Accounting

Why is the AR due date the same as the invoice date on an invoice?

The due days are determined from the TERMS master file. Make sure to specify the correct due at days, once populated all future invoices will get the proper ar due date.

Where do I put the vendors Credit Memo number (i.e. debit memo in Cetec) so that when it prints on a check stub, the vendor knows which credit we are using on an A/P payment

If you put in the vendor’s CM # in the ‘Description’ field on the Debit Memo screen that’s linked to a Vendor Return, that will populate on the remittance of a Check when you apply a debit memo to a vendor A/P payment.

What is the suggested method to reconcile receipts that havent been vouchered yet with what shows on our ledger? Is there a good report that shows what has been received on a given date that hasnt had a voucher created on it?

Yes, You would have to check the receipt list. You can set the appropriate filters by going to PURCHASING » RECEIPTS » RECEIPTS LISTS

What is the proper way to void a check in the system?

To cancel a check pull up the check and click the cancel check button. This will cancel the check, although it can still be found in the check register with status = ‘cancelled’.

If the check was in a previous closed financial period, you could enter a manual ledger entry to reverse the initial check (if necessary depending on the the type of check: payment, credit memo refund, etc) and then cut a new check - all in current period.

What is the difference between a credit memo and an unapplied cash?

The difference is that a credit memo will negatively affect accounting, while an unapplied cash will not. Credit memos are usually created as a result of an RMA process and requires giving back credit to a customer. Unapplied cash is different in that it is used for allocating a customer’s credit to different payments.

What is the "Global Voucher auto-approve" configuration setting for?

This is a configuration setting for the system that may be helpful for smaller businesses. In larger businesses, this is turned OFF by default, because larger businesses typically employ an AP clerk who may be entering bills all day long, and they bills they enter need approval from Accounting management before being eligible for payment to vendor. Having this config option (global voucher auto approve) turned on will allow every voucher entered to automatically be eligible for payment (i.e. appear on the A/P payment screen), where you can simply put check marks next to the bills you want to pay and then pay them.

What is a Subsidiary location in Cetec ERP? What is it used for?

Subsidiary location is a filter that exists on both the customer and vendor profiles that allows you to designate a customer as a subsidiary, and relate it to a specific warehouse location. These customer or vendor accounts represent subsidiary, or sister, companies that operate under the same instance within Cetec ERP.

The setting should be used for intercompany transactions that require eliminations in ledger postings, and the ability to exclude in operational reports such as revenue (invoice list and invoice values dashboard widget), accounts receivable & payable, bookings, and so on.

It allows more complex business entities to run multiple companies on the same Cetec ERP instance, and correctly report on intercompany transactions between the different subsidiaries (which are also modeled as a warehouse location).

What if I want to remove A/R Payments attached to a deposit in Cetec ERP?

If you no longer want to apply all of the A/R Payments to a Deposit object in Cetec ERP, you can fix this in a couple of quick steps. First, simply navigate to the A/R Payment(s) that you do want on the deposit. Next, reopen the payment. Once you have done this, all you will need to do is move the payment to another (or new) deposit.

What happens when I change the tax rate for a tax group?

The correct way to handle your situation is to update the tax rate for the same tax group. Doing this will not go back and update the tax rate of past invoices. We maintain the original tax rate of invoices for tax reporting purposes.

Updating the tax rate for a tax group will also automatically update the tax rate of any customer who is set to use this said tax group. This means that any new quote/order/invoice generated for this customer will use the new, updated tax rate.

Cetec ERP handles tax rates on past invoices and the customer level tax rates straightforwardly, but things get more complicated for open orders. Changing the tax rate while having open orders will not automatically update the tax rates for these open orders. But when you go in and invoice, these orders will invoice using the most up-to-date tax rate for the tax group being used.

What does the undo charge button do that appears after processing a credit card payment?

It refunds the credit card charge.

What do I do if my Voucher/PO/Receipt don't match?

There are three different methods you may use to process and adjust cost based on the price discrepancy we will explore here. (Option 3 below is useful especially in cases when the inventory received at the incorrect value has already been consumed)

  1. You could cancel the receipt, edit and fix the PO line to be the correct cost, and receive it again. At vouchering, when you tie the PO Line to the voucher, it should match.

  2. You could make an inventory adjustment to the inventory lot/receipt to adjust its value to be the correct value. Note, make sure you map the inventory adjustment to an inventory adjustment reason code that will post to an Accrued Liabilities or Accrued Purchases account.

  3. This option is useful especially if your inventory has already been consumed. With this option, you can leave the inventory value alone and not perform any inventory adjustment at all. Instead, you can tie the PO Line to a voucher, and leave the split $ amount but then add an additional new split to the voucher and enter the $ difference on that split, so that the total of the voucher splits matches the $ amount the vendor is invoicing you for. Then, on that new additional split, map the G/L account to either an Expense account or a material Cost Of Goods Sold account (your preference). This will write that delta $ amount to that expense or COGS account on your P&L immediately.

To learn more about this process see this blog here.

What determines a customers account to be placed on hold?

How the system works in regards to credit holds is as follows:

  1. It will always pass if it is intercompany
  2. It will always fail if the prevent order entry flag is set
  3. Otherwise credit limits are to be evaluated: a.If open ar amount > credit limit, account is placed on hold b.If credit limit = 0 then effectively there is no credit limit (this test will always pass) c.There is a config option ‘include_backlog_in_credit_hold’ which will include the backlog/open orders in the customers ar amount

  4. If any invoices for the customer are older than credit hold at days (defined in data mtnc for 9TERMS) based on today - invoice date then customer is on hold as well.
What are the manual processes or entries you require in Cetec ERP accounting?

You can always make any manual ledger entry you need to when you need to. Currently, the only manual process we enforce is payroll. We encourage outsourcing of payroll process due to wide-ranging tax ramifications involved.

What are the automatic accounting processes in Cetec ERP?

To name a few: invoices, receiving, inventory adjustment, credit memo, a/p payment, checks, a/r payment, deposits, debit memo.

What are cost centers? How does Cetec ERP track cost centers?

Cost Centers allow for organizations to track, organize, and analyze where their various costs and expenses are coming from. Cost Centers provide flexibility. Organizations can create and assign Cost Centers per company, vendor, department, team, resource, job process, or project.

Cetec ERP currently utilizes Cost Centers on the PQuote, Purchase Order, Voucher, Ledger, and financial reports (Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow Statement). This means that the Cost Center you assign at the PQuote stage will carry forward to the Purchase Order, Voucher, post to the Ledger, and be filterable with your financial statements.

You can also specify Cost Centers at the PQuote Line level which would similarly carry forward through the purchasing process. Specifying a Cost Center at the Line level simply overwrites the default Cost Center assigned at PQuote header.

Cost Centers are generally used for cost assignment and Profit Centers are generally used for revenue assignment.

What about credit card purchases? How can I use Cetec ERP to enter and keep track of them? Many purchases are for different things and need to be reconciled, making it difficult to keep all current.

You can enter credit card charges at whatever frequency you desire. We let you associate payment types to the payment, so you can track the authorization numbers, etc. You can also optionally enter credit card payments via the check payment feature, which will let you track and reconcile credit card charges via the check register, which is nice. As for the difficulty of keeping things current, that will always be the case; our recommendation is for discipline with some kind of expensing process by which the charges, or the receipts for the charges, are regularly entered.

The MICR line on our Cetec ERP - generated checks does not appear properly. Can this be fixed?

Yes, the position of the MICR line is set by a variable. If this is not appearing properly, it is likely that the variable was not set. To set this information, navigate to ADMIN»Config Settings» check_micr_level and add the appropriate value. If you are unsure of this value, start at 20 and test how this looks in PDF by selecting Get PDF. From there, you can adjust the value up or down accordingly, until the MICR aligns appropriately.

Regarding A/R: when we ship product, will the packing slip get automatically saved to the work order?

Yes, and it can be re-generated at any time.

Regarding A/R: when we ship product, will it be invoiced right away?

Yes; the invoicing happens after tracking and freight is entered, one at a time throughout the day as you ship product.

Regarding A/R: does a copy of the invoice stay with the order?

Yes; the order and the invoice are linked, so you can always easily and quickly get to either one from the other.

Regarding A/P: does the packing slip and invoice need to be scanned into the order? Do you need to keep the physical copies for any reason?

Not required, but you absolutely can do this. They can be scanned and attached to the receipt/PO (as can other documents, e.g. Certificate of Conformance (C.O.C., etc.) No need to keep the physical copies if the documents are stored inside the system.

Regarding A/P: does Cetec ERP let me see a week by week payable listing of each account?

Yes, there is an A/P summary broken into buckets; 1-30, 31-60, etc.

My net income on my balance sheet does not match the net income from my P&L (profit and loss). Why?

The net income represented on the balance sheet is the net income calculated from the P&L using the from date of your earliest transaction in the Cetec ledger to an end date. If the balance sheet is ran for the same end date, these figures should match.

Is there an option in the general ledger to have the income statement clear into the balance sheet at January 1 each year? Essentially a year end closing procedure?

Yes, the Retained Earnings section allows you to easily clear out any year end outstanding balances. You can reach this section via ACCOUNTING » Retained Earnings, or through the notifications on the associated financial reports (Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, Statement of Cash Flow).

Is there a way to put an order on accounting hold (Meaning it can be pushed through production but that Cetec ERP will prevent it from shipping)?

You can place your customer on credit hold by navigating to your customer and clicking the edit button. On the edit screen go to the credit code and set it to a restricted account. That will put the customer on hold and place all orders under that customer on hold and prevent them from being shipped.

If you need to ship an order for that customer you can go to the edit screen of an order and click the ignore credit hold check box. This will allow you to ship that order.

Is there a panel to accept a payroll file, or do each of these fields need to be created in the GL every week?

Yes, this can be done by putting the data into a spreadsheet, and importing via ACCOUNTING » Chart/Ledger » Import.

Is it possible to go back and edit previous months entries without throwing the whole balance off? How does it affect the previous months numbers?

Yes, you can edit previous months (or days or weeks or years) entries; however, the financial reports will adjust per the retroactive entries. Conversely, you can also lock down periods by setting a G/L lock date to prevent this from happening.

In our current process, when invoicing is commenced a bunch of daily reports get printed. Will this continue? Will I be able to find this information?

No daily reports will print, unless you manually print them. There’s no real need to do so however, as all ledger and invoice data is able to be pulled up at anytime across any date range.

I accidentally invoiced something I shouldn't have. What should I do?

You would need to consider the following situations and address these issues. 1) adjust material cost on the invoice to be what they think it should be. 2) unpick what is still picked that shouldn’t be 3) reduce the qty on the material that wasn’t relieved correctly. 4) zero out the ledger entries for their material reductions

How would I send a refund check to a customer?

To send a refund check- Go to the Accounting Tab > A/R > Credit Memos in order to create a credit memo and write a check from the credit memo.

How would I receive a refund check from a supplier?

If you have received a rebate or a refund from a Vendor (or non-vendor), you can record receipt of the payment as follows:

  • In the case of a Rebate, first, go to Take Cash by navigating to Accounting and A/R, then choose Take Cash in the drop-down menu.

  • Populate the appropriate fields in the Take Cash screen, Credit your Materials or Expense GL account and Debit either Undeposited Funds or your Bank account. Click Update and then click Receive to complete.

In the case of finding you have overpaid a vendor, which created a Vendor Unapplied Cash item for that vendor that will not be applied elsewhere, and you requested & received a refundthen, after creating a Take Cash to receive the refund from the Vendor, you will need to complete two more steps to clear the Vendor Unapplied Cash from the Vendor AP balance, as follows:

  • First, navigate to Accounting and A/P, then choose Add Voucher in the drop-down menu. Create a dummy Voucher to the Vendor for the amount of the refund. On the Voucher you will have a Debit to your Materials or Expense GL account in the ledger split for the amount of the refund.

  • Then Click Submit.

  • Second, scroll down to the bottom of the new Voucher and click the Make Payment link to create a new AP Payment.

  • In the new AP Payment screen you will scroll down to click the Include box for the Vendor Unapplied Cash item that is outstanding, manually entering the amount in the value field.

  • Also check the include box for the Voucher you just created which will autofill the amount upon checking the Include box. The Unapplied Cash and the Voucher will offset each other.

  • Then scroll up to the upper part of the screen to view the AP and Cash amountsAP amount will reflect the refund amount, but cash amount will be zero as the Vendor Unapplied Cash and the Voucher cancel out.

  • Now, click the Mark As Paid button to complete the process.

How has Cetec ERP adapted to Canadian business most notably a value added refundable tax ie HST?

-First, I would recommend reading through our “How To Manage Tax” document on our website. That will provide you with an understanding of the foundations of our tax system, which is rather robust and flexible.

-With respect to HST, the system can model HST taxes and input tax credits. In Canada, my understanding is that there are value added taxes (like HST) where there is an offset between taxes collected and taxes paid, so a remittance voucher can be automatically generated.

On the Customer side:

  • Cetec ERP fully supports charging (and thus collecting) taxes. - Cetec ERP supports multiple tax rates (and taxing authorities).
  • Cetec ERP also supports tax reporting of money owed to tax authorities. - Upon invoice creation in Cetec ERP, taxable invoices hit the mapped tax ledger accounts.

On the vendor side:

  • Cetec ERP supports tax estimates on vendor POs
  • Cetec ERP registers the tax due to the Vendor once a Voucher is created in A/P
  • Note: the voucher isn’t created “automatically”, which should be OK, as a simple comparison between your tax accounts in your ledger would give you the information needed.
How does the payment reference value on ledger entries get determined?

The payment reference value for ledger entries derive from:

  1. If AP Payment payment reference value is given, then this will become the ledger entries’ payment reference value.
  2. If no AP Payment reference value is given, and if a system check has been used to pay, then the check number will become the payment reference on the ledger entry.
  3. If no AP Payment reference value is given, and if anything other than a system check has been used to pay, then the payment reference field on the ledger entry will stay blank.
How does the Finance Charges module work? How do you set up finance charges for late payments? How do you manage finance charges in Cetec ERP?

Setting up Finance Charges 1) Navigate to the 9TERMS Data Maintenance Table (Admin>Maintenance>Data Maintenance>9TERMS) 2) Create a Term for a penalty fee with the 3) Use the + / - Columns to show the ‘Penalty Due at Days’ and the ‘Penalty Percent’ columns 4) Enter the value for the days at which a Penalty fee will be added to an invoice and the Percentage to be charged. 5) Assign the Terms in the Customer record to default onto Quotes/Orders/Invoices

Managing Finance Charges 1) Choose Customer from the dropdown (customers will only show if they have an invoice w/ Finance Charge) and click ‘Submit’ 2) Click ‘Show Create’ and select the Invoice(s) you would like to create a billing for (bill-only invoice to charge the customer); enter the amount to be added to the bill 3) Enter a non-inventory prcpart - you may want a prcpart created specifically for finance charges (ie SERFinanceCharge, etc); click ‘Create’ 4) You will have created a bill-only invoice to be sent to the customer for the Finance Charge; these are listed across the top of the Finance Charge report.

How does payables work with editing past months? Are there safety features? Can you close the month in terms of payables?

First, upon entry of a vendor invoice, the system will log system-generated DateTime entry for reference so you have something to rely on in case of data entry error. Second, yes, you can employ a G/L lock date to close out a period to prevent writing transactions to previous periods in case the invoice date on a voucher is entered incorrectly and proceeds to payment.

How does entering invoices work? Will the detail of the invoice and the GL account be separate entries?

Every time you invoice in Cetec ERP, any number of G/L entries/splits will be written. What accounts the transactions write to depend on the transaction mapping you have set up ahead of time. There are default mappings, e.g. what COGS / revenue accounts are written to by default every time you invoice; there are mappings per PRC you can set to override those; and finally there are mappings per Prcpart you can set to override the PRC mappings.

