Here's your July Adventures-in-P21 eNews Update.
Your review of projects, tips, industry scoop, and more.
Now reaching over 3,800 (world-class) Prophet 21 ERP system users!
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We hope this message finds you doing well (and hanging in there) during these very challenging and unexpected times. We are all in this together, if our team can help you in any way,
please
reach out...
we are here for & with you!
August 14th - September 11th, 2020
P21WWUG already has 70 sessions confirmed in this year's new virtual environment, with great thanks to their volunteers, members, guest speakers, and sponsors.
The P21WWUG Team is thrilled to announce that their virtual CONNECT 2020 Conference
will be offered to current P21WWUG members
completely FREE
!
There will be over 90 hours of educational offerings all Offered LIVE and recorded for later viewing. This means you have the opportunity to attend ALL educational sessions, either live or on-demand.
Please Register and Join us for these 6 sessions that MindHARBOR will be leading:
- Vendor Managed Inventory with Prophet 21
Tue, Sep 1, 2020 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM EDT
- P21 Business Process Automation, automating your past due invoices
Tue, Sep 1, 2020 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EDT
- Custom P21 Printing Projects
Thu, Sep 3, 2020 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM EDT
- Mass vendor pricelist management, scheduling, and import tools
Thu, Sep 3, 2020 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EDT
- How to Print/manage/archive Hazmat paperwork with P21
Wed, Sep 2, 2020 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM EDT
- P21 Reporting and Data Visualization - Best tools for P21 Data Analysis
Wed, Sep 2, 2020 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EDT
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Recent Custom Projects for P21® System Users
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Our Team has been busy since our last update in June. Here are new project examples that highlight our core focus areas completed since our last newsletter. If you'd like help with challenges in any of these types of projects, please let us know.
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New & Recent Projects Round-up
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Pick Ticket Shipment Grouping
Project
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This project enables the grouping of PickTickets for Orders and BackOrders for a given Ship To Address in the EPICOR P21 ERP System.
Several components will need to be developed, along with some P21 Configurations/Setups, in order to accomplish PickTicket/Shipment consolidation by Customer Ship To Address.
- SSRS will need to be installed and/or configured on the current Azure Server VM (Virtual Machine) that currently hosts the MindHARBOR API.
- An SSRS Report showing Orders with allocations, grouped by Customer and Ship To Address, sorted by oldest to newest order.
- A new PTAUTO shipping route will be added in P21
- The P21 PickTicket Scanner will need to be run in unattended mode, polling every 15 minutes, to generate PickTickets for any Orders set to the PTAUTO shipping route
- A Windows Service will be designed to monitor PickTicket Generation, and when complete, set the Order Shipping Routes back to none, and then print a master PickTicket sheet with barcodes, as well as the individual pick tickets
- An SSRS Report will be designed for the master PickTicket barcode sheet, and to provide PickTicket Printouts associated with the master PickTicket barcode sheet.
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Purchase Order Update Tool Portal (Web Portal)
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- User will login to the custom web portal (Using windows authentication for P21).
- User will see a list of Open Purchase orders.
- User will then be able to filter by any/all columns (see PO Edit.xlsx sheet for a list of columns).
- After the user has filtered down the list of Pos they will be able to modify.
po_hdr_ud.confirmed
p21_view_po_line.required_date
p21_view_po_line.date_due
p21_view_po_line.expected_ship_date
p21_view_po_line.supplier_ship_date
shipped – This is a conditional field ( if ship_date is not null then ‘Y’ )
PO NOTES
- After the user has completed the changes on the portal, the user would click SAVE.
- This will fire a process to update all modified POs.
Split PO Lines
- User would have the option to split a PO Line.
- User would click the checkbox “Split line”, and then enter in the split qty (split qty would be the qty that would remain on the original line).
- User would then update enter the “po_line.expected_ship_Date” for the new line.
- User would click SAVE. This will fire the process to create the new line in the PO and adjust all the required fields.
