powerful costing functionality and visibility. Different costing methods per warehouse, quotations, bill of materials, product configurator and what-if costing functionality enables you to derive cost-based quotes and pricing with confidence.

The system accommodates local and foreign pricing techniques, from manual and simple automated pricing to contract pricing and complex trade promotions pricing and discounting. Sales order entry and electronic capture is streamlined through pricing automation based on customer and/or stock code matrices, and contract pricing at customer and/or buying group level by product or product group. Discounted, foreign and quantity-break pricing methods are catered for, as well as profit margin controls. The import, export and global price update facilities enable seamless implementation of extensive price changes.

Essential for suppliers of retail and wholesale customers, SYSPRO's Trade Promotions module facilitates the creation of rules that govern pricing, promotions, special offers, and rebates, as well as improved promotions tracking. In addition, the system's powerful rebate, accruals and deductions management functionality promotes fast, accurate invoicing and reconciliation, and improved cash flow management. Optional integration to SYSPRO's General Ledger module facilitates complete management and reconciliation of associated financial transactions.

Maximizing your profitability is only possible with an accurate picture of your costs. With operational costs consuming a high percentage of your revenues, we understand that maximizing yield and keeping strict control of costs and reducing waste in all areas of the business is essential to your on-going profitability.

SYSPRO enables you to implement continuous improvement by giving you visibility to costs and profits across the business and helping you to identify points of waste as they happen. This includes variations in expected and actual raw material and production costs; late supplier deliveries; obsolete, slow-moving and excessive inventories; and product defects and scrap. In addition, the Bill of Materials What-if costing feature enables you to model possible changes in raw material and labor costs and see the imploded effects on higher level item costs and profits.

For corporate governance requirements, as well as cash flow and operational efficiency, it is critical to budget for capital expenditure and to forecast the requisite cash requirements. SYSPRO's Asset Capex System facilitates the creation of both broad and specific capex budgets with the latter forming a subset of the broader budget category; for example, a piece of equipment within a production cell or line.

You can capture up to three quotations for a capex line and once the capex line is approved, you can rapidly generate a new purchase requisition, purchase order or a job, or link to an existing one. The approval process is controlled through a series of capex line statuses, including unapproved, approved, on hold and closed.

SYSPRO provides simplified acquisition processing once the asset is receipted from a purchase order or a job. The asset is placed in suspense and through a user-friendly suspense review facility you can retrieve and check the details of the suspended asset on-line before automating its transfer to the live asset register. This reduces double entry, as well as the margin for capture errors.

Comprehensive queries and reporting is provided on committed, uncommitted and spent capex values.

The effective prediction and management of cash flow requirements depends on access to reliable accurate data. SYSPRO facilitates this by providing you detailed data and a number of tools enabling you to see what cash is due for payment or collection, and when.

The Accounts Receivable module provides an aged trial balance that gives you a clear picture of when your billed receivables are due, along with customer terms and the average number of days each customer takes to pay. Sales order backlog reports by due date along with customer payment terms give you the data you need to calculate receivables for unbilled orders.

The Accounts Payable module provides an aged trial balance for your invoiced purchases along with supplier terms and an option to include unapproved invoices. The GRN suspense trial balance includes an aged balance of purchase receipts not yet invoiced by suppliers, while a Purchase Order Commitment report provides you with projections of the value committed to outstanding orders in any given time period.

The Cash Book module provides a snapshot of your current cash status as well as outstanding deposits and withdrawals and easy reconciliation of bank balances. In addition, the Cash Projection report enables you to forecast the effect on your bank balances of any recurring entries projected into the future.

General Ledger budgets for the current and following year, as well as eight alternate budgets, enable you to capture, query and report on cash flow forecasts at ledger code level.

The SYSPRO Cash Flow Forecast provides the capability to create multiple on-line cash flow models from a variety of inflow and outflow data, such as receivables, payables, cash book, general ledger, sales, purchasing, demand forecasts and material requirements. These forecasts provide a comprehensive view of the company-wide cash flow position. In addition, the various SYSPRO modules provide you with detailed reports and queries which assist in payment and collection control.

Understanding the true cost per transaction of doing business means identifying contributing elements, direct and indirect, across the entire organization. These include not only the cost efficiency of operational activities and their interrelationships, but also the time spent on manual and redundant processes, reconciliations, paperwork and reporting, as well as the cost of lost opportunities from a lack of agility in responding to the global marketplace.