How do you move an existing credit memo from customer A to customer B?

Please close the first credit memo for customer A by writing a check; you will never issue or print this check. Then you want to take a payment from customer B with the check and create a credit memo from the payment.

How do you manage tax in Cetec ERP?

Please refer to this document - How To Manage Tax

How do you make a payment to a vendor using a credit card?

You will want to create a Payment Type in ADMIN » Maintenance » Data Maintenance » PaymentType. Then you will have to set the target account on the payment while using this payment type.

How do you delete/reverse credit memos from a closed period?

There are two ways to go about this: Option 1: You can go into the ledger entry of the credit memo and create a reversing entry dated today. Go to Accounting -> A/R -> Credit Memos and click on the Credit Memo number. On the Credit Memo screen, click Ledger, then click on the Entry # number. In the Edit Ledger Entry screen, click the Reverse Entry? button. The Reverse On date will be defaulted to the ledger Transaction Date. Change that date to today’s date or any date subsequent to the G/L Lock Date, Click the red Reverse Entry? button.

Option 2: You can create a Bill Only invoice to the customer to offset the credit memo with a Note on the line item(s), such as “This offsets Credit Memo ####.” Once you update this Bill Only Invoice, go to the customer’s account and click on Take Payment On the A/R Payment screen, input the Payment Value of zero (0). Apply the Credit Memo amount Apply the Invoice amount (from the invoice you just created) Click Update Click Payment Complete.

How do I write off bad debt?

1) Create an AR Payment for the customer. The Payment Value should be $0.00. 2) Check the box(es) of the invoice(s) to include, then input the total amount in the Write Off/Charges box.
3) The Map Write Off To account is probably defaulted to Discounts. You should click in that box and change the account to your Bad Debt expense account. 4) Update, then Payment Complete.

How do I write a check in Cetec ERP? I need to just write the check, outside of normal A/P process, potentially for something that's already been paid. How do I do so?

Each check you create will have a single account that the money comes out of. This is the “credit” side of the transaction, and usually is some kind of cash or checking account. This is the account you select on the A/P check register screen right before you click the Create button.

Then, once on the check screen, click the “Add Break” button to identify what the check is for, i.e. the breakdown of what account or accounts the check is being written for. This will be the debit sides of your check transaction.

The debits you define will always sum up to the credit total.

How do I voucher (enter bills for) partial quantities of PO lines? What about when a vendor invoices me for a partial quantity of a PO Line Receipt?

Split the PO line. I.e. reduce the qty on one line, add a new line and put the split qty there. Then voucher the split PO line with partial quantity.

For a vendor invoice for only a partial quantity of a PO Line Receipt… that necessarily breaks the three-way match qualification. Currently in Cetec ERP, there is no way to break up the quantity of the receipt to tie to specific separate vendor invoices (vouchers). Instead, you can tie the entirety of the PO Line receipt to the voucher for partial payment (and bypass three-way match requirements). Then, when the subsequent voucher comes in for the remainder of the amount owed for that PO Line Receipt, you won’t be able to tie the receipt to the voucher (you will again bypass the three-way match requirements to put the voucher through as approved for payment).

How do I rerun a cancelled check for a vendor?

To rerun a check to a vendor after a check cancellation, simply navigate to the AP Payment that is linked to your cancelled check. Once you’ve done this, all you need to do is make the necessary changes and click “Mark as Paid” again to complete the transaction.

How do I import a trial balance entry?

Importing a trial balance entry is a very similar process to importing ledger entries under the Accounting tab (this is as opposed to using the import tool found under the Admin tab).

First, you will need a spreadsheet with the following column headers:

  • External ID/Key *
  • Currency
  • Name *
  • Description *
  • Credit Value
  • Credit Account Number
  • Credit Notes
  • Debit Value
  • Debit Account Number
  • Debit Notes
  • Date *
  • Cost Center
  • Location.

Once you have the spreadsheet built out, you can start filling in the data required.

  • Notably, because the trial balance is just one big ledger entry, several of these columns should be the same value across the board. These columns are as follows: External ID/Key, Name, Description, & Date.

Now that you have your spreadsheet to import, you can go to Accounting -> Chart/Ledger -> Import. From here you will follow standard import procedures.

How do I find a Vendor's 1099 amounts for a year?

To get the dollar amount paid out go to purchasing>vendors>vendor list. From here make sure the 1099? box is marked as yes and set the dates to the desired time frame, finally mark the activity box as yes and submit. You can export this information into a spreadsheet to aggregate the totals.

How do I enter bills?

Cetec ERP refers to all bills as “vouchers.” This is the first chance we have to enter a vendor invoice into the system. This is done under Accounting -> A/P -> Voucher List

Once you create a new voucher, you need to specify the vendor, invoice data (this drives the vendor A/P summary aging) and invoice number.

Next, you need to associate any related POs to this voucher/vendor invoice. To specify a PO in the “Search PO” area: In the section titled “PO Line/Receipts Attached to Voucher,” choose the relevant PO that all receipts will populate to. This allows you to easily choose multiple receipts for the PO to add to the voucher.

Finally, in the “Breakdown” section, you can enter the total invoice amount and break out how you want to account for these charges. The default Vendor G/L account will help keep this more consistent (assuming this is set for the relevant Vendor).

Also, keep in mind that the voucher has to be approved before it is eligible for payment. The system will attempt to auto-approve the voucher if there is a three-way match between PO, receipt and voucher value.

How do I enter a credit invoice from a vendor instead of issuing a debit memo?

Occasionally you may receive a credit invoice from a vendor who will not accept your company issued Debit Memo.

Entering a vendor credit invoice is very similar to entering a vendor invoice (Voucher) and is done in ACCOUNTING » AP » Voucher List

Once you create a new voucher, you need to specify the vendor, credit invoice data (this drives the vendor A/P summary aging) and credit invoice number. In the Breakdown section, you can enter the total credit invoice amount as negative dollars (ie, -5.75) and break out how you want to account for this credit. The default Vendor G/L account will help keep this more consistent (assuming this is set for the relevant Vendor). This credit invoice is now considered a voucher with a negative dollar value. Also, keep in mind that the voucher has to be approved before it is eligible for payment.

How do I control what email address is used when sending out AR emails?

Cetec ERP has a config variable named ar_email_from which a user with the admin role can access by going to ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings. Please put in an email address to be used in that field and click Set.

How do I change the accounting #/routing # that gets printed out on Cetec ERP-generated checks?

In order to change the account #/routing # please navigate to ACCOUNTING » Chart/Ledger » Account List and click into the account used for depositing checks.

Once you are there, you will see an option to change both the routing number and the account number. For non-cash accounts these fields won’t be utilized.

How do I cancel a bad/bounced check?

In dealing with a bad/bounced check:

  1. Find the AR Payment and Deposit ID’s.
  2. Make note of the Deposit Date, then Re-Open the Deposit
  3. Reopen the AR Payment. Zero out the Payment Value and the Unapplied cash/Credit memo/invoice items. Click Submit, then Payment Complete. (after this any unapplied cash item will be cancelled)
  4. Go back to the Deposit page and click Deposit.
  5. Change the Deposited On Date back to the original date and click Update.

Additionally, you can go to the invoice(s) and click on Notes, then add notes about the check being NSF and whatever other info you like. The Note Type is A/R Note. Do not check Sticky Notes box.

How do I add COD to the terms field on orders??

To add a new term, please navigate to ADMIN » Maintenance » Data Maintenance » 9Terms. From there you can add a new term.

How can I use Cetec ERP with external Accounting software like Quickbooks or Xero (without using an API)?

Note! Cetec ERP does include a plug-and-play option for integration to Quickbooks Online.

However, if you are not wanting to utilize an integration, there are two options or strategies you may use: Option #1 - Quickbooks/XERO for A/R + A/P + Financials

  • “Invoicing” a Cetec ERP Sales Order means product is shipped, and this creates an Invoice in the Cetec ERP invoice history. On a regular basis, these invoices must be re-keyed in manually to quickbooks/xero as an A/R invoice. All customer invoicing, terms, A/R aging, collection of payment, deposits, etc. remain to be performed in Quickbooks/Xero. **Note: this means that A/R aging against customer accounts within Cetec will age forever into the future, unless manually cleared with a fake A/R payment in Cetec. If you’d like, feel free to hide accounting menus in Cetec to avoid seeing this in A/R.

  • “Receiving” a PO line in Cetec ERP is how you close out a PO line; this registers to a Receipts List which you can run by “receipts uninvoiced”. On a regular basis, these PO Lines must be re-keyed in manually to quickbooks/Xero as either POs or Vendor Invoices. All vendor invoicing, terms, A/P aging, disbursement of payment, etc. remain to be performed in Quickbooks/Xero. **Note: this means that PO Line/Receipt accruals aging against vendor records will age forever into the future, unless manually cleared with a fake A/P invoice and subsequent fake A/P payment. If you’d like, feel free to hide accounting menus in Cetec to avoid seeing this in A/P.

  • all A/R and A/P reports continue to run in Quickbooks/Xero, not Cetec.

  • all financials continue to operate per normal processing in Quickbooks/Xero

Option #2 - Quickbooks/XERO for Financials Only

  • All A/R and A/P activities (invoices and payments, AR reports, AP reports) to be processed in Cetec ERP; A/R customer terms and A/P vendor terms are authoritatively defined in Cetec ERP.

  • All A/R and A/P reports to be run as authoritative in Cetec ERP

  • Cetec ERP logs GL activity (credit split amount and debit split amount against every account for every transaction). You can export this granular G/L activity on a regular recurring date range, and then import this ledger activity to populate the Ledger and subsequent financial reports in Quickbooks. This may be done through API or via Excel Macro.

  • Quickbooks/Xero is thus used for high level financial reports (P&L, Balance Sheet, and G/L) and expenses and Bank Feeds/Reconcile.

How can I add my bank name and address to our system generated checks?

Navigate to ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings and search for a variable named check_bank_info.

There, you can enter both bank name and address.

How are the Pay at days on the voucher determined?

By default, the system uses vendor terms, but this can be overwritten with Pay at days. Pay at days are different from terms, if you choose to manage them.

How are the Cash In and Cash Out cash projection metrics derived that display on the home page dashboard reporting widgets?

Cash In is defined as Invoice values, grouped weekly according to their AR Due Dates, and Cash Out is PO values, grouped weekly according to their Est Pay Dates.

Note that the Invoice AR Due Date is the Invoice Date + terms, and the PO Est Pay Date is the PO Due Date + terms.

Additionally, there is a target line that can be set on the Cash Out graph via a config setting (“cash_out_goal”) to help guide Purchasing people towards a target. You should be able to back into those numbers from the Invoice List and the PO List respectively.

Does the system keep a check book balance? How does this tie into our bank accounts?

Yes, you can do this via the Cetec ERP check register. The check register shows you all your checks and allows you to reconcile them based on your bank statements. (you’re also able to batch print those checks and remittances and batch download them into CSV for positive pay).

You can use the check register to ensure that all the check balances are tying out between the appropriate ledger accounts and bank statements. Note that we also have a Deposits module by which you can do the same thing on the A/R side.

Regarding tying to bank accounts, there’s definitely no explicit default linking or API from Cetec ERP to the banks. In other words, you still have to put all the data into the system; you’re not downloading a statement or anything like that.

Does Cetec ERP support both cash and accrual basis for financial reports?

By default, Cetec ERP financial reporting is driven on an accrual basis only. A tool for automatic toggling between cash/accrual financial reports is currently on the roadmap for development in the Cetec ERP platform.

However, when filing taxes, typically your CPA will be able to “back in” to the cash based reporting based on the financial reports exported from the Cetec ERP system. That is, financial statements may be exported to excel for accrual-to-cash conversion adjustments to AR, AP and relevant revenue, COGS, and expense account balances.

You may also choose to make a manual ledger entry for that adjustment and reversal, e.g. at end of month, and reverse on first of following month if you dont want to export to excel to adjust; just clone the GL entry or make recurring, adjusting values as needed for the conversion.

To calculate cash basis, a rough model is as follows.

Revenue: Beginning A/R plus Accrual Revenue minus Ending A/R = Cash Based Revenue

Expenses: Beginning A/P plus Accrual Expenses minus Ending A/P = Cash Based Expenses

Net Income: Cash Based Revenue minus Cash Based Expenses = Cash Based Net Income

Does Cetec ERP require any manual accounting process?

Cetec ERP automatically processes invoices, receiving, inventory adjustment, credit memo, a/p payment, checks, a/r payment, deposits, and debit memo and eliminates the need for manual ledger entry.

The only exception to this rule is payroll. We encourage outsourcing of payroll process due to wide-ranging tax ramifications involved.

Does CETEC have the capability to post to a GL account every time something is picked from inventory? It appears that when you pick something it allocates it, but doesn't actually remove it from inventory until you complete the work order.

Inventory stays in the Inventory account through the Work process until the order it is picked to is invoiced. That will remove the components from inventory and also impact the ledger. If you want to track what is in WIP, you can do so by manually posting against your asset accounts and a WIP account. You can get the value of what WIP is on the floor by going to PRODUCTION -> Orders -> WIP Aging Report.

Do you have a list of recommended Weekly/Monthly accounting review/audit procedures for Cetec ERP?

While Cetec ERP does not require any monthly processes, these are recommendations based on best business practices. The majority of these are likely already part of normal business operations, and there are additional things that are not documented, but the following comprise general boundaries and recommendations for periodic audit and review.

Annual

  • Post to retained earnings

Monthly/Weekly

  • G/L Inventory reconcile to Inventory Detail
  • G/L A/R reconcile to A/R Summary
  • G/L A/P reconcile to A/P Summary

Cost Accounting

  • Invoice Cost review estimates vs actuals

MRP

  • Past Due Vendor POs
  • Past Due sales and workorders
Can you set a reason code to a specific GL account?

Yes! If you navigate to Admin> Maintenance> Data Maintenance and search for InvShortageReason you can set a GL account ID. This specifically needs to be the Account ID not the Account number. If you go to Accounting> Chart/Ledger> Account List you can view the column called Account ID and put that into the InvShortageReason.

Can the ERP system handle Foreign Currency?

Currency control in Cetec ERP is handled by going to Admin Data Maintenance Currency. You can put all of the currencies you will need in there. To set the default currency, please contact support@cetecerp.com and we will set your default to your preference (this is handled directly by Cetec ERP to reduce the risk of a user accidentally changing the default currency value). This home currency will be the currency that drives your general ledger and primary financials, and will be the default currency for your transactions. Then, you can set up separate currencies in your Currency maintenance table in the Admin section. Any active currencies you set up will appear in select boxes for you to choose from when performing transactions. If you need exchange rates, set them up in your Currency Rates table in the Admin section for each active currency you have. Cetec ERP will runs a daily peg to update those exchange rates per the global exchange rate database.

Can I update a parts default COGS accounting?

Yes!

If you would like to override the default setting, you can do this per PRC basis by navigating to PARTS » PRC List » [search for a PRC].

You can also set a part level override to this by navigating to PARTS » Views/Lists » List » [search for a part] » click on Edit to the left side navigation menu.

Can I set the Cetec ERP - generated check numbers?

Yes. Go to ACCOUNTING » A/P » Check Register and select Create Check. In the Check number field, enter the number at which you would like your checks to begin. You should not need to update this field again, as the system will use this input as the base number to generate the next check number as the input value +1.

Can I have ledgers and sub-ledgers in Cetec ERP?

Yes, Cetec ERP will let you define sub-ledgers, sub-ledgers of sub-ledgers, to the nth sub-ledger.

Can I change the fiscal year for accounting related reports? e.g. I want the report to start on 07/01/xx rather than 01/01/xx.

Navigate to ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings. There are two variables here that control the fiscal year start date. For ytd_start_day, please put a date; for ytd_start_month, put in a month. After giving values to both variables, relevant financial reports will default to your start date.