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Document Link Solution
This project creates a utility that will monitor a network folder and then create/enable PDF document links with P21. You can keep customer purchase orders, order confirmations, and other documents digitally on hand and linked with your p21 system data via PDF.
1.Create a process that will run every 1 minute to poll a folder for new files.
2.Process would then parse the filename for the relevant information. This would be [PONumber]_[Supplier_ID].pdf (or any other file type) .
3.Process will look at the exiting file links with P21 to check if it already exists.
4.If it does not exist then the process would move the file to a TBD location.
5.Then the process will create the new document link accordingly.
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AP Freight Validation Portal
This project created a very successful custom portal where users can upload their carrier rates, fuel surcharge rates, and it will use the weights and other data to calculate the carrier cost. Then after the payment is made, users can record, track, and look back on the payments/trends over time.
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Links to Other Recent Project Samples:
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Recent P21 Business Process Automation Projects:
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- Using Google or Bing Geocode API's to provide address validations and in capturing customer geocodes.
- Hazmat Interface with PDFs & reports.
- Sales Order quantity conversion pop-up.
- P21 assembly copying.
- Assembly date automation.
- Credit card web order project.
- Automate open and close of cash drawer via XML.
- Contact Management Portal (Constant Contact sync & contact management portal).
- ACH Export
- Prevent Pricing Override for any item where a contract or special pricing library is active
- Automating imports such as Journal Entry, Invoice, Orders, etc. using XML automation in P21.
- Automating other tasks such as open/close orders, to trigger down-payments (just a few, of many possible XML automation examples).
- Numerous P21 data import and export projects.
- M&A ERP Data Migration - migrating data from various ERP platforms into P21 and bringing newly aquired companies on to P21 and/or moving data off of P21, into other systems.
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Connecting P21 data with third party software: we've been opening the P21 system up to best-in-class third party software solutions, and helping users get more out of P21 since 2007...If you'd like to connect to a third party software system, we can probably help.
Past projects include: Amex, ACH, Amazon, AutoCrib, VendNation, eBay, Profit2, Blue Ridge Global, Waterloo Information Systems Limited (WISL), SnapVend, epaCUBE, ShipLink Global, Restaraunt365, Rubber Tree Systems, Bezlio,
Salesforce (SFDC), Salesforce Service Lightening, Service Titan,
Banyan Technology, SAP Concour, BuyRexRoth Bosch and others.
eCommerce Integrations
(please visit our new ecommerce integrations page here)
:
our focus is on using our custom API middleware (and/or Epicor APIs) needed to bridge & connect the data streams between systems. We usually work with front-end teams or internal resources that manage the design and marketing. Big Commerce & Magento are (currently) the two most popular ecommerce products that we're getting requests for...we can connect most Ecom platforms (including custom solutions).
Here are a few current integration project examples:
- ROC Commerce & P21.
- Magento & P21 Integration Project.
- OroCommerce & P21 Integration Project.
- WMS (Warehouse Management Systems) Integration Project.
- AutoCrib FTP Integration.
- SAP Concur Accounts Payable (AP) Automation Integration.
- SalesForce Integration Project.
- ASPDotNet Storefront Project.
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Recent rules examples:
- Business rule to suppress popup in Shipping Entry.
- Order entry Business rule for BillTo Fields.
- Business rule to show exclude credit card fee field in Cash Receipts.
- Order Entry credit card fee Business rule.
- Business rule to set Pack List pricing field.
- Prevent non-stock order cancellation Business rule.
- Credit card processing fee Business rule.
- Business rule that captures and validates UOM conversions on order line.
- Business rule that sets stockable flag on new item on the fly creation.
- Business rule that displays custom crystal form as PDF from button in ShipTo based on custom fields.
- Order Entry Credit Card Fee Business Rule.
- Limit Payment Type per Role.
- New Item Sale Business Rule.
