Need to deduct a percentage or a flat amount from a vendor’s invoice? Here’s how…

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Need to deduct a percentage or a flat amount from a vendor’s invoice?  Here’s how:

  1. Setup a distribution code on AP05.3 as a percentage and indicate the account that the amount should go to. You can actually setup two or more different percentages to distribute to two different accounts. Make the percentage a negative percentage when deducting an amount from the invoice.
  2. On the vendor’s AP10 record on the Default Tab add the distribution code. It will default onto the invoices and automatically deduct the percent or percentages specified on the AP05.3 form for the distribution code.

  1. You may have to adjust the invoice total amount to reflect the deduction(s) to be in balance.

Can you have a single BL & AR company and have transactions post to more than one GL company?

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The short answer is no.

However, there are some creative ways to accomplish having a single BL & AR company and still booking information to various GL Companies.

Option 1: Using allocations and getting creative with your Process Levels and possibly accounting units, you can move the amounts to various companies using the allocation module.

The AR process Level setup has a default accounting unit that allows you to book all transactions for this process level to the various accounting units and then setting up an allocation to transfer those amounts at the end of each period would allow you to see the AR amounts on your various GL companies in the financial statements.  I would make these allocations auto reversing so that you can show what you need to for financial reporting only.

Option 2: Setup the various AR and BL companies and use the National Account relationship for your processing.  This option will allow everything to book in the correct company, and still allow you to process payments and adjustments, produce various reports, create consolidated aging reports and all other AR reports.

So as often is the case, you can get what you want, you just need to think it through and see if it will work for your needs.

What are Paint Screens? When do I use them?

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Every now and then the system hiccups. Just like we all do.  When this happens, sometimes there are ways of addressing the issue and sometimes there are not through the standard forms.

When there isn’t a way to address the issue with the standard processes, Paint Screens can be used to go behind the scenes and address the issue that is needing to be fixed. So of course, they should be used sparingly and only when there is no other choice to address the issue.

Some examples of this are:

  • PO lines where the quantities indicate that the line should be closed, however the line is still open.  This keeps the PO header open as well.
  • AP Credit memos that were canceled yet still show up on the MA126 report.

Are you thinking about integrating an external project system to your ERP?

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There are several things that you need to take into consideration:

  1. What are the accounting needs?
  2. When do the commitments need to be booked in the GL?
  3. Budgets:
    • Do you want a budget to be tracked in your external Project tracking system?
    • Do you want a total not to exceed budget in your ERP to make sure someone is notified when the budget is exceeded?
    • Do you want a detailed budget in both places?
  4. If there is retention from supplier invoices to be paid at the end of the project, when does the retention need to be booked?
  5. Where is the project initially setup? In the external project tracking system or the ERP?
  6. What are the touch points that need to be considered when determining what the interface points are?
  7. How will your ERP know when the project is complete so it can be marked as closed?

Lawson Portal – Getting Started as a New User

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When first using Lawson portal, it can be a bit overwhelming with all the buttons and unfamiliar UI. The first change I always make is changing the buttons to display text instead of icons.

 

First go to Preferences >> User Options

 

Under “Toolbar Button Display” select Text >> Apply and OK

Once you’ve applied the changes, your icons will change from this:

To this:

This is especially helpful for users with higher tier access as you don’t want to accidentally click delete or change a form when you didn’t mean to!

 

Hope this simple tip was helpful!

Lawson Portal Helpful User Guide

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Over the years I’ve assisted users debug issues in Lawson portal.  Through this time, I’ve noticed a pattern of users not utilizing fundamental functions of portal.  I’ll share to you a few of them today.

 

New Tab Button:

Instead of using up more of your PC’s memory, Lawson has its own tab system that users often miss. This will let you switch between multiple forms faster and easier as shown below:

 

Search box keywords:

 You might be used to typing in form numbers as shown below, but did you know you can type in keywords as well?

Don’t know a form name to General Ledger? Type in the word General Ledger and click search:

This is great for newer and veteran users taking on newer tasks.

 

Form Help:

Finally, if you want to get more information about the form you’re currently using. Go to the form and click Help >> Form Help.

 

Hope these tips helped you in your journey in mastering Lawson Portal.

How to set ESS access from an external domain and for custom forms

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Step 1: Login to Infor Security Services (ISS)

Step 2: Goto SSO >> Manage Domains and click edit button as shown:

We are simply verifying the names of the displayed XML files:

Step 3: On the LSF server, go to the %LAWDIR%\security\domainauth\EXTERNAL directory to edit that XML

 

Step 4: Add an entry to an existing tree or create a new one:

 

 

That’s all that’s to it.

How to check historical instances of outgoing LBI smart notifications

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Step 1: Login to your LBI server and go to the Tools dashboard

 

Step 2: Select the Smart Notification link

Step 3: In Smart Notification interface, click the Admin button at the top right:

Step 4: Under Content section, select the Delivered Alert History link:

Final Step:

Select the between dates and click the “Get Delivered Alert History” button to see sent notifications. Below you’ll see all sent notifications on June 26th 2019. You can also filter down on the notifications by Alert ID and or Recipient. You can also redeliver these messages if needed.

BS531 – Web Pending Benefit Extract Process

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Running BS531 creates two separate CSV files, one for employee benefits (BNBATCH) and one for dependent benefits (BNDEPBATCH).

Copy these files over to the D:\lsfprod\law\prod10\work\BNBATCH directory on your LSF application server (your directory names may differ slightly).

After creating your BN531 job, go in LID and use the jobdef command to locate it under the user you created it under.

Once located, press F6 and select “C. CSV File Attributes and verify”

Verify the File Name is BNBATCH and type is CSV:

Now run the BN531 job in report mode to verify there are no errors.

Run BN531 in update mode.

 

Once done, go back to the D:\lsfprod\law\prod10\work\BNBATCH directory and rename the BNBATCH to bnbatch_emp. Now rename bndepbatch file to BNBATCH.  Run the BN531 again in report. Once verified there are no errors, run the BN531 again and confirm the data carried over.

Hope this was helpful.