Are the financial statements printer friendly? For month end and year end? Is it historical? Can I look up previous months/years?

Financial statements are all exportable to Excel - this is widely preferred since generally further changes are made based on who the audience is. Yes, you can absolutely see all historical transactions (that occur through ERP, not Legacy), and yes, you can look up all previous month/years.

Are retained earnings generated automatically in Cetec ERP?

Yes, retained earnings are generated at will. The Retained Earnings section allows you to easily clear out any year end outstanding balances. You can reach this section via ACCOUNTING » Retained Earnings, or through the notifications on the associated financial reports (Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, Statement of Cash Flow).

Are material adjustment comments visible in the GL account transaction details?

You cannot find material adjustment comments in the transaction details. However, you can find them from the inventory activity. To get here you would go to Parts» Reports»Invetory Activity. From there, make sure that you have the ‘Reason’ column present by using the ‘+/- column and scrolling until you find ‘reason’. Click ‘Show’ then you’ll be able to see the comments.

General

Will the system log people off automatically when they log into another job? If not, this will mess up timing and planning, especially if they forget to log out.

No, users may be logged into multiple jobs at the same time.

Will Cetec ERP run on my existing server?

The details for this can be found on our pricing page: Resident Hosting Pricing

Why do my customers default to nontaxable on creation?

By default, a customer is set to nontaxable during creation. If you would like your customers to default to taxable during creation, set the configuration setting “customer_default_taxable” to 1.

Why are there no materials displayed on my Pro Forma Invoice?

If you commit an order into Cetec and navigate to the Pro Forma Invoice, you will notice there are no items to display. Cetec does not display material on the pro forma until you set ship quantity for that order. There’s no material because setting the ship quantity allocates the material to that order, so you must do this to display material on the pro forma.

Why am I getting a "Can't Access Order Module" error?

As part of our efforts to improve the scope of our access control, user roles must be defined in the config setting, “Can Access Order Module”. If you can’t access sales orders, it is likely due to the role not being defined here.

Which roles have access to "protected" documents in Cetec ERP?

By default, the two roles that can access protected documents in Cetec ERP are the “Admin” and “IT” roles.

When cancelling an order, would making the order $0 resale and invoicing work instead of just closing the line? If so, how would we differentiate between a cancelled order and $0 repair order or RMA?

This would be another valid option to recover cost. Set the resale to $0.00 and fully finish out and invoice the line item. That would indeed work and would recover the cost of the material and also the labor. However, this would effectively tell the system that you made negative profits on that customer historical sale/build. There wouldn’t be a way to differentiate between a $0 repair order or RMA re-work order unless you flagged the order header or order line item with a field or part number or something that is searchable / segmentable from a reporting standpoint.

When I try to log into a beta environment instead of a live system. Cetec hangs and nothing happens. What should I do?

Sometimes, if you have more than one system up at a time (e.g. LIVE.cetecerp.com and DEMO.cetecerp.com) – the cookies and site data can get a little funky.

Here are instructions for how to clear cookies: Go to top right three horizontal bars on your google chrome web browser » Settings » Advanced Settings » Privacy » Content Settings » “All cookies and site data” » type in “cetec” to the search box » click “Remove all shown”.

What will be the "real" cost of the ERP system including implementation, initial training, and customization? What is typically included in that implementation price?

Implementation services are a la carte, but typically it ranges from $15k - $20k for: discovery / gap analysis / process consulting, data migration, user training, one week on site implementation consulting, and custom configuration and/or development.

Check out our Launch Packages page for complete details.

What types of dashboards or reporting modules are built in?

There is much flexibility behind dashboards and reporting in Cetec ERP. There are several canned dashboards; you can make your own dashboard by setting a certain report in the system as your user Home Page.

Canned dashboards include: sales dashboard, customer/profit dashboard, quoting dashboard, purchasing dashboard, lead/CRM dashboard, Quality Dashboard (NCRs, CARs, etc.), Executive dashboard (sales history with cost/resale/GP/GM metrics, sales projections, SVOP- sales value of production, ontime delivery, inventory value, open A/P, open A/R).

Canned reporting includes: searchable, filterable, sortable reports across every major transaction set and “business object” set in the system, all of which are exportable to Excel with one click.

Important! Our proprietary report writing engine “Report Writer” offers major additional reporting and dashboard capabilities.

What type of manufacturing options are available in Cetec ERP?

Make-to-order (MTO), Engineer-to-order (ETO), Assemble-to-order (ATO), Make-to-stock (MTS), Pick-to-order (PTO), Kitting, Distribution (of raw or finished goods)

What type of companies are in your customer base?

Size: 5 employees to 200+ employees (product will scale; legacy product ran multi-national, multi-billion dollar companies and mom/pop shops)

Industries: both distribution & manufacturing in electronic components, wire harness, PCB, ball bearings, metal fabrication, enclosures, medical devices, downhole oil/gas tools, cabinets and furniture, machine shops, machine vision, testing equipment, and more.

What specific functions of this ERP system make it conducive for a manufacturing company in medical, military, aerospace, aviation, etc.?

Here are a few examples:

Inventory control in a high-mix / low-volume environment - achieving warehousing efficiency (with our Mobile Warehouse iPad / barcode support), accuracy, and complete traceability in a dynamic production environment.

Production process control - engineering can create electronic work instructions (attach files/pictures) inline with each stage of the job/BOM router, with inline data capture and/or sign-off (initials) requirements. A work instruction line can be flagged as “required”, which will prevent the order from proceeding to the next step in the router, let alone ship/invoice. These work instructions are fully tracked and auditable, so you can go back from shipment to work order to proved work instruction fulfillment.

Publish quality alerts - any work order for a part with a quality doc/alert assigned to it will publish that at the top of the work order view and traveler, with a link to the document. Assign expiration dates to quality alerts to prevent them from sticking around and becoming meaningless.

Perform inspections (receiving, in process, final, etc.), log inspection failures with your own maintainable database of failure codes, dictate inspection instructions with inline data capture requirements (see above), run inspection and yield reports, etc.

Fully ISO compliant document control and document revision control integrated across the entire ERP system.

Cost/profitability analysis - complete job costing drill down reflecting actual cost in material, scrap, direct labor, indirect/overhead, outsourcing, and misc. charges.

Full shipment/invoice drilldown into low-level assemblies, raw material, etc. (complete traceability)

Manufacturing quoting and estimation

Robust BOM / revision mgmt / ECOs

Paperless shop floor

Stay nimble and maintain ability to affordably customize ERP system to meet new/changing customer requirements

Fully integrated ISO management system for document control, NCRs, CARs, root cause analysis, tool/equipment maintenance scheduling, customer case management

What security features does Cetec ERP use?

The base Cetec ERP platform runs on the world class Google Cloud Computing platform. Information on Google’s secure cloud platform may be found here:

https://cloud.google.com/security/ https://cloud.google.com/security/whitepaper https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/backup-recovery/backups https://cloud.google.com/storage/

Google cloud servers are backed up nightly. Also, the software itself contains export and backup features for you to back your data up on whatever frequency of schedule you would like.

Third, we are happy to offer an inexpensive monthly service for those customers who wish to automatically push both data backups and source code to an internal or third party server.

For complete details and contractual information regarding data backups and source code backups, please reference sections 10.7and 10.8 of the Cetec ERP End User License Agreement.

What role is required to control a customer's terms code, credit code, and credit limit?

A user needs either Admin, Accounting Admin, or Customer Credit role to control a customer’s terms code, credit code, and credit limit.

Before you can add Customer Credit to a user, you may have to make sure that “Customer Credit” has been added to the list of roles first. To make this role available, navigate to ADMIN » Maintenance » Data Maintenance » Role and Add Record for a role “Customer Credit”.

You will also need to be sure Customer Credit is added to two security by role settings. To get to security by role navigate to Admin» Users» Security by Role. Be sure it’s added to Can Edit Customer Terms and Can Manage Customer Credit Hold otherwise this role won’t work correctly.

What role gives you the option of uninvoicing?

Only those users with the admin role can uninvoice an invoice by default. Otherwise, you can control which user role is allowed to perform the Uninvoice function via Admin » Users » Security By Role.

What level of training is provided?

Expert/consultant (in-house) training is provided either remotely (via shared screen video conference) or on site. Training is provided per customer request. Email support/training requests are included in the monthly subscription. Furthermore, our full suite of training “how-to” videos are provided for free online, see - How To Guides

What is your pricing structure? (subscription based, or base package purchase price with additional user license level pricing)

SaaS (subscription based) - $40/user/month. Half rate ($20/user/month) for ShopFloorOnly users. Subscription includes: cloud server hosting, maintenance, licensing, upgrades, support, training videos and documentation.

What is the difference between internal customer/vendor and a regular or external customer/vendor?

The purpose of flagging a customer or vendor as internal is so that you can process work order transactions against yourself, e.g. sell to yourself & buy from yourself. This is useful for build-for-stock programs, and keeps everything consistent and traceable from a cost accounting standpoint. Cetec ERP comes with a default internal customer and vendor set up, but you may choose to set up multiple different internal customers/vendors to account for multiple warehouses.

What is the benefit of having an ERP software?

Software is a tool, and tools make a difference.

ERP software unifies all of your functional business areas: Sales informs purchasing, inventory is controlled, work orders are managed, invoices link to accounting, and so much more.

Most small companies try to keep track of everything needed to run a business with spreadsheets. Spreadsheets do not cut it when a business is growing. It is too costly to maintain this complexity with spreadsheets. Software is more efficient.

Your employees may be used to spreadsheets; it is how they operate. Training them on new process can be expensive and annoying. But the results are rewarding.

The ideal time to adopt an ERP (in lieu of Quickbooks plus spreadsheets) is at the inflection point of a companys growth. In other words - it is earlier than you think! Adopting a full suite integrated system, and consistent, intelligent business processes across all functional areas of your business - these are key to growing your business.

What envelope size do you support if I want to mail out invoices?

We support #10 single window envelopes (4 1/8 x 9 1/2).

What drives the inspector name on the Certificate of Conformance?

The first inspection recorded drives the inspector name on the COC.

What bandwidth is recommended for Cetec ERP to run effectively in the cloud?

There is no definitive answer as it depends on how many users are sharing the connection, the difference between peak traffic and average traffic, what page speed is acceptable to your company and user base, etc. Cetec ERP customers operate across a range of connections, from a DSL connection for 5-10 users up to fiber speeds. If bandwidth is a concern, the best test is to have users actually simulate some Cetec ERP activity in a demo or free trial environment.

What are the various label dimensions in Cetec ERP?

Cetec auto-populates printable/scannable barcode files with corresponding warehouse labels. For printing purposes, it’s important to note the specific dimensions of each label.

Dimensions are listed below in inches.

Bin Location Label:”1x3” Serial/Piece Label:”1x3” Receipt Label:”4x3” Order Packing Label: “4x3” Order Line Packing Label:”4x3” Skid Label:”4x3”

What access does the production only users have in Cetec ERP?

The ProductionOnly user role (offered at a reduced rate of $20/user/month) was designed for shop floor workers performing repetitive work. For example, imagine a shop floor of several hundred workers performing repetitive work. The only functions a ProductionOnly user is allowed to do are:

  • Scanning and/or looking up a work order;
  • Viewing the work order work instructions;
  • Viewing basic work order data (e.g. customer, part number, quantity due, due dates, etc.)
  • Viewing basic work order documents (e.g. traveler, drawings, etc.)
  • Updating work order status
  • Clocking in/out of a work order
  • Pick parts for the product
  • Complete/receive the work order into finished goods

Some examples of what a ProductionOnly user may not do are (this list isn’t exhaustive):

  • Perform inspections
  • Manage the order specific BOM
  • Split the work order into two different work orders
  • Un-invoicing an invoice
We are a custom job shop. Does Cetec have a product configurator?

Yes, Cetec ERP offers a product configurator as an upgrade for $800/month (unlimited users). The product configurator is fully integrated to BOMs and Quoting in Cetec ERP.

Additionally, even without a proper configurator, Cetec ERP supports custom instantiations of BOMs, BOM Quote Worksheets, Work Order Specific BOMs, etc. for custom manufacturers.

The document management system seems to be really beneficial, but how does it work? How does revision control work? How does ECN fit in the document management system?

Documents may be uploaded per standard document/revision management functionality to ECO/ECN business objects. Please see this article for help on the document management system: Document Control

Is your cloud-based SaaS set up to run with TLS 2.0 or greater, for HIPAA compliance or PCI compliance?

Yes, we provide TLS 2.0 support, actually our version is upgraded beyond 2.0. To use it, simply login under “https://__.cetecerp.com” with the added ‘s’ there. However, please note that with our default cloud SaaS offering, we do not force you to use it. In other words, technically one of your users could remove that ‘s’ and be on the normal environment; we intentionally don’t enforce that in the product.

If you are going to be HIPAA audited, we would recommend looking into doing some kind of private hosting, either on your own internal server. Note that, if you end up working with a HIPAA auditor on this to set up your own network security, our team and our product are extremely flexible, and we’ll do virtually everything needed to make sure you’re taken care of on those requirements.

Cetec ERP is technically hosting agnostic. You can set up the app on our cloud (which is free) or on a Google Cloud virtual instance (which is pretty cheap) or on a Rackspace or Amazon instance (getting more expensive) or on your own internal hardware that you manage on your own (we do offer a $99/month maintenance fee for resident hosting).

Is this ERP system flexible and scalable as business conditions and goals change?

Yes, absolutely. There is inherent flexibility and scaleability due to the modernized database structure of the application, and because these tools are license-free and written in modern web friendly languages, development is nimble and rapid and inexpensive.

Furthermore, our elite team of consultants, business process experts, and software architects have deep industry experience, and are committed to forming long term relationships with our customers. As your business needs changes, the software is flexible and we are willing to build in development specific to your needs.

Is this ERP system cloud based?

Yes, it is a 100% cloud native multi-tenant platform. We offer hosting free of charge via the Google Cloud Compute platform, but technically we are hosting agnostic, so if you wish to host in a third party cloud, or on your own local resident hardware, we will support you.

Is there a way to update credit card information to use when paying for Cetec ERP subscription?

Yes! Below are directions for entering a credit card in your site:

  1. Go to the top right three-bars icon » My Profile.

  2. Then, click the ““Subscription Page”” link in blue from your profile. That will take you here: https://mysite.cetecerp.com/subscription_page

  3. Scroll down on that page, click Add Card, then make sure to input a billing address, and mark the card as ““Use For Cetec ERP Billing!”””

Is there a way to set default ship type for new quotes?

Yes. To set the default ship type, please navigate to ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings, search for a variable named quote_default_ship_type, and use these characters below to specify what you want the default to be: “P” for Partial “C” for Complete “L” for Line Complete ‘H” for Hold

Is there a way to send out customer statements in bulk?

Unfortunately there isn’t a way to send them in bulk but you can set up customer statement notifications. You can follow this documentation here to set it up Customer Notifications Documentation

Is there a way to prevent a user from being able to edit parts?

If you want to prevent a user from being able to edit parts, please add the role “Block Edit Part” to the user’s roles and privileges. Once you do that the user will be prevented from being able to edit parts.

Before you can select this role in the user edit page, you may have to make sure that “Block Edit Part” has been added to the list of roles first. To make this role available, navigate to ADMIN » Maintenance » Data Maintenance » Role and Add Record for a role “Block Edit Part”.

Also be sure that you have this role in the security by role setting. Go to Admin » Users » Security by Role and search for Can Edit Part - Block. Be sure Block Edit Part is in the setting otherwise it won’t work correctly.

Is there a way to adjust how precise (number of decimals) costs will display in the software?

Yes – the numbers are controlled by multiple configuration settings (depending on which area in the software you want to define). To find them please navigate to ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings. Type in “currency_precision” and search for it. It will return multiple variables.