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Because so many customers have asked, we've added our (most popular)
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Here are a few recent project examples for our P21 Clients:
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Supply Chain Exception Report
This report takes the current Qty on hand, than uses a running total of all types of open transactions, either negative (like for a sale order), or positive (for a purchase order) to come up with daily and weekly totals, and from that we can report out on any items that go into the negative(s).
The layout the customer decided to go with was a 13 week grid with only the negatives being displayed, but the data could be laid out in several different ways depending on a users need.
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A recent custom Sales Dashboard solution
, using Tibco Spotfire (you can learn more about them below in our partner spotlight),
this board includes:
- Year over Year Sales per month.
- Year of Year Number of orders per month.
- Sales per product group.
- Last 5 Years total sales.
- Open Quotes, Converted quotes, open orders.
- On Time delivery Percent + Avg Lead Time.
- All of the graphics change instantly when you filter it down to one branch, salesrep, team, customer, location, etc.
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Recent Reporting Projects
- Customer pricing reports that use the Price Engine.
- Sales history report that can be run outside of P21.
- Point of sale reports to send to Vendors.
- Inventory usage/forecasting reports.
- Customer service invoice report.
- Blanket purchase order value report.
- Set up new customer service query and blanket purchase order query in excel.
- Created a view for the service quote report show all and/or just the last 5 days.
- Point of Sale report.
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Forms Changes
- Invoice/order acknowledgement forms that can be automatically emailed.
- Order acknowledgement customization with user defined fields.
- Customize Production order pick tickets.
- Alternate items on quote forms.
- Specific default printer setup (for remote packing slip & pick ticket).
We can help with all of these types of custom BI & Forms requirements
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P21 Vendor and MindHARBOR Partner Spotlight
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ShipLink Global has been impressing system users over, and over, and over!!
See ShipLink for Prophet 21 in Action -
To learn more about Prophet 21 integration and configuration capabilities, contact ShipLink Global
at 657.222.0500
or visit:
ShipLink Global Online
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Why are 82% of U.S. Businesses Migrating to Digital AR Workflows?
Especially now in this “new normal” pandemic economy, businesses must manage costs and revenue with precision. That’s why MindHARBOR is partnering with fintech leader
Unified Payments Group
whose cloud-based, modular payment acceptance solutions integrate seamlessly with P21 to streamline and automate users’ AR processes and workflows.
Do you know how much paper checks, PDF invoices and credit card acceptance cost your business?
What do customers say about Unified Payments Group?
“The National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors endorses Unified as our exclusive partner for AR and payment acceptance technology to our industry because their solutions are best-in-class. Unified’s integrity and the unparalleled support they provide are why NAW is more than just a partner, we are also a customer,
”
said NAW’s Chief Affinity Officer, Anthony Simone.
Digital transformation doesn’t have to be disruptive.
Unified’s suite of automated AR and cash app solutions, including dynamic e-invoicing, no-cost credit card acceptance, pay-by-text, online and mobile/curbside payments, and more are supported by subject matter experts from the payment and treasury management industries.
Receive your complimentary AR Savings Consultation
to understand what Least-Cost Payment Routing can do for your business.
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Have you seen?
AI-powered, search-driven experience with built-in data wrangling and advanced analytics
TIBCO Spotfire® is the most complete analytics solution in the market, and makes it fast and easy for everyone to visualize new discoveries in data. Using search and recommendations powered by a built-in artificial intelligence engine, anyone can explore data to bring insights.
Whether creating simple dashboard metrics, predictive applications, or dynamic real-time analytics applications, Spotfire® delivers numerous capabilities at-scale, including visual analytics, data wrangling, predictive analytics, location analytics, and streaming analytics.
Our Data Ninja (Thomas Bodary)
has been doing some neat projects for some of our P21 clients with this platform.
ask Thomas
about what it can do for you (and your P21 Data)!