SYSPRO provides essential integrated visibility to your accounting, distribution and manufacturing operations, thereby enabling you to easily identify and track your cost elements and to target areas of waste for improvement programs. Additionally, it facilitates the automation of many processes that have traditionally been labour-intensive and time-consuming, such as operational-to-financial reconciliations and communicating with trading partners.

It offers Standard, Average, Last, FIFO and LIFO costing methods flagged at warehouse level, thereby providing accurate operations-focused inventory valuation, which in turn supplies accurate input for product pricing and profitability. Comprehensive multi-level costing of manufactured items is provided through the Bill of Material and Work in Progress modules, with the Product Configurator and Quotations and Estimating modules providing additional tools for assemble/make/engineer-to-order environments. Lot traceability, serial tracking and return merchandise functionality, along with SYSPRO's inspection systems, provide tracking of product defects, thereby helping you mitigate costly recalls.

SYSPRO's cost rollup and implosion functionality, along with user-friendly costing queries, provides fast access to reliable information on which to base pricing and profit margins. In addition, its extensive what-if costing features enables modelling and comparison of the cost effects of alternative inputs, such as raw materials, production routes, labor rates and subcontractor rates.

SYSPRO provides work-in-progress tracking, enabling evaluation of detailed actual-versus-expected costs, as well as targets for cost savings and continuous improvement programs. Used in conjunction with the Projects and Contracts module, it facilitates comprehensive project job costing. Visibility to production scheduling, along with what-if sequencing and scheduling tools, enhance manufacturing agility and competitiveness and help to prevent lost sales in unpredictable demand environments.

Excess inventories tie up valuable resources both in terms of cost and warehouse management. SYSPRO helps you optimize, manage and track your inventories through its multi-warehouse Inventory, Material Requirements Planning, Purchase Order and Work in Progress modules. In addition, the Purchase Order and Landed Cost Tracking systems provide a more accurate estimate of the full landed cost of imported goods, with the GRN matching and reconciliation features facilitating electronic reconciliation of supplier deliveries and charges.

Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Cash Book provide comprehensive balancing and reconciliation tools, as well as credit and cash flow management capability. Additionally, efficient administration of customer accruals, rebates and deductions is facilitated through the Trade Promotions Management module. Commitment accounting is provided through the Accounts Payable and Purchasing modules, while the Assets Register ensures accurate maintenance and depreciation costing, and asset profit and loss realization.

SYSPRO's General Ledger module provides powerful queries with drill-down from journal to transaction source, as well as at-a-glance financial and activity ratios. Processing time is greatly reduced through features, such as sub-ledger integration and reconciliation, journal copy, journal import, automatic weighted transfer of costs and G/L analysis.

Furthermore, SYSPRO's ease of ledger consolidation across complex businesses, along with its XML-based financial reporting features, enables prompt web-based deployment of financial reports to SYSPRO and non-SYSPRO users alike.

SYSPRO's flexible user-defined stationery formats, along with SYSPRO Reporting Services (SRS), precludes the need for pre-printed stationery for invoices, delivery notes, order acknowledgements, dispatch notes, purchase orders and statements. In addition, SRS provides considerable savings by reducing the need for paper-based audit trails and reporting. Its automatic scheduling tool precludes the need for resource-intensive supervision of periodic and month-end reporting. Furthermore, the archiving feature provides for the electronic storage of reports as run, thereby enabling users to view them on-line to discern actual print requirements.

SYSPRO's Office (SOI), fax and email integration saves time, postage and paper by enabling you to deliver transactional documents, such as purchase orders and statements, directly from their point of extraction via secure electronic means. Additionally, SOI facilitates direct queries of key operational data from the desktops of enterprise-wide users and trading partners, without the need for the desktop installation or licensing of SYSPRO.

The capability to extend electronic communication, so as to automate the acceptance and acknowledgement of orders on a 24/7 basis, is provided via SYSPRO's e.Net solutions, Document Flow Manager and Web Applications. Furthermore, SYSPRO's e.Net Solutions tools afford non-proprietary and version-independent integration to mobile devices and best-of-breed applications, such as shop floor control and quality monitoring systems.

The ROI of implementing SYSPRO is rapidly realized through full visibility to an integrated picture of your business operations and the resultant reduction in operational costs, processing time and human resources.

Understanding the true cost per transaction of doing business means identifying contributing elements, direct and indirect, across the entire organization. These include not only the cost efficiency of operational activities and their interrelationships, but also the time spent on manual and redundant processes, reconciliations, paperwork and reporting, as well as the cost of lost opportunities from a lack of agility in responding to the global marketplace.