For example, putting the value of 3 for po_currency_precision will show up to three digits for all pquote and purchase order related numberical values.

Is there a required date format for Cetec ERP?

We require dates to be in YYYY-MM-DD format, e.g. 2007-06-06.

This is to encourage all Cetec ERP users to use the global ISO standard. Users should not enter dates in any other format into the system to prevent potential system issues.

Cetec ERP helps you abide by this standard by providing a GUI datepicker any time you have a date field to enter or modify a date. When you select a date from the datepicker, it will log the chosen date in YYYY-MM-DD format.

Is there a limit to the number and or size of documents that can be stored through Cetec ERP's Document center?

No. There is no limit, as long as the file stored are related to the use of Cetec ERP (no personal cinema or music collection).

Is there a demo of this ERP system that we can easily view?

Yes, check out the videos in our How-To section of the website (Support -> How-To). You may also schedule a free demo session, consultation, and Q&A with one of our experts today to get a complete system walkthrough and thorough qualification of the software for your needs.

Is the hosting service ITAR certified - not just compliant?

Yes! Cetec ERP offers an ITAR certified hosting service via Microsoft Azure called “Gov Cloud” for $500/month (flat).

However, Cetec ERP’s default hosting service (which is included in the $40/user/month subscription) is provided by Google Cloud compute, which is not ITAR certified nor ITAR compliant.

For information on which compliance and certification bodies Google Cloud undergoes audits for check here: https://support.google.com/work/answer/6056694?hl=en

Of note in that thread is Google’s comment on ITAR specifically:

“Can I use Google services with data controlled under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations?

The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) is a set of U.S. government regulations that control the export and import of defense-related articles and services on the United States Munitions List (USML). Google does not support use of our services with ITAR-controlled data.”

Is Cetec ERP a fully integrated ERP? (capabilities with GL, AR, AP, Inventory, Manufacturing, MRP)?

Yes! Cetec ERP is a complete system. Nothing is “moduled out”. Front office to back office, top floor to shop floor, quote to cash, stem to stern… you get the idea. It includes G/L, AR, AP, Financial Reporting, Inventory, Manufacturing, MRP, Quality Assurance, Enterprise Document Management, CRM, Packing/Shipping, and much more

Is Cetec ERP NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) compliant?

For NIST compliance, we outsource this to Google Cloud Compute.

See here: https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance/nist800-171/

“…[Google Cloud Compute] have undergone an independent third-party assessment that confirmed compliance with NIST 800-53 controls in scope for FedRAMP, which includes all requisite controls described in NIST 800-171.”

Per the documentation above, it does appear Google Cloud Compute is NIST compliant.

If a customer requests to cancel an order, how can we close that order and be able to search/locate that order at a future time?

You can go to the side nav menu of the order where it says Close Line/All and delete the order. However, if parts are already picked, it will notify you and prevent you from deleting/closing the entire order if lines are picked. In the future, to search/locate closed/deleted orders, there is a filter for “all deleted” on the production order list.

How much does Cetec ERP cost?

Please visit our pricing page for details.

How long does a standard implementation take?

For a smaller business (e.g. 20-30 users), we estimate 1 week on-site for “go-live”; est. 1-2 months of “prep” for go-live (prep includes data migration/validation, user training, system configuration, etc.) See our implementation page online for complete details - click here

How is the quality manager field on the COC populated?

The quality manager on the COC is populated from the row Quality under ADMIN » Maintenance » Data Maintenance » Department.

Inside the Manager ID field, you want to type in the ID of the user you want to use.

How does the order and invoice naming scheme work?

In Cetec ERP, orders derive their numbering from the quote from which they are created. For instance, if two orders are created from the quote 900, the first order created is named 900.1, and the second, 900.2. After that, each line in an order is given a line number e.g. 900.1-1 and 900.1-2, 900.2-1, 900.2-2 and so forth.

Meanwhile, invoices also get their numbering from the orders from which they are created e.g. 900.1-1 and 900.1-2. So while the line numbers and the invoices use the same naming scheme, they refer to two different objects which can be differentiated by their context.

Example: Order 900.1 containing 5 line items work order 900.1-1 work order 900.1-2 work order 900.1-3 work order 900.1-4 work order 900.1-5

If you ship work 900.1-3 first, that would create an invoice labeled 900.1-1.

How does the document tag feature work?

When you upload documents you can attach tags to them.

Once they are attached, you can search for them by going to ADMIN » Docs » Documents List, and typing the tag you wish to search into the ‘Tags’ filter field.

How does the Beta site work within Cetec ERP?

New releases to Cetec ERP are deployed to your live “production” environment roughly on a six-week cycle. Two weeks before a release to production, we deploy to your “beta” environment. During this two weeks, we perform additional internal testing and quality assurance on the release, and we provide you with the ability to go and check out the new features. You can do so by simply adding a “-beta” to the end of your instance name within the URL you use to access your Cetec ERP system. Note that the “beta” environment still operates on live data, so it’s not intended for free range testing. If you’d like a true test environment with a nightly/weekly refreshed copy of your data, you can setup a new test instance of Cetec ERP and sign on to our monthly subscription for that instance ($40/user/month, five user minimum, i.e. min $200/month) just like a normal instance. You may contact a Cetec ERP support representative to request nightly or weekly backups from your live instance to your test instance if you wish, so that you always have a recently updated copy of data in the test system.

How does Cetec generate barcodes? Can we customize barcodes to match industry-related barcode requirements?

Cetec ERP default barcodes are Code 128. GS1-128, a government-required barcoding system relevant to medical device manufacturers, is an implementation of Code 128 which includes additional data generally. We can accommodate customized barcoding for all of your customers or for a particular customer, providing that we can nail down which documents and what specific requirements there are. Then you all can make custom documents yourselves or have us work with you to do so.

How do we recover cost on orders that are cancelled that have material picked and labor clocked?

There are a few ways you could go about doing this. First, if you have picked material on lines, you can do the same process described above (Close Line/All) and select which lines you’re wanting to close out. If/when you do this, the system will bring up a pop-up window for the lines you’re selecting and ask if you’d like to adjust and consume all the picked material associated with the line you are closing/deleting. That would be one way to recover material cost, but this would not recover labor cost.

How do I utilize the wildcard search in Cetec ERP?

To perform a wildcard search in Cetec ERP, simply include a “%” after the value.

How do I remove the date header/URL footer from my Cetec ERP documents?

You first need to check your browser printer settings and see if “Headers & Footers” are enabled. The default config setting in your Cetec ERP environment should be set to remove these automatically. If you are still seeing date/time header on your Cetec ERP documents, contact support for further assistance.

How do I pair my UPS/FedEx account to Cetec?

You can connect your shipping accounts via ShipEngine! Learn more here: https://cetecerp.com/product/feature-outlines/shipengine-integration.html

How do I increase the precison value for Landed cost?

The config settings line_currency_precision and total_currency_precision will increase the decimal places for Landed cost so you can have the same precison for Landed cost that you have for your regular costing.

How do I give a user the ability to edit the serial page on a work order?

To give a user the ability to edit the serial page you’ll want to edit a security by role. Navigate to Admin>Users>Security by Role. Search the role called ‘Can Edit Print Records’. There, you’ll add in the user role Production so that all Production users will have the ability to edit serials on your work orders. If you want only specific users to have this ability you can create a new role called Can Edit Serial Page and add that to the security by role. Give the users you want to be able to edit the serial page that role and they will be able to access that page and make edits. Check out our how to on Custom Roles here.

How do I get column names to automatically match when importing?

When importing a data sheet into Cetec ERP, users will typically be asked to match the column header with the dropdown menu for each column. This process can be made automatic if you use the correct header names for Cetec ERP to identify.

For this to happen, you must name your column in the datasheet following the Cetec ERP Technical Name convention. Take the column Ship Date for example, to put this into Technical Name format you need to remove the spaces and then replace them with underscores, as well as remove all capital letters. So, Ship Date becomes ship_date.

If you follow this naming convention your column headers will automatically match with the preferred drop-down menu option. Reducing the user work on this front to simply validating that the columns are matched appropriately.

How do I get all of my lines to populate on my pro forma invoice, even if I haven't picked them yet?

In some instances, you may want to send out your pro forma invoice prior to starting work. By default, the pro forma will only show lines that have been picked. If you would like to show all order lines on the pro forma, simply uncheck “Only Include Lines With Ship Qty > 0” on the Customize PDF screen.

How do I delete a customer?

Navigate to the customer’s profile, click the edit tab, and select the ‘Delete’ button.

How do I correct system clock? Set Time Zone?

The purpose of time zones are to be a reference point for different things happening at the same time around the world. Thus, when time is logged/displayed in the Cetec system, the time must display according to one timezone or another.

We could have chosen either Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) or Eastern or Pacific Time. The designers went with Central Time as the default for Cetec ERP. So, if you’re an Mountain Time customer, and you see that someone logged into a work order at 3:00pm in Cetec, you’ll know automatically that they were actually logged in was 2:00pm in the Mountains.

The same principle applies for our other customers located all around the world. Note that, from an audit standpoint, as long as the timezone your system runs in is fixed, known, and consistent, you can key your time reporting off of that timezone system standard. An auditor should have no issue with this.

How do I change the 'From' email address that shows in emails I send through Cetec ERP from outbound@cetecerp.com?

If the user is logged in and has an email address listed in their user profile, and the config “email_allow_user_specified_from” is turned on (value = 1), it will show the ‘From’ address in sent emails as the user’s address (instead of outbound@cetecerp.com).

If the above config is off (value = 0) then the ‘From’ address shown in emails will be outbound@cetecerp.com.

You can override this by changing the config “email_from_address” to your desired company email address; this will be what shows on emails sent without a user logged in (notifiers, etc).

You can also override the default Reply-To header by entering an email address in the config “email_default_reply_to” (value = 1). This will change the email address that shows as the Reply-To in emails sent without a user logged in (notifiers, etc.)

Note: To make changes to config settings, go to Admin » Config Settings » Config Settings, and type in the name of the config in the Name field.

How can I review invoices before they are sent?

First be sure that invoice notifications are off. This will be sure the invoices wont be sent automatically. After this, you can run the Invoice List and filter by “Unsent” and review the ones that have not been sent to customers yet. You can then send the invoices manually after you have reviewed them.

How can I clear any serials that have been attached to an order within Cetec?

Good news, you should be able to clear those Serials through the interface! If you go to the Generated Serials List (Production » Orders » Generated Serial List), then search for your Order, you can access the Order Line in question. You can then visit the Serials page for that Order Line and clear the serials, just use the ‘Clear Serials/Sequences?’ checkbox at the top!

How can I change Production Only users default login page from the Production Order List to the company homescreen?

You can set the home page as their default login screen in the user edit. Admin>Users>User List>Edit> then you will copy and paste the homepage url of your company and add /home to the end (i.e. https://cetecerp.domain.com/home) into every ProdOnly user’s “Homepage (user forced here after login).” If you do not add the /home to the end of the URL, it will not work.

How can Cetec ERP help me with employee time tracking, payroll, labor/overhead time tracking, and overhead time tracking?

Manufacturing ERP systems almost never include native, built in payroll functionality due to the wide ranging tax ramifications involved in payroll processing. We assume you will have some sort of third-party payroll module to pay out your employees, manage W2s and such. None of that type of functionality is supported in Cetec.

This is a given with Cetec, along with almost any other manufacturing ERP platform: you have to have an external payroll processing software no matter what.

Therefore, often the question is: what is the time tracking tool to track the time (for clock-in in the morning and clock-out at 5pm) that will then be entered (either manually or through an import or through integration) into the Payroll system.

You have two options for that time tracking tool:

1- an external time tracker (e.g. TSheets, When I Work, Deputy, Ximble, Boomr, TimeTracker by Ebility)

or

2- “internal” tasks within Cetec.

With EITHER option, you’re going to have to take the time entries from your time tracking tool and enter those into the Payroll system.

There are time tracking tools (like Tsheets, etc.) that integrate directly with various Payroll providers, so you could explore that.

Currently, Cetec as an “internal” clock-in / clock-out time tracking tool doesn’t provide any integrations to any Payroll system (though at some point in the future we likely will).

And again, with either option, you’ll have a twice/monthly (whatever frequency your payroll cycle is on) by which you take the reports from your payroll software module and load a payroll journal entry (with splits for cash, labor, payroll taxes, etc.) into the Cetec ERP financial accounting system.

And, finally, note that whatever option you take (#1 or #2 above) for your time tracking tool, you’ll still want to use the Cetec time tracking tool to track direct labor time on actual work orders (for job costing and manufacturing cost accounting which are seamlessly part of the Cetec ERP system).

Most companies go with option #1. One benefit of this option is that the clock-in-at-8am / clock-out-at-5pm type of time tracking in an External time tracking tool keeps indirect labor cost tracking entirely in the Payroll software system and direct labor cost tracking in Cetec (for job costing and such). In that model, Cetec is your only data source of direct (i.e. work-order-specific) labor cost, and payroll is your only data source of indirect employee labor. Apparently, that can make absorption tracking cleaner/easier for companies.

Option #2 would be more attractive if the internal task/time tracking in Cetec were setup to integrate automatically to a payroll system. Integrations are available per request through our API.

How are order statuses defined?

When a new order is created it sets the status to New (0).

When parts are picked it changes to Started/Packing Slip Out (3).

When you change the freight or invoice values it changes the status to Pending Invoice (4).

When you partially ship an invoice the status changes to Backorder w/ Prior Shipment (5).

Shipped (6) is used when an order has been fully shipped.

If you need to use these statuses for API or Metabase usage here are the numbers that correspond to each stage.

1 = New 3 = Started/Packing Slip Out 4 = Pending Invoice 5 = Backorder w/ Prior Shipment 6 = Shipped

How are developmental requests prioritized? What is the timeframe for development queue items?

Cetec ERP is a stable, powerful, and actively developed platform.

Many developments are released free of extra charge based on the SAAS (Software as a Service) model.

So how does Cetec ERP prioritize developmental requests? There are a few guiding principles:

  1. We ask questions such as, “Is this integral to the product?”, “How many customers would this feature benefit?”, and “Does capacity allow for this development” If we answer “yes” to these questions…
  2. We ask, “Has any other customer expressed the same or similar need?”

When a customer comes to us with a development request that the developers approve we log it to the development queue first. Once a month, the management team will gather to have a development meeting wherein they decide on the target date for each development request.

In deciding priority, the criteria we look for are

  1. How crucial the feature is - Sometimes a customer comes to us with a feature request that we can recognize as essential for some parts of the system.
  2. The number of requests received for a particular feature.

If there are requests that do not satisfy either of the criteria, then we will determine the target date based on the order it has been sent in.

If our customer wants to expedite this process, they can pay us for billable time to move the priority to the front of the lot.

How are Turns Per Year calculated on the Pulse Dashboard?

The turns per year are calculated as: the average daily invoice cost multiplied by 365 (average across the last two months) / inventory value.

Does this ERP system have workflow capabilities? Provide some example of workflow capabilities in AP, PO's, Sales or other.

Yes! Workflows let you manage and track assignment of items based on workflow stage, departments, and assignments of responsibilities therein. A workflow assignment starts tracking of queue time, emails a Ping to the assignee, and “nag” alerts can be set to continually email based on a priority level to the nag notifier. Here are a few examples:

A/P - voucher is entered by A/P clerk, system attempts three-way match (between PO, receipt, and invoice) to unlock approval, if no match then voucher is manually or automatically queued via Workflow to Accounting mgmt for approval, approval unlocks ability to pay down voucher. Workflow configuration exists to either always explicitly require voucher approval, or to never require it.

Purchase Orders - a pQuote (RFQ) is entered by a purchasing employee, but the dollar amount on the PO is above your dollar threshold setting requiring approval. Thus, the pQuote must be submitted via Workflow for approval by Purchasing mgmt, which unlocks the ability to place the PO with your vendor.