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Epicor®, Prophet 21®, KKR, and Your Industry News Round-up
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Investing now in ecommerce will pay off, study says
- Depending on how severely the pandemic is hitting them, most companies should take a hard look at where to cut their technology budgets, Forrester Research says in a new report. But one area where many companies should maintain or even increase technology spending is in ecommerce, the report says.
How Valin Corporation Managed an Abrupt Remote Work Transition -
Elizabeth Galentine / MDM - The industrial distributor’s Director of Organizational Development Cory Calderon sees a post-pandemic future with a hybrid remote/onsite work environment, contingent upon scalable software applications and technology upgrades.
Outside Sales Pricing Support During an Economic Slowdown -
John Gunderson / MDM - In many cases, distributor sales people report that they can’t remember the last time they have reviewed their pricing with their leaders. MDM’s John Gunderson shares five steps pricing teams take to maintain margins.
Building disruption-proof digital supply chains
- Many of the supply chain processes and technology solutions launched in response to the coronavirus pandemic—including AI, blockchain and IoT systems—should become permanent to keep business strong over the long term and through the next market disruption, Wright says.
In a recent MDM webcast, “Navigating the New Now as a Distributor,” Epicor’s Emma Vas and Mark Jensen discussed key trends that are emerging to help distribution companies thrive. Distributors are finding ways to boost revenue, negotiate supplier relationships, optimize inventory and streamline social distancing..
B2B ecommerce in 2020 will grow new and different ways
- Digital overtook manual in B2B sales last year, as sales processed through B2B ecommerce sites, log-in p
ortals and e‑marketplaces grew overall by 18% in 2019 over 2018. At the same time, total sales for manufacturers and distributors increased 1.5%, according to the 2020 B2B Ecommerce Market Report released this week..
Safety Sales Surge for Fastenal, Core Business Also Shows Promise -
By: Eric Smith / MDM - The safety category again stole the show for Fastenal Co. during its May sales report with a 136.3% increase, while the company’s fastener business has likely hit the bottom during the COVID-19 disruption and could be on the upswing..
EDI growth slows as ecommerce grows
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Still a main channel for large companies, EDI sales grew 9.4% year over year in 2019, but combined sales of EDI, ecommerce sites and e‑procurement grew faster, according to the 2020 B2B Ecommerce Market Report.
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Resources On Linkedin:
Join the New P21 User Group, Group on Facebook (now @134 members & growing):
If you aren't a member yet,
you ARE missing out!
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We get a lot of emails from our friends in the P21 user community each month that are looking for new roles, opportunities, and/or seeking relocation. We also get contacts from companies that are looking for fulltime talent.
We'll always do our best to connect talent...if you are looking for a new role, or if you have an opening, please send Mike the details…when we see a fit, we’ll gladly (and confidentially) make the connections (without any fees or strings for either party). We've helped make MANY of these win/win connections over the past 14 years, and we've already connected
3
new hires in 2020 (with a few more pending)!
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Got Content, Feedback, Questions?
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If you have articles, press releases, adventures, questions, and/or tips to share with other Prophet 21® system users in the next edition of Adventures in P21, please send them our way! e.
blaze@mindharbor.com
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MindHARBOR.com QuickLinks & More Information:
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Thank you for reading, and for the opportunity to be your Partner-in-P21!
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Please forward & share this newsletter with a fellow P21 user today!
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MindHARBOR is not part of /or associated with any of the brands and logos listed on this email or our website including: Epicor Software Corp., Epicor Prophet 21®, Epicor 8 Vantage®, Epicor 10®, NetSuite®, Activant®, Dynachange®, ICE®, Microsoft®, AutoCrib®, Cribmaster®, SnapVend®, Power Bi®, Intel®, Microsoft®, and/or any other registered brands and service marks. MindHARBOR "is" an independent systems provider specializing in high end, high quality custom C# .NET programming, custom business application development, SQL server reporting services (SSRS), and eBusiness Consulting services on time, on spec and on budget...
since we opened our business on January 1, 2000.
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