SYSPRO provides essential integrated visibility to your accounting, distribution and manufacturing operations, thereby enabling you to easily identify and track your cost elements and to target areas of waste for improvement programs. Additionally, it facilitates the automation of many processes that have traditionally been labor intensive and time consuming, such as operational-to-financial reconciliations and communicating with trading partners.

SYSPRO offers Standard, Average, Last, FIFO and LIFO costing methods flagged at warehouse level, thereby providing accurate operations-focused inventory valuation, which in turn supplies accurate input for product pricing and profitability. Comprehensive multi-level costing of manufactured items is provided through the Bill of Material and Work in Progress modules, with the Product Configurator and Quotations and Estimating modules providing additional tools for assemble/make/engineer-to-order environments. Lot traceability, serial tracking and return merchandise functionality, along with SYSPRO's inspection systems, provide tracking of product defects, thereby helping you to mitigate costly recalls.

SYSPRO's cost rollup and implosion functionality, along with user-friendly costing queries, provides fast access to reliable information on which to base pricing and profit margins. In addition, its extensive what-if costing features enables modeling and comparison of the cost effects of alternative inputs, such as raw materials, production routes, labor rates and subcontractor rates.

SYSPRO provides work-in-progress tracking, enabling evaluation of detailed actual-versus-expected costs, as well as targets for cost savings and continuous improvement programs. Used in conjunction with the Projects and Contracts module, it facilitates comprehensive project job costing. Visibility to production scheduling, along with what-if sequencing and scheduling tools, enhance manufacturing agility and competitiveness and help to prevent lost sales in unpredictable demand environments.

Excess inventories tie up valuable resources both in terms of cost and warehouse management. SYSPRO helps you optimize, manage and track your inventories through its multi-warehouse Inventory, Material Requirements Planning, Purchase Order and Work in Progress modules. In addition, the Purchase Order and Landed Cost Tracking systems provide a more accurate estimate of the full landed cost of imported goods, with the GRN matching and reconciliation features facilitating electronic reconciliation of supplier deliveries and charges.

Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Cash Book provide comprehensive balancing and reconciliation tools, as well as credit and cash flow management capability. Additionally, efficient administration of customer accruals, rebates and deductions is facilitated through the Trade Promotions Management module. Commitment accounting is provided through the Accounts Payable and Purchasing modules, while the Assets Register ensures accurate maintenance and depreciation costing, and asset profit and loss realization.

SYSPRO's General Ledger module provides powerful queries with drill-down from journal to transaction source, as well as at-a-glance financial and activity ratios. Processing time is greatly reduced through features, such as sub-ledger integration and reconciliation, journal copy, journal import, automatic weighted transfer of costs and G/L analysis. Furthermore, SYSPRO's ease of ledger consolidation across complex businesses, along with its XML-based financial reporting features, enables prompt web-based deployment of financial reports to SYSPRO and non-SYSPRO users alike.

SYSPRO's flexible user-defined stationery formats, along with SYSPRO Reporting Services (SRS), precludes the need for pre-printed stationery for invoices, delivery notes, order acknowledgements, dispatch notes, purchase orders and statements. In addition, SRS provides considerable savings by reducing the need for paper-based audit trails and reporting. Its automatic scheduling tool precludes the need for resource-intensive supervision of periodic and month-end reporting. Furthermore, the archiving feature provides for the electronic storage of reports as run, thereby enabling users to view them on-line to discern actual print requirements.

SYSPRO's Office (SOI), fax and email integration saves time, postage and paper by enabling you to deliver transactional documents, such as purchase orders and statements, directly from their point of extraction via secure electronic means. Additionally, SOI facilitates direct queries of key operational data from the desktops of enterprise-wide users and trading partners, without the need for the desktop installation or licensing of SYSPRO.

The capability to extend electronic communication, so as to automate the acceptance and acknowledgement of orders on a 24/7 basis, is provided via SYSPRO's e.net solutions, Document Flow Manager and Web Applications. Furthermore, SYSPRO's e.net solutions tools afford non-proprietary and version-independent integration to mobile devices and best-of-breed applications, such as shop floor control and quality monitoring systems.

The ROI of implementing SYSPRO is rapidly realized through full visibility to an integrated picture of your business operations and the resultant reduction in operational costs, processing time and human resources.