Quotes - inside sales starts the process of quoting a new item, but the item must be sent via workflow to Engineering for BOM estimation and/or Purchasing for material requirements planning.

NCRs & CARs & ECOs - controlled documented process for non-conformances and corrective actions routes through various departments of your business unto resolution.

Documents / Document Revisions - per ISO requirements for doc control, any docs uploaded by a non-admin user are queued for approval via Workflow by mgmt.

Does Cetec ERP support non-PDF custom documents?

Recently, we collaborated with one of our clients who relies on specialized machines to manufacture their wiring. Traditionally, our client used spreadsheets to create their BOM worksheets. These documents contained critical information, such as the gauge and color of wires, connectors, and detailed instructions on how to assemble them. However, the process of converting this data into a format that could be imported into Cetec ERP and subsequently understood by the machines was cumbersome. In essence, the machines depended on the BOM order table to know precisely what to build. The existing system required users to generate PDF files, which, while useful for printing, lacked the flexibility needed for this specific application. Recognizing the need for a more versatile solution, we embarked on developing a new feature that allows users to generate non-PDF files. This enhancement opens the door for our customers to create documents in a format tailored to their machines, improving efficiency and reducing the potential for errors.The new system utilizes a template toolkit for custom documents. When the Cetec ERP generates these files, they can include the specialized functionality needed for the machines to operate effectively. While these non-PDF documents provide immense flexibility, they are designed for collaboration with Cetec engineering, ensuring that our clients receive the best possible support and integration. It’s important to note that while this new functionality allows for greater customization, the non-PDF documents are not intended for unilateral use by customers. Instead, we encourage collaboration with our engineering team to ensure that all generated files meet the necessary specifications and operational requirements. This development not only enhances the user experience but also strengthens our commitment to supporting our customers in their unique manufacturing processes. By working closely together, we can help ensure that all machine data is accurately represented, leading to smoother production workflows and improved overall efficiency.

Does Cetec ERP include any Point Of Sale (POS) or E-commerce functionality?

Unfortunately Cetec ERP does not include POS or E-commerce out of the box. However, our team is happy to offer fast, low-rate integration to provide the link you need, and we have decades of experience doing so.

Does Cetec ERP employ a concurrent or named user license model?

Cetec ERP employs the “named” users approach as is the standard for the SaaS (Software As A Service) model.

Do imported parts default to inventory or non-inventory if I do not fill out the "non_inventory" import column?

Imported parts will default to inventory parts unless you utilize the “non_inventory” import column to mark them as non-inventoried parts.

Can you provide us information about your company that will show its stability and growth (customer base, growth, future development)

Cetec ERP has been in business since 1996 and has thrived through several economic downturns. We have 50+ customers on our legacy ERP platform, which was a terminal based system. We invested 10 years of R&D into the re-write of the modernized web ERP platform, focusing engineering resources on tackling the more “difficult” (i.e. more regulated) manufacturing verticals, e.g. medical, military, aerospace, maritime, downhole, especially high-mix / low-volume and dynamic manufacturing environments. This has provided our product with a competitive advantage that is allowing us to gain traction in a crowded enterprise software market. That, combined with an extraordinarily low “commodity” style pricing model enabled by modernized license-free web development tools, is fueling rapid growth and an ever increasing customer base that is happy to finally see a truly complete web-based ERP designed expressly for manufacturing and distribution. All development is built into the core software product in the cloud, which means our entire customer base gets continual upgrades and enhancements (once/month release schedule), which means you have no fear of falling behind on an old version of software.

Can you adjust which PDF columns show? How do you adjust PDF column settings for system generated emails?

The column settings for Cetec ERP are saved on a per-user basis. This means that you and your co-worker could set a PDF to display different columns, and that Cetec ERP will not enforce a standard PDF setting for all users of a same company.

Also, once the column settings are saved for a specific PDF document, Cetec ERP will remember it and use these same column settings in the future.

One exception to this rule is the PDFs that are sent out by the system. We have a config variable called Default User ID in ADMIN » Config settings » Config Settings [Only accessible to users with the Admin role] to determine which column setting Cetec ERP would use in sending our system-generated emails.

To set the config variable, please navigate to ADMIN » Users and type in the ID of the user you want to use in Default User ID, and save it. You also want to make sure that the default user sets the column settings correctly.

From that point on Cetec ERP will look up the default user’s column settings and use that to send out PDFs.

Can we change our logo on Cetec ERP?

Yes. You can change the user-facing logo as well as the logos that print on your customer-facing PDFs. To do so, please navigate to ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Wizard / First Login. Please leave everything else intact but when it prompts for a new logo, upload a new one, and go through the wizard.

Can I set my A/R Aging to the due date, instead of the invoice date?

Yes! If you navigate to Admin –> Config Settings and search, “AR Aging Transaction Date “ you will see a configuration that allows you to change this. Simply defining ‘due_date’ in this setting will now adjust the aging days in the different reports across Cetec ERP to be against the due date.

Can I restrict my documents to only be accessible to certain users?

Cetec ERP supports this functionality. When a document is uploaded, if you put a flag/filter on the document for, “protected = yes”, then the only users who will be able to download the document are those with user role of “Admin” or “Can Access All Documents”, which is defined in config settings.

Can I batch email remittances to multiple emails for the same vendor?

Yes! You can set multiple emails on the same vendor record on the vendor “Edit” screen. Under “Accounting Emails”, you can input multiple email addresses separated by commas. From there the Batch Email Remittance will pull whichever email(s) are on the vendor record.

Are you able to provide an Entity Relationship Diagram for the database tables?

We have the Entity Relationship Diagram built into an Admin module, however it does not show the relationships as those are built into the software and not the database. This is available to any Admin from Admin > APIs & More > Schema Diagram!

Are there add on reporting programs required or recommended?

Cetec ERP offers a proprietary ETL (exchange transform load) data warehouse called Report Writer which hooks into the Cetec ERP platform and flattens out the entire data set, allowing you to slice/dice across the data in any way you desire to create and save and regularly re-run custom reports. It is an extremely powerful tool.

Many small to mid-sized businesses find the canned reporting and Excel export capability of the standard Cetec ERP product (see above) to be plenty enough for their reporting needs. However, for those businesses who find value and management ROI in a flexible reporting engine, it is recommended.

Report Writer is a separate product offered at a flat fee of $500/month.

Are the homepage dashboard widgets assignable by user, or user role, or can everyone see them?

Dashboard widgets are available per user role; see below for a list of each dashboard and which user role assignments allow visibility to the dashboard:

Quotes = ‘Sales’ role

Customers = ‘Sales’ role

Invoice Values = ‘Manager’ role

PQuotes = ‘Purchasing’ role

Ontime = ‘Manager’ role

Inventory = ‘Manager’ role

Order Values = ‘Manager’ role

Monthly Booking Value = ‘Manager’ role

SVOP (Sales Value of Production) = ‘Supervisor’ and ‘Manager’ roles

A/P Summary = ‘Accounting’ and ‘Manager’ roles

A/R Summary = ‘Accounting’ and ‘Manager’ roles

News = (all roles)

Reminders = ‘Admin’ role

Sales Funnel = ‘Sales’ role

Top Open Quotes = ‘Sales’ role

Late Purchase Orders = ‘Purchasing’ role

NCR/CAR Dashboard = ‘Admin’ role

Sales by User = ‘Manager’ role

Open Order Lines = ‘Sales’ role

Customer Satisfaction = ‘Quality’, ‘Supervisor’, ‘Manager’, ‘Admin’ roles

Inventory

what does the Preferred Bin field in Warehouse Edit screen do?

Preferred bins are given preference for picking. Preferred bins will show first in the pick list and will be used for auto-picking when possible. It is used in cases where you want to have stock picked from any bin that starts with a specific prefix such as ‘FLOOR.’

Why does the cycle count/full inventory not include parts with 0 quantity on hand?

Cetec ERP intentionally does not include parts with 0 quantity on hand. Doing so would give hundreds or thousands of parts that do not exist to count for some of our customers.

Usual physical process on this is to use stickers/dots to show what has been counted, then to go back and find the parts that have not been ‘marked’ and add them at the end. Some customers do it per shelf/rack/etc, some do it at the end, it depends on how a company has arranged the rest of the count.

Why does the Inventory Widget on the dashboard, Inventory Value report, and List by Bin all display different total inventory values?

Executive Dashboard = avg cost * QOH for all inventory.

Inv Value list value is calculated from the relieve inventory logs, from the beginning of time.

List By Bin = Actual value of all bins. This is the most accurate report that you should rely on.

Why does Cetec allow me to adjust and override the raw material/component qty being relieved (backflushed) at the time of shipment?

You are correct - The system sets the “qty to relieve” to exactly what was Qty Picked by default. But, it allows you to change that number if you want.

This flexibility exists because apparently there are edge cases where a BOM calls for a certain qty to be picked but ultimately a different qty is relieved, and the remaining qty is dispositioned (either put back in stock for later use, etc.)

Edge cases include:

1- The scenario of partial shipments. Letting the user control “qty to relieve” gives the user greater control over what material is actually getting consumed on the partial shipment (some of those partial ship scenarios can get pretty weird).

2- Overpicking in order to have spares. Some people will overpick ontop of the Qty Need intentionally, i.e. to issue enough ‘spares’ to a kit so they won’t have to ask for more if they need more (in their mind it’s easier to put some back than to go back and get more if that makes sense…) In that situation (overpicking spares), you need to go back to the pick list and unpick from the closed order (or from the part record) to “put back” the parts in the system and show parts as qty Avail.

When we receive in an RMA that is damaged goods that we are not going to repair, but just scrap. What are the proper steps to take for receiving in the RMA so that it does not go into inventory?

Generally what happens is that the receiving clerk will receive in the RMA when it arrives on the dock (this also assumes the PO was generated from the RMA when the RMA was issued). This acknowledges receipt and does put the part into inventory. Then as part of the review of the returned product if it is determined that scrap is preferred over repair, a simple inventory adjustment will remove it from inventory while selecting the proper reason code.

When copying a BOM under a new part number, can we get the labor and labor path to follow as well?

In Cetec ERP’s BOM Worksheet, use the Copy BOM functionality to pull BOM materials and miscellaneous charges, and the Copy BOM Worksheet functionality to pull materials and miscellaneous charges over from another BOM Worksheet. In both cases, if you want to copy over labor, do so by clicking on Labor Total and using the Copy Labor From Part functionality.

What is a std cost/standard cost?

Std cost is a user modified field that exists for reference purposes only. Once a user enters in a std cost, he/she can compare that to the avg cost.

The only time that Cetec ERP ever modifies the std cost is when the std cost is set to 0. If that is the case, it will take in the first receipt cost of the part and set that as the std cost. But once any value has been entered, Cetec ERP will cease to modify it in any way, providing a static field for reference/comparison purposes.

What is a bin lock? Why is my bin locked?

A locked bin disallows a user from picking parts from that bin on an open order.

A bin can be locked for three reasons.

1) If the user puts a manual lock on the bin by clicking the ‘edit’ button to the right of the bin name and clicking the ‘Lock Bin?’ checkbox.

2) If the user puts a manual lock on the bin when receiving the part into inventory by clicking the ‘Lock Bin’ on the warehouse screen.

3) If you require incoming inspections on this part, that bin will be locked upon receipt until the Incoming Inspection has been completed.

4) If the part has an expiration date beyond today. The expiration date is also set by clicking the ‘edit’ button to the right of the bin name. To disable the lock feature when bins expire, edit the configuration setting [Lock Bins When Expired] to 0.

What is a PRC code?

In Cetec ERP, a part number is always tracked and kept in the following format: Product Code (PRC) + Part Number. This combination together is referred to as “Prcpart”.

The PRC prefix is the “smart numbering” minimum structure for part records in Cetec ERP; more specifically, it’s the smart numbering minimum we inherited from the legacy product, a terminal-based ERP product that ran global companies, and that which was re-written into the modernized Cetec ERP.

For customer or vendor interfacing documents (e.g., quotes, order acknowledgments, invoices, RFQs, packing slips, invoices): We give you complete control over whether to show or hide the PRC versus the part number. You can also opt to combine them and show the entire PRC part together as a single item.

For example, you can define a single PRC code as ““TNK”” for TankUtility, and hide that ““TNK”” prefix anywhere else you need. You can also implement a new smart numbering scheme and leverage the PRC codes to help you segment your inventory (e.g,. into raw materials, subassemblies, finished goods).

Please see the following document to learn how to manage PRC codes - How To Create A PRC Product Code.

What if we receive "productX", assign it a serialized barcode, and pick and scan into a work order, then get a call from the supplier saying that "productX" is recalled?

First, you can run a report called the “Invoice As Used” report that will give you complete sales history (i.e. historical invoices) with detail broken down on each component or ingredient or raw material used (i.e. consumed) on the order. You can view that report in Sales » Invoices » Invoice As Used.

If you serialize individual units of product upon receipt, you can also run an “as used” report for component (i.e. raw material) level serials. You can review that report in Sales » Invoices » Component Serial List. This will let you view all Serialized pieces of raw material that have ever gone out on shipments.

The same can be done for top-level finished items that you assign serials to on their way out the door. You can view that report in Sales » Invoices » Top Level Serial List. This will let you view all finished goods serials that have ever gone out on shipments/invoices.

Those reports (above) all deal with historical sales, i.e. what products were used or shipped out. If you get a recall on “productx” and you want to report on what currently open work orders the material is being used on, you’ll use the WIP Material Report (Production » Orders » WIP Material Report).

If you simply want to see all Finished Goods (i.e. BOMs) the a component or raw product is used on, head to the part record for that raw product and click the “BOM Use” link on the far left side-navigation column.

What if I can't find my item on the waterfall or inventory forecast? What might be happening?

The waterfall is an inventory forecasting report that displays demand signals on the left, and supply signals on the right.

Demand signals could include demand for the item on an open customer sales order, OR demand for the item insofar as it is used/included on a BOM for a work order.

Supply signals could include supply incoming for the item on an open vendor purchase order, OR supply incoming for the item that is being produced as finished product on an internal “build for stock” work order.

If you can’t find your item on the inventory forecast, it might be for one or more of the following reasons:

-the demand signal (open sales order or work order) might have been canceled, closed, deleted, or shipped. -the supply signal (open PO or build-for-stock order) might have been canceled, closed, deleted, or fully received. -the line item on the open PO might have been marked as “non-inventory”.

What does the Primary Bin field in Part Edit screen do?

Primary bin will be Shown at the put away screen. It is Uused to specify a location that the part should go if there is a reason to deviate from random stock.

What do traceability capabilities from Raw to FG to Sales and possibly after sales look like?

Cetec ERP accomplishes complete material traceability and cost traceability from raw material to subassembly (and n number of multi-level assemblies) to finished good to sale of product and beyond sales. This includes lot level tracking from the receipt of material (date code, lot/heat code, component rev) to serial level tracking upon receipt of material (unique raw component serialization), AND receipt/cert docs, and includes receipt cost tracking per FIFO layer in inventory. This information is passed through upon order pick to the work order (to the subassembly or finished item being built and/or stocked/shipped). Finally, finished items (subassemblies or top-level) may be serialized as well. The net is that an end user (perhaps not your customer) could call you with only a top-level serial number, and you could locate the corresponding shipment, n number of subassemblies and corresponding costs/serials/lots/dates/cert-docs, down through to raw material costs/serials/lots/dates/certifications.

What Does Floor Stock Do And How Do I Enable It?

The Floor Stock feature allows the system to automatically pick parts on the production floor when you go to pick parts for a particular order in your system.

You’ll need to turn on the ‘Enable Floor Stock’ config setting in your environment for this feature to be active.

You’ll then flag that part as ‘floor stock’, which will auto-picked once you pick other parts for the work order!

Quantity available vs. quantity reserved

Quantity Available is QOH (quantity on hand) minus Quantity Reserved.

There are configuration options to determine exactly when and how these inventory quantities are reserved. 1) One such configuration option reserves inventory quantity for open sales orders within the part’s lead time. This methodology is designed to help manage cash flow. With this configuration option turned on, Cetec ERP will not reserve stock for an order until, based on the leadtime, it is impossible to buy stock in time to fulfill that order. This lets you use that stock as demand arises. For instance, if you take the case of a schedule of six orders with monthly releases, Cetec ERP shows the demand for the parts, but waits to reserve the stock until the dates on those last orders approach. Note that these allocation schemes are only relevant for businesses with extremely high volumes. 2) Another configuration is to reserve the quantity once it is picked. 3) The third configuration is to reserve the quantity immediately when the order is placed.

For job shops, make-to-order operations, or manufacturers, Cetec ERP should be configured to either: 1. Reserve all material for an order when the order is created (this methodology relies on valid lead times for all raw material and finished goods in question for the order) or 2. Simply relies on the pick of the part to reserve material for an order only when the material is picked (Cetec ERP will always reserve the material if you pick it.)

If we have 200 QOH of a part, and then the part is updated to a new revision, should it still say 200 QOH? How do I segment quantities of parts with different revisions?

For example, let’s say we have QOH of qty 200 of part BOM01.

Updating BOM01 to a new rev BOM01-A, then setting new rev BOM01-A as the “current” rev - that simple BOM record manipulation will have no effect whatsoever on the inventory record for that Part. It will stay at qty 200.

Understand that there is a difference between an inventory record for a part/item and a BOM record for a part/item. So, when we display QOH=200 for part BOM01, what we really mean is the sum total QOH of all BOM Revs associated with that part, i.e. BOM01 and BOM01-A.

The next obvious question is: if QOH is the sum total of BOM rev qtys, how do I segment and distinguish between qty of one and qty of another? The answer is that we also store “revision” at the bin level. So, if you go to a part record for any part/BOM, then scroll down, you will see that inventory qty is stored in Bins. Each bin layer has a receipt with three fields: date code, lot code, and… revision. So, if you have qty 200 of BOM01, but then you make a rev update and start building BOM01-A, and you build qty 100 of BOM01-A to stock, Cetec ERP will track the BOM01-A rev when you process the build-for-stock order and corresponding receipt into stock. So then when you look up part BOM01 you will see you have QOH=300, but more specifically qty 200 of BOM01 and qty 100 of BOM01-A, and you would see that by looking at the bin layers in inventory.

I have a question regarding inventory counts. I am planning to have a full inventory and I want to include every part number, including the ones that currently have "zero" stock. How can I do that?

For now we do not support the inclusion of parts with 0 QOH in full inventory/cycle count. What we recommend our customers for now is that when you go around your warehouse checking for stock qty based on full inventory/cycle count, you put a sticker next to bins that you are finding in your inventory but not in your system. After every bin has been counted, someone can do a survey of these bins with sticker on them and enter it through the Add Stock (Non PO) button up on the top right side of the screen.

How is inventory average cost calculated in Cetec?

Out PART AVERAGE COST is calculated as follows: (QOH=Quantity On Hand)

(Current QOH x Current Average Cost) + (Receipt Quantity x Receipt Cost) / (QOH + Receipt Quantity)

Example: Current QOH=100 Current Average Cost=$1.25 Receipt Quantity=50 Receipt Cost=$1.45

(100 x $1.25) + (50 x $1.45) / (100+50) = $1.31667 $125.00 + $72.50 / 150 = $1.31667

How does the inventory flow through the system? When is inventory cleared? Does it clear after the final good has shipped?

Inventory is assigned to order when picked. Inventory is backflushed upon shipment/invoice of the finished good.

How does a cycle count know which parts have been included in past cycle counts? Do you have to press SET for bins that did not need inventory adjustment?

Yes, unlike when you work with a full inventory, you have to press SET for every part counted in a cycle count, even if there is no inventory adjustment to record. When you press SET, a “Last Cycle Counted” date is set within the system to ensure that counted parts are withheld from future cycle counts.

How does Cetec ERP choose parts for cycle counts?

Within the parameters you give to a cycle count, it will randomly choose parts and create a cycle count. Then, when you go into a cycle count and complete the count for a part by clicking Set, we change that part’s “Last Cycle Counted” date.

Next time you go into a cycle count, it will look at the parameters given it, and parts to include from those whose “Last Cycle Counted” dates are oldest (i.e. least recent).

For instance, let’s say you have 100 items in your inventory and you count 10 items a day. The first time you do a cycle count, 10 of the parts will have their dates updated. The following day you do a cycle count, Cetec ERP will choose from parts with older dates, those that weren’t updated the day prior. After you go through 10 days/cycle counts, when you make your 11th count you can expect the system to choose the first 10 parts that were counted on cycle count #1 because those are the parts with the oldest dates.

How do I flag RoHS on a top level assembly?

Cetec declares RoHS compliant on a top level assembly depending on its components RoHS flag.

-If all components (both subassembly and raw) are checked ‘yes’ on RoHS, then the BOM will flag yes as RoHS. -If there is just one component (either subassembly or raw) that is either checked ‘no’ or has no declaration of ‘yes’, then the entire BOM is not RoHS declared.

How can a failed cycle count update be fixed?

Correcting quantities on a failed cycle count update can be done as an inventory adjustment. The cycle count can be closed even if parts were not updated. To prevent failed cycle counts, ensure that a part is not scheduled for a cycle count prior to a put away, and avoid moving bins for parts that are in a cycle count.

Does Cetec ERP support landed cost tracking?

Yes, Cetec ERP does support Landed Costing. Here are some brief instructions on how to do so:

First, note that Cetec ERP doesn’t require that you track landed material costs. Because Cetec ERP does support capturing tax and/or freight as separate fields on a PO / PO Line/Receipt, you may always segment PO freight and PO tax amounts explicitly on a vendor invoice.

Alternatively, PO freight and PO tax charges may be lumped into PO receipt material cost, i.e. Landed Cost.

When receiving material in Cetec ERP, the costing information is defaulted from the Vendor Purchase Order; this cost can be overridden at the time of receipt. An option for inflating PO line cost with additional freight and/or tax charges from the PO, i.e. inflating it into the cost of inventory about to be received, an option for “landed cost” will appear on the receiving screen. Note, the option will only appear at Receiving if you turn on Receiving - Enable Landed Cost configuration setting in Admin » Config Settings.

Immediately upon receipt, the general ledger is debited for the inventory value of the receipt (qty received * unit cost) by the total dollar amount received (whether landed/inflated or not). Landed costing lets you treat tax/freight as a part of the cost of goods until they are sold; not entering landed cost of material lets you treat tax/freight as purely an expense.

Does Cetec ERP have min/max inventory capability, safety stock levels, re order points, minimum order quantities?

Yes, Cetec does have that capability.

We call it ROP (re-order point) and MOQ (minimum order qty) and EOQ (economic order qty).

You can set each one of those values on the inventory record of a part’s warehouse record (click the pencil icon at the top left of a part/inventory record next to the Warehouse name).

ROP = the safety stock level; if you dip beneath this level, a signal is sent to MRP to build/buy more. EOQ = the ideal quantity to build/buy; MRP will tell you to build or buy this much more above your ROP when that trigger hits. MOQ = this is a check that, in lieu of a fixed EOQ, makes sure when you add the item to a vendor PO or build-to-stock work order, that it is at least above the MOQ.

Note also that you can run MRP filtered by a “source type” of ROP (as opposed to Supply/Demand).

Can I select a default warehouse location to receive PO against?

There is a configuration setting that drives a default warehouse location for PQuotes. Navigate to ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings and search pquote_default_location. Enter in the two character code in caps (e.g. MN, TX) that represents the warehouse location that you would like to default to, and click Submit.

Are cycle counts arranged by parts or bins?

Cycle counts are arranged by parts and not bins. So for instance, if part ABCEXAMPLE gets included in a cycle count, all bins of ABCEXAMPLE would show up in that cycle count as well.

Parts

Why is the QOH for a part > 0 when I see nothing on shelf?

Quantity on Hand (QOH) refers to the the total quantity of a part within the four corners of your warehouse including the parts that are reserved. The only time that QOH ever changes is when you receive or ship the part, or manually adjust its quantity.

This means that you could find a QOH > 0 while you see 0 part in your warehouse.

Quantity Available (QA) more accurately captures the quantity of a part on a shelf at any given point. QA = QOH - QR.

Why does the system respond slowly when pulling up a part or waterfall?

Loading a part/waterfall may be slow when pulling it up again after an extended period. This happens because several pieces of data may need to re-calculate. However, once this has been done the speed should return to normal. To determine whether this was the cause for a slow load time, bring up the same part/waterfall again, to ensure that the loading time has improved.

When should I use multi-level BOMs? Is there a case to be made for flattening out my BOM structure?

Cetec ERPs flexible build process lets you structure your manufacturing process to fit your needs, including the creation of complex multi-level Bill Of Materials (multi-level BOMs).

For example, if we are building a boat, we could create a single BOM for a boat, with the engine, shell, and wheel house all contained within a single part. Alternatively, we could separate the build processes for the engine, the shell, and the wheel house, and then assemble them into one final boat build process. Both structures are valid, and both will let you build a working boat at the end of the day. But one may be better suited to your needs than another.

If any of the pieces in the build will ever be overbuilt, or stored on stock apart from the top level, then you will want to create a separate BOM structure, i.e. a sub-assembly, for the part. In many cases, set-up time to build a piece is high enough that building more than is needed for a specific job is prudent - controlling that piece of the build as a separate sub-assembly lets you easily overbuild and reduce the impact of the set-up. Additionally, if the sub-assembly is common to several builds, then structuring it as a shared component provides more flexibility and control to the build process.

That said, if the above factors arent present, then leave the build alone and keep your top-level BOM completely flat. The overhead and complexity associated with dividing a manufactured/assembled part into several sub pieces with respective distinct BOM records should be avoided unless there is a specific benefit to managing them as separate.

What users / user roles are allowed to perform inventory adjustments?

Any user with a Manager, Supervisor, or Admin role.

What is the difference is between cross parts and part spec group?

Cross parts simply link parts together, without any other restrictions other than that this part is a reference to that part. Examples include customer part numbers, vendor part numbers, part synonyms, etc.

Part Spec groups let you group parts together arbitrarily and restrict them. Meaning… you can say, e.g. with a part spec group A, that this unique grouping of parts are interchangeable with each other, whereas with this part spec group B, which is a slightly different grouping of parts are interchangeable with each other. What this gives you the power to do is, you could then say, for a single component RAWABC, you can maintain different part spec groupings of approved alternates for component RAWABC. Let’s say on this customer job/BOM, you actually can add Part Spec Group A to the BOM itself (instead of a component part number like you normally would. Then on this other entirely different customer job/BOM that uses the same component, you can add Part Spec Group B to the BOM itself (instead of a component part number like you normally would).

In summary: Cross Parts let you make parts synonyms (alternates) of each other.

Part Spec Groups let you create groups of part synonyms and apply those groups as Approve Alternates per BOM.

What is the difference between QOH/QR/QA?

Quantity on Hand (QOH) refers to the the total quantity of a part within the four corners of your warehouse. The only time that QOH ever changes is when you receive or ship the part, or manually adjust its quantity.

Quantity Available (QA) is QOH - Quantity Reserved (QR).

This means that you could find a QOH > 0 while you see 0 part in your warehouse, and that QA could go below 0.

What is the best way in the system to manage WIP inventory that are issued in bulk amounts?

There are a few options: 1. You can pick the whole set of 5000, and then reduce the pick back to 1000 when you put the other 4000 away. Or 2. you can remove the 5000 from stock and treat it as floor stock. If you go with the second option, you don’t want to pick it on the order either. We generally prefer the first method, unless it’s incidental items that are very low cost.

What does it mean for a bin to be "Locked/Usable"?

Locked/Usable is a bin feature that allows you to still pick parts from a locked bin if necessary to your business needs. In this regard, it follows all of the same functions as a locked bin, except for the fact that it is still “usable”, or able to be picked onto open orders.

What cost records are associated with items/parts in Cetec? When I look at a part's "cost", what am I looking at?

Question: What cost records are associated with items/parts in Cetec? When I look at a part’s “cost”, what am I looking at?

1- fixed part cost (defined on the part Pricing tab on the left side-nav menu of a part). This is useful for purchased components with cost/qty breaks defined per vendor (vendor part cost catalogues can be uploaded in batch in Pricing Maintenance).

2- last buy/built cost. This is a record of the actual cost that the part was most recently purchase/received or built/received at.

3- Inventory rolling average cost. This is a snapshot of the rolling, weight average costs of inventory. At the time of receipt (from a vendor or from an internal build), the average cost value is automatically updated (rolled) based on this calculation: (Current QOH x Current Average Cost) + (Receipt Quantity x Receipt Cost) / (QOH + Receipt Quantity). This cost is leveraged in Average Costing financial postings (only applies if your company operates on Average Cost methodology). If current QOH of the product is zero, the rolling average cost will be $0.00.

4- fixed last resort part cost. This is simply a fixed estimated cost of the part, much like #1 above (fixed part catalogued cost), except that it allows “last buy cost” and “rolling average cost” values to supersede it in “default cost” calculations (see #5 below).

5- “default cost”. This is Cetec’s attempt to automatically grab one of the above four calculated part cost references, and automatically use the value on various screens (e.g. transaction line item cost population, default component pricing on BOM overview, etc.)

6- Rollup BOM estimated cost. This is a cost summation and calculation of every material, labor, overhead, and misc charge the system has on file for the components in the makeup of the product. This is the total “rollup” cost estimate. Note that this is only an estimate, and is based on each components own “default cost” (#5 above) records. Note - a subassembly’s “rollup bom est. cost” will supersede its own “default cost” (#5 above) record as long as it is used and summed up in calculating its impact in parent Rollup BOM estimated cost calculations! This rollup cost value is calculated for you and displayed on the BOM Overview screen

7- fixed “standard cost” for a part, defined on global part record edit screen. Not to be confused with the fixed catalogued part cost defined on left side-nav pricing menu. This cost is leveraged in Standard Costing financial postings (only applies if your company operates on Standard Costing methodology).

8- Actual costs per transaction (e.g. per part Purchase order receipt, per part build-to-stock invoice, etc.). Material costs are logged at actual cost purchased/received and stored on Purchase order receipts. Parts produced on work orders have their material makeup, labor/overhead makeup, outsource cost makeup summed and rolled into the receipt cost of the part built to stock on that work order. These actual costs may be looked up per transaction.

9- Average actual costs on transactions over a period of time. PO Receipt reports and/or invoice reports may be run in Cetec across a certain date range; export the Cost column to excel and perform an historical average (sum of all costs divided by number of rows in the export for the date range defined) cost calculation of all actual invoiced (or received) costs for that product.

Is there an import tool to upload Cross Part reference information (vendor name and vendor part number, customer part number, etc.)?

No. You will need to contact a Cetec ERP expert to help with data migration of cross part references (MFG part numbers, vendor part numbers, customer part numbers, etc.)

Is there a way to track raw components and sub-assemblies used throughout the system?

Please use the Invoice As Used report under SALES » Invoices.

Is there a way to tell which user created a part?

Yes! To see which user created a part number, locate the part number, click Edit on the far left side-nav menu, and scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page. You will find a text blurb indicating who created the part number and when.

Is there a way to show a part is draft or not released and should not be ordered yet?

If the part has never been ordered before, Cetec ERP automatically publish an alert on the quote line that says “New Part being Quoted”. If this happens often, you could require explicit approval of quotes before ordering (via Quote Workflow).

Is there a way to allow putting two receipts of the same part in the same bin?

Under ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings, there is a config variable called “Put Away - Use Suffix For Duplicate Put Away.” Once you turn that on, the system will add a suffix to a bin name every time you try to combine two receipts in one bin.

For instance, if you have an older receipt in bin 001-002-003, and a newer one in bin NEW, instead of preventing the new receipt from being moved to bin 10032017, it will instead create 001-002-003-1. We add the suffix to work around our system limitation (due to our system architecture) to keep the receipts separate. But you can put both receipts into the physical bin 001-002-003, and start using up the quantities from the older receipt first.

Is there a way to add more columns such as Part Description, Vendor, and Vendor Part Number to tables that do not have it? I see the "column +/-" button, but I do not always see those listed as an option.

You can show/hide columns using the “column +/-“ tool, but you can’t add columns that don’t already exist. If there is a spot you need the any of those fields available, let us know and we’ll consider doing the needed development to add it (usually custom requests like these are either given a spot on the product development roadmap, or bid per our hourly rate.)

Is there a way to access a list of lead times by part number?

You can utilize the Parts By Warehouse report’s “Leadtime” column to view lead times by part number. The Parts By Warehouse report can be found in the “Parts” tab under the “Lists” dropdown menu.

If i am looking at a product I normally build, and I want to sell it, I'm wondering what I should mark it up at, and I ask myself: "what does it normally cost us in order to build this product?" - where should I look?

You have three options:

1- check the part records “default cost” value; this value is autopopulated for you on a quote line or order line or PO line when you select a part.

-if someone at your company has a fixed cost defined for the part (via the Pricing tab on the left side-nav of a part screen), that will automatically register is the part’s “default cost”

-if not, the “default cost” value will derive from how much the item actually cost you the most recent time you built/bought it. This is the part’s “last buy cost”. This value is autopopulated for you on a quote line when you select a part if you have the use_last_buy_cost config variable turned ON. – Note, the “last buy cost” value could be misleading, as the “last buy cost” could register in an internal transaction like an RMA receipt, which could be drastically under what the actual cost normally is. (should we exclude this somehow from last buy cost?) i will check on this.

-otherwise, the “default cost” value will derive from the inventory item’s “rolling weighted average” cost. This is only useful if the part has quantity already in inventory; otherwise it will read $0.00 and be useless.

2- check the BOMs current “rollup” cost calculation. This is a cost summation and calculation of every material, labor, overhead, and misc charge the system has on file for the components in the makeup of the product. This is the total “rollup” cost estimate. Note that this is only an estimate, and is based on each components own “default cost” (#5 above) records. Note - a subassembly’s “rollup bom est. cost” will supersede its own “default cost” (#5 above) record insofar as it is used and summed up in calculating its impact in parent Rollup BOM estimated cost calculations! This rollup cost value is calculated for you and displayed on the BOM Overview screen

3- run an invoice report a receipt report for the BOM across a certain date range; export the Cost column to excel and perform an historical average (sum of all costs divided by number of rows in the export for the date range defined) cost calculation of all actual invoiced (or received) costs for that product.

I am looking at an invoice in Cetec ERP. The line item shows the part's "cost" on the invoice (i.e. "unit cost"). Where is this cost coming from?

This depends on whether your company runs on an average cost methodology or actual cost methodology.

By default, Cetec ERP runs Actual costing. If you’re on actual costing, then the invoice line “cost” displayed represents the actual cost of all material, labor, overhead, outsource, etc. incurred to your company as a result of that particular invoice/shipment.

If you’re on average costing, the invoice line “cost” displayed represents the rolling weighted average inventory cost of any material you invoice/shipped plus any additional labor, overhead, outsource, etc.

If you use standard costing, any variances from average costs or actual costs to an items “standard cost” defined on the part will post to a variance account in your financial statements, if you have standard costing configuration turned ON in Cetec ERP.

Note! Before an order is invoiced, the order line item’s “cost” displayed on the line item represents the ESTIMATE cost of the item, not actual. It is only upon invoicing that the item’s ACTUAL cost is posted and logged to the transaction.

How is the "Roll Up Cost" calculated in the BOM overview estimating page, and how is this different than the "Ext Cost" value?

Ext Cost and rollup costs are different things, but they work in tandem with each other on the BOM overview screen in Cetec ERP.

The easiest way to understand is to start with the lowest level “raw” or “purchased” material. This type of material is just purchased and received into stock; it has no possibility of having any value added labor/overhead/outsource rolled into it.

That’s what Ext Cost is: it is simply the record of default cost stored in the system for that part number which is delivered via the Cetec “pricing engine”. The pricing engine is designed to search through hierarchical levels of pricing trying to find something to grab and use as a default cost for the part. First it looks at any standardized fixed/catalogued pricing/costing defined in the Pricing tab on the left side-nav of the part menu; if it can’t find anything there, then it looks for “last buy/build cost” if the use_last_buy_cost config value is turned on; if nothing there, then it looks for average cost in inventory; if nothing there, it looks for a “Last Resort Cost” value on the part profile. If nothing there, then the default / ext. cost for a part number is $0.00.

Rollup cost, however, is only able to be defined on a BOM part. It is a calculated value. It derives from the adding up of six values: 1- Est. Setup on the BOM part; 2- Est. Setup overhead on the BOM part; 3- est Labor on the BOM part; 4- est. overhead on the BOM part, 5- est. outsource/charges on the BOM part, and finally 6- est. rollup material cost for all subcomponents constituent within the BOM itself.

That #6 value there warrants additional explanation on how it is derived. Note carefully that #6 there is NOT simply the ext. Cost (pricing engine delivered) value on the BOM part itself; rather, it is the sum value of constituent component costs.

IF the constituent component is a BOM (i.e. subassembly), it will use the rollup cost of that subBOM in its calculations;

IF the constituent component is not a BOM (I.e. raw/purchased component), it will use the Ext. Cost (delivered from pricing engine) in its calculations. This behavior is consistent and recursive down through the BOM tree.

NOTE: The “cost record” associated with a part number is a value stored with the part record itself; the “rollup cost” for a BOM part number on the other hand is not a stored value, it is a calculated value.

The “cost record” pulls from one of four different possible $ values you can store as a part’s “cost” within a part record: 1- Part Pricing Cost; 2- Last Buy Cost; 3- Average Cost; or 4- Standard Cost. See screenshot below: image

There is a “pricing engine” in the system that will look for a $ value and, if it finds one, it uses that and displays that as the “Cost Record”. It looks first for the Part Pricing Cost, and if it doesn’t find that, it looks for a Last Buy Cost (if you have the “Cost_use_last_buy_cost” config enabled); if it doesn’t find that, it looks for an average cost; if it doesn’t find that, it looks for a Standard cost; and if it can’t find any of those, there is one more field in a part record called “last resort cost” it will look for.

The “material cost” in the Edit BOM screen is simply the sum total of each part number’s “cost record” as delivered via the pricing engine.

The “rollup cost” is entirely different. It is a calculated value. How it is calculated is by recursing down through the BOM and totaling up the labor $ estimate, the overhead $ estimate, any Charges $ estimate, any Setup $ estimate, and finally additionally the total of all component part numbers’ costs inside that BOM. IF the component part number is a subassembly (i.e. if it has a BOM record associated with it), then its Rollup Cost will be used in the overall calculation; otherwise, if the component part number is an actual raw component (i.e. with no BOM record associated), it will use that part number’s “cost record” as delivered by the Pricing Engine in the overall calculation.

How is stock allocated to orders?

Allocation in Cetec is dynamic. You can technically consume any material you want on an order, though the system will guide you to the oldest stock first (depending on single lot requirements, etc.).

On the planning side, projections are based on the earliest work start date (when the material is needed to begin build, not just to ship). The purchasing system then scans through all projected allocations and identifies parts that won’t be available, either in sufficient quantity or at an early enough date. This information is included on a report for purchasing action (either a new PO or an expedite).

How is Avg PO Lead Time calculated?

This is calculated by taking the difference between the PO dock date and PO entry date for all the POs within a specific date range. Then that total is divided by the total number of POs within a specific date range. That date range is set by this config setting “Avg Leadtime - Months To Review”.

How does the system identify reorder points (ROP)? For long lead times, it would be beneficially to run a report so that at the time it needs to be checked on, it gives enough time to order again to get in on time.

Cetec ERP will not identify re-order points for you. You must assign a re-order point (ROP) and an economic order quantity (EOQ) manually to a part record. MRP will then track when inventory levels dip beneath that ROP, and deliver a buy signal to replenish the order.

How does new part creation work in quotes?
  1. You need a pre-existing PRC to add a non-pre-existing Prcpart to a quote.
  2. If the added non-pre-existing Prcpart is a BOM, Cetec ERP creates it there and then.
  3. If the added non-pre-existing Prcpart is not a BOM, Cetec ERP creates it when the quote converts to an order.
How does QR (Quantity Reserved) work in Cetec ERP?

If an order is unscheduled, the order qty is reserved upon order. If an order is scheduled, the order qty is reserved if the shipdate <= today + part leadtime.

At any point in time, qty for an order is also reserved once parts are picked for an order.

Lastly, you can configure Cetec ERP using the config variable, “Reserve Inventory for All Orders,” to reserve the part qty globally upon order entry. This variable is turned off by default in Cetec ERP.

How do you get a total of all the inventory items in my warehouse?

Please navigate to PARTS » List by Bin and filter by warehouse location. To get a total of all inventory items, you can export the report, and sum up the value of all the bins in your warehouse location.

How do you delete a part?

In order to delete a part, please navigate to PARTS » View/Lists » List » [find a part]. Once you do that, click on the ‘edit’ tab on the left-hand side of your screen. When you scroll down to the very bottom of the edit screen, you will see the option to delete the part (The QOH must be 0 before you can delete any part. If your QOH > 0, please take care of the QOH before attempting to delete).

How do you delete a PRC?

To delete a PRC, please navigate to PARTS » PRC List » [select a PRC] and click Search.

The search result will be returned at the bottom of the page. Please click into the PRC you have searched for, and you will see an option to delete there.

How do we assign a vendor to a part number or set preferred vendors for certain parts.

There are a number of ways for you to accomplish this.

1) You could maintain a list of vendors, and their respective costs, per part, on the ‘Pricing’ tab of a part record. Navigate to a part record; the ‘Pricing’ tab is in the left hand nav.

2) You could rely on PO History to get data on preferred vendors. When you click on the blue ‘i’ icon next to a part row, that will drop-down the Part Info report within the interface. Then, navigate to the ‘PO History’ tab. Here you’ll see complete info on vendors you typically buy the part from, specific lead times, costs, and other useful data. You can also see the crosses tab here, where vendor part crosses may be set up.

3) You could leverage Vendor Parts listed under part crosses to designate multiple vendors and vendor part names for a single given part record.

4) You can log preferred vendors in the Part info edit screen.

5) You can also assign a vendor to a specific PRC code (see Parts » PRC List). This assignment can be leveraged on MRP; you’ll see the default vendor there and if you add a line from MRP to a PQuote, the PQuote header will auto-populate with that vendor.

How do I maintain vendor consignment programs in Cetec ERP?
  1. First create a separate warehouse in Cetec ERP. This is your consignment warehouse location.
  2. Then receive parts / part qty into the consignment warehouse at zero cost.
  3. When you need to “buy” and use inventory from consignment, perform inventory adjustment down in the consignment warehouse. Place PO for the parts you need, where vendor (on the PO header) is the consignment vendor receive against that PO into your normal warehouse for the qty adjusted from consignment
  4. Once the parts are received in your normal warehouse, you can use them however you need to fulfill end customer demand.
How do I go about changing parts in an active BOM revision?

First, consider the customer/integrator/end-user requirements. If they require the ability to review all changes before any swap, then you KNOW that a rev roll is required. You will probably wait and use up existing stock as much as possible, and only then flip the switch when you hit acceptable levels. In a situation that controlled, there is nearly always some stock that just gets written off because you can’t make everything come out evenly. However, there are alternative ways of handling this. Assuming that your components are functionally equivalent, we recommend creating a new BOM revision with the new component part and ordering against that new current BOM revision. Then, have your production planner / order entry person swap the new component to the old component, so that the old component is consumed on the Order BOM (from the Order, go to the Production View for the order line, then hit the Order BOM Mgmt link on the left). Note that you can also automate that process more by setting up a Part Spec Group for the new component and the old component, and putting the Part Spec Group on the BOM revision.

How do I get consumption quantities of a part number?

For that purpose I would use the Invoices as Used report under SALES » Invoices.

This list exhaustively captures all the parts that were sold and used to build some other part. Go into the list, change the status to All, and set the Ship Date.

How can I give a user the ability to move parts (move bins) without giving them the Supervisor, Manager, or Admin roles?

To do this, create a role called ‘Part Edit’ by going to Admin » Maintenance » Data Maintenance, click into the ‘Role’ table, and click the Add Record button. This newly created role will already have the proper accesses pre-loaded to it. At this point, assign this role to the appropriate user and they should then be able to move parts from bin to bin (without Supervisor, Manager, or Admin access).

You can use Security by Role to add any role permissions. Go to Admin » Users » Security by Role and search for Can Edit Part. You can grant access by adding a role name or remove access by adding the role name to the ‘Block’ version of the config setting.

How can I check if I have enough inventory to convert a quote to an order before setting a build date?

To check inventory, perform a stock check for a complex assembly.

Click on the assembly part to open it in a new tab. You’ll be able to view both the “build estimate” and the “BOM overview.” The build assembly will show you parts and subassembly in inventory, and will give you estimates.

To drill down into ALL components (including components within subassemblies), head to the “BOM overview.” You can check all part QOH values here to determine what you have on hand to work with.

For part numbers specifically, can I add sub parts under one part number? For example, if we can use different manufacturers, can we cross all the part numbers to one, so we know what inventory to pull from?

Yes. You can maintain this via the Cross Parts feature in Cetec ERP here: How To Manage Part Cross References

Each of our parts will have a drawing or spec sheet. Is there a way to do a bulk upload of files to the Documents page of each part number? Or does this need to be done one by one?

No, it’ll need to be done one by one. There’s no way to program something generic as every Cetec ERP customer will have a different part scheme. This would have to be done as custom work, and it would be pretty involved. For most small/med companies, it will be less expensive to hire a temp and upload & attach them manually to each part/rev.

Does Cetec ERP support a shelf life/expiration date feature?

Yes. Setting the shelf life attribute on a part sets the number of weeks before a part becomes expired. You can then report on this by navigating to PARTS » View/Lists » List By Bin.

It will have two columns named Created On and Expires On. Created On tells you when the part was created, and the Expires On date is the Created On date + shelf life.

Can you send a spreadsheet to suppliers so they can fill in pricing, availability, and lead time and then it comes directly back into the system; and then can easily filter to decide which vendor to purchase necessary parts from?

Yes, you can import vendor pricing via spreadsheet. For docs on this, see here-

Inventory Pricing & Vendor Catalogues

Can you change the name of a part?

You can use the part merge function to change the name of a part.

To do so, you must be an admin or have the role of “part merge.” If you do not have it, please ask someone with the admin role to grant it to you, or ask him/her to do it for you.

To use the part merge function, please navigate to PARTS » View/Lists » List and search for the part. To the far right side of the returned search, you will see a link that says, “Merge.” Clicking on this will take you to the part merge screen.

From here, you just want to put in the name of the new part in the input field, and press Merge. Doing so will transfer over all the part related data while changing the part name to the one you just provided.

Can I edit a part #?

Yes. To edit a part number, first, create a new part number, then “merge” the old part number up into the new part number. This way, you won’t lose any of the data associated with the older part number.

Are Cetec users able to create reminder or placeholder items on a BOM or do all components of a BOM need to have a quantity behind each item?

You can indeed create reminder or placeholder items on a Bill of Materials (BOM) in Cetec ERP. The best way to do this is by adding a non-inventory part to your BOM and utilizing the description line to add any notes.

Production

Will the system identify if a part is pulled from different kits? For example, a reel is used in 3 different kits, does the system identify that its pulled that way?

Yes, if your Kit is modeled as a BOM, we will direct the warehouse picker to go pull material specific to that kit. Furthermore, if any materials are currently in WIP on an order for a Kit, the part record will outline where those materials (i.e. what kits for what orders) are currently being used, where they are in production, etc

Why is an assembly that I built internally costed at x value upon invoicing?

When you process an internal build order, the cost for the bin will be the actual cost (and not the estimated cost) that went into building the assembly.

To chase this down, you would want to go into the receipt screen, click on the PO that it was created from, jump over to the corresponding order, then go to the invoice that was issued from the order.

The Details/Serials screen in invoice is where you want to be if you want to understand how the item was costed.

This page breaks down the actual cost involved in building the assembly including the labor, overhead, the price of the parts that were consumed in the process, etc.

Why is a work order displaying every work location in the system?

A work order will display every work location in the system if it does not have a labor path defined. Once you define its labor path, the work location change pulldown menu will be limited to those work locations in the labor path.

Why does stock orders have work start date at all? Can I default all stock order's work start date to its dock date or ship date?

Even though stock orders do not technically need work start date, Cetec ERP still utilizes the date in some cases (e.g. move to pick queue and waterfall). Therefore this date does matter for stock orders as well.

By default all stock orders are set to have work start date that equal to their ship date. But you can turn on the config variable StockOrder_Default_WorkDate_to_DockDate to make it equal the dock date.

When the invoicing looks at the labor does it pull the actual labor off of the production screen or does it take the estimated labor?

When Cetec ERP processes an invoice, it pulls actual labor, and not estimated labor. We would never recommend a system or process that posted estimated labor to your G/L. To post labor cost at invoicing, before you invoice the order just punch in the work time used on the order. You can do this by either starting and stoping the work time clock on a work order, or by simple punching in the total number of minutes logged to the job (you have to have the supervisor role to do this).

When an ECR or ECO is created is Cetec ERP there a way to prevent, stop, and flag any orders for the effected parts from being released until the ECR/ECO is complete?

Once you link an order to a ECO then you will not be able to move or invoice it.

What should I do when I didn't pick all the components before I created an invoice?

This can be easily fixed. Simply follow these steps: 1) Adjust material cost on the invoice to it should be. 2) Unpick anything that doesn’t belong 3) Reduce the quantity on the material that wasn’t relieved correctly. 4) Zero out the ledger entries for their material reductions

What report shows daily actual production labor values vs estimate labor values?

I would consult these three reports: PRODUCTION » Mgmt » Production By Workcenter PRODUCTION » Mgmt » Production Time By Location and SALES » Invoices » Labor Variance

What is the default unit of leadtime for parts, and can this be changed?

By default, different places in Cetec ERP measure leadtime using weeks or days.

If you would like to use a uniform leadtime unit all throughout the system, we have a config variable enabling you to do that. To change the default, please navigate to ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings » [search for “leadtime_unit”].

The potential values are “0” to use the default setting, “1” to use weeks everywhere, and “2” to use days everywhere.

This will not automatically change the values you had before (e.g. if you had 1 week leadtime using weeks as the leadtime unit, changing the leadtime unit to days will not automatically convert this to 7) so we recommend using caution when making changes to the system.

Also, the leadtime values only takes integers, meaning that if you have the leadtime set to weeks, you cannot enter anything less than 1 or any decimals as a value.

What is the best way to track jobs with customer supplied material?

You can create a PO for $0 and issue it to the job. You can still track jobs with customer supplied material and drive production from a BOM like a normal work order. To do so, just receive components in (without a PO) at zero cost to reflect the acquisition of customer supplied material; this material will be relieved (at zero cost) upon shipment of the order to the customer to reflect the relief of customer supplied inventory.

What does the work location demand report do?

The work location demand report shows you the schedule start date and schedule end date to help you see how long orders are supposed to take. It also gives you the estimated and actual times at work locations on that BOMs specific labor plan. You can filter by work location, customer, and part. You can also see what work location an order is currently in.

What does the "Material Here On" column mean on the Release WH screen?

If you are short material and you have a PO coming next week, for instance, Material Here On tells you, that material is going to be here on this day.

What controls the COC username?

We will show the person who inspected the order. However, there are some conditions:

  • If no one inspected the order, we show the person who moved it out of the inspection ordline status location.
  • If no one moved it out of the inspection ordline status location, we show the QA person for the company.
  • If no QA person, we show the user printing the COC.
What are work centers?

Work centers are useful for managing a shop floor with several production lines. You can assign certain BOMs or finished goods (with respective part routes) to a particular work center, so that work orders for those goods are routed to and may be managed to the appropriate work center.

In ADMIN » Maintenance » Data Maintenance » Workcenter, define and describe the work centers (i.e. production lines) you wish to assign to BOMs/finished-goods and track work orders against.

Orders created for parts with a work center defined will automatically be assigned that work center. You may also manually edit the work order to change which work center the order is assigned to.

To add a new work center inside the Workcenter data table, you would check the Add Record box, click Submit to create a new row, fill in the information, and click Submit once again.

Once you’ve added the work center you want, you can assign each part or an order line to a particular work center.

To set a work center for a part, please go into the part screen, then click on Maint/COCs to the left side. Once you are inside the screen, select the work center that you want to assign to the part and click Submit.

To set a work center for an order line, please go into the sales order screen, then click on Edit to the left side. In there you can assign order lines to different work centers.

What are quality alerts? How do they work?

Heres a video with more info - How To Publish Quality Alerts on Work Orders

We have RMAs the customer takes a credit for and they don't want the assembly returned after repair. We want the assembly to be completed/received into our warehouse once complete. How can we create a work order for this?

In the header of the RMA, check the box next to “Rework to Stock?” Then click the orange Update button.

Tracking rework labor and material

Regarding tracking the labor - three options:

  1. You could create an entirely new work order and track all rework time separately there.
  2. You could split the work order into a new order line item and track rework time separately there.
  3. You could keep everything in the same work order, and create “re-work” work locations for each work location in ADMIN » Data Maintenance » OrdlineStatus. Then, to track re-work labor, click the link next to Work Location Group. This will pop up a screen where a user with the Supervisor or Admin privilege can move the work order to any work location, even those that are not defined in your part path. So you would select the re-work location, either a catch-all re-work work location or a re-work location specific to the machine.

Regarding tracking the material, same as above, three options:

  1. You could create an entirely new work order and track all rework time and material separately there.
  2. You could split the work order into a new order line item and track everything there.
  3. You could keep everything in the same work order, and use the “part request” feature to request and track rework material, and define “reason code” for why you need new material for re-work (e.g. “scrap” is a common reason code). The material cost will still roll up into total cost for the work order. But if you need to, you will be able to look at the part request reports to see what material was requested as rework for which orders.

Our recommendation is strongly to opt for option #3 on both fronts, labor and material.

Tracking consumables

Cetec ERP handles consumables, such as saw blades that are continually “used up” on the shop floor, in a couple of different features. We see the need as maintaining some kind of kanban on the consumable to ensure you always have enough on hand to fulfill an order. In the instance of a saw blade that dulls over time: purchase saw blades, receive them into inventory, then maintain an ROP (re-order point) on the item. When a blade dulls, go into the system and adjust the inventory down by one item. When the quantity level for the blades drops below ROP, Cetec ERP will notify purchasing to buy more.

Over-picking

By default Cetec ERP does not allow you to over-pick. We do have a configuration option, however, that you can turn on/off at any time to allow over-picking. If you want to allow overpick be sure this config setting is set to 0 part_pick_forbid_overpick.

My Pick Parts screen loads slowly. Is there any way I could get it it load faster?

Try turning OFF the config setting “Warn if inventory pick is Not from oldest FIFO Bin” if you don’t really need it turned on. This could help speed up the load time of the pick parts screen 2x.

Labor tracking

Cetec ERP lets you set up labor plans (i.e. labor path, build path, router) while simultaneously detailing the labor cost estimate associated with a labor plan. You can formulate a router, a labor time estimate, and labor cost estimate in one simple process.

Labor plans are maintained per BOM revision. You can modify a BOMs labor plan in one of three different places in Cetec ERP: 1. On the BOM edit screen (Parts » Views/Lists » List » (select part/BOM) » Labor Plan (side-nav, scroll to bottom left); 2. On a BOM Quote // BOM Worksheet; 3. On a work order.

The labor plan is a permanent association with the BOM. If you change a labor plan for a BOM in any of the above three contexts, it will register that change across the other two.

Important Notes / Caveats: Cetec ERP does save records of originally quoted labor costs which pass on to the order as labor cost, and saves originally quoted labor estimates that pass on to the work order (this originally quoted labor estimate is what displays as the actual // estimate field on the work order, so you can track actual labor against what the estimate was at the time of order placement.) An update to a BOMs labor plan, therefore, will not overwrite this originally recorded labor estimate for an order. Note that you do NOT have visibility to the labor plan as it was originally formulated at the time of order placement; you only have visibility to what the total labor estimate was.

Note that if you are quoting a BOM which already has a permanent labor plan / labor estimated associated with it, but you do not provide a labor estimate (or your labor estimate is 0) - Cetec ERP will pull the BOMs existing labor estimate over to your order at the time of conversion from quote to order.

Kitting Scenario: What must a Cetec user do to adjust the qty without scrapping the material if parts have already been picked?

To make the adjustment, the team must dekit material. Then, edit the qty needed on the order, then repick the material to the appropriate qty.

Is there a way to receive finished parts into inventory when more parts were made than are needed for the specific customer job / work order?

Yes! In this situation, we recommend the following process:

1- Make sure you set the pick qty of raw/sub material on the customer work order to only the amount which is being consumed on that work order;

2- Next, simply create a new “build to stock” work order (via Production » Orders » Build To Stock). When you create the build-to-stock work order, set the Qty equal to the amount of the overage you built. You can even set a fake/internal “customer PO” field to reference the original job that the overage came from. Then, process the build-stock order, pick qty of the raw/sub material according to only the amount which is being consumed on the build-to-stock work order for the overage. Complete/receive the overage build-to-stock work order to register the overage finished product into inventory.

Is there a way to filter when kitting/pulling inventory so that it will show ALL locations where parts are, instead of the location that has the amount needed?

Yes. The Pick Parts screen will suggest that you pick based on FIFO. However, we will not enforce it. Youll be able to see ALL bin locations where the part exists and pick from any one of them.

Invoicing an order that is tracking labor

Cetec ERP intentionally allows for invoicing an order that is tracking labor - imagine a rush shipment, and some user forgot to log off.

Instead, we throw a warning to notify the user that labor is still being tracked.

To adjust labor time after invoice, do so via View Work report. To adjust labor cost after invoice, do so via invoice edit screen (labor cost field).

I have invoiced an order while one of my users was still logged into a job tracking labor! How do I fix it?

In this case, the system will not force block invoicing. Instead it alerts the user attempting the invoice. This is done intentionally - imagine a rush shipment that needs to leave your warehouse, but some user did not log off job.

To adjust labor time after invoice, do so via View Work report. To adjust labor cost after invoice, do so via invoice edit screen (labor cost field).

How is overhead rate calculated?

Overhead rate is an hourly rate. The value you put into the overhead config setting will be multiplied by the number of hours you log on an order. This gives the orders overhead rate.

How does the work location "Partial Move" function work?

The partial move button is primarily for adding a note to the work order showing you moved a partial qty. If you make a note when you partially move qty, it will show up below the start work button on the work order screen and permanently under the comments tab. The best way to track actual quantities that are done first would be to split the line. You would then be able to complete those qtys separately. In order to have the permissions to do partial moves, you either need Admin permissions or add the Production Only role to the Security by Role setting “Can Change Order Location Group,” which will make it so the locations show up in the select box.

How does the shortage report work? How is that customized?

The shortage report is a real-time reporting tool that identifies work orders that will be unavailable as of the Ship Date for that order (due to unavailability of components or subassemblies that comprise the top level part for the order). It allows a user to drill into why a work order will be late given current demand signals and supply levels. Users can also filter and export the report to Excel.

How does Orders W/Need work?

You can access the Orders With Need data in two ways:

  1. Go to PARTS View/Lists [Choose a part] Activity+ Orders W/Need from the left side-navigation menu.
  2. If there are any orders with need for the part, they will display as links on the receiving screen upon the receipt of a relevant part.

The Orders W/Need list displays a subset of the Open Orders list. Here are the rules for determining what orders get included in Orders W/Need:

The system first looks at all open orders for part X (for stock orders, part X is the “as sold” part; for build orders, part X is the “as used” part)

A Stock Order for part X as sold has a quantity need if (all these conditions must be met):

  1. The order’s ship date is today, or is in the past.
  2. Qty set to ship is greater than 0.
  3. Qty set to ship has not yet been fully picked.

A Build Order for component part X as used has a quantity need if (all these conditions must be met):

  1. The order’s work start date is today, or is in the past.
  2. Order balance due of top-level part * component qty per top is greater than 0.
  3. Order balance due of top-level part * component qty per top has not yet been fully picked.

Then, for all orders that meet the above conditions, the system then sums up: the Qty set to ship for all Stock orders + the Order balance due of top-level part *component qty per top of all Build orders

If that number is greater than the quantity on hand in inventory (minus any material that has been received in today), then all orders contributing to this quantity will get logged to Orders W/Need (as either orders as sold for stock or orders as used in BOM orders).

How does Cetec ERP help prevent wasting product?

There are several ways to handle these scenarios in Cetec ERP, both proactive and reactive, to support a dynamic manufacturing environment. Let’s use the following example to illustrate:

1 sheet of raw metal (RAWABC) can produce 10 units of finished product (SUB200). BOM Definition for Qty 1 of SUB200 RAWABC = 0.1 (qty per top) You receive an order for 8 units of SUB200.

Material handling The order is released to warehouse for 8 units of SUB200. This will alert the warehouse user to pick qty 0.8 sheets of material. It’s impossible to physically pull 0.8 units of material, so the warehouse user records an “overpick” of qty 1. Then, the material will be taken and cut for the order and the remainder put back into stock (via Dekitting).

Overbuilding If you want to go ahead and use the remaining 0.2 units of raw material to produce 2 additional units of SUB200, you’ll need to create a separate “build for stock” work order to process those items. In fact, if overbuilding product is a common scenario, you may want to consider processing ALL work orders as build for stock, and processing all sales orders as “stock” transactions, by which you pull finished goods in stock off the shelf to fulfill orders. That way you can overbuild if and when you need.

Here’s another variation of how to handle a similar situation: Top level assembly TLA12345 requires 7 units of “make item” SUB200 1 sheet of raw metal (RAWABC) can produce 10 units of finished product (SUB200). BOM Definition for Qty 1 of SUB200 RAWABC = 0.1 (qty per top) You receive an order for 1 units of TLA12345, which creates a suborder for qty 7 of SUB200.

The scenario fits exactly the models described above, with one exception. If you want to overbuild the SUB200 parts, i.e. to build all 10 SUB200 parts instead of the qty 7 required, make sure you manually edit the suborder qty from qty 7 up to qty 10.

Product Management This is the preventative, proactive solution that may assist some companies in planning and process control upstream from production. The basic premise for this method is that you already have metal pieces cut and in stock to satisfy the order for qty 7 metal pieces. The reason you already have them in stock is because those metal pieces have an ROP (re-order point) that is strategically set by product management and purchasing to drive the production of optimal levels of metal pieces to have on hand in order to fulfill customer demand. This essentially represents the attempt to get a better handle on the overbuilding your shop floor is able to get away with due to existing customer demand. The ultimate solution is to better model customer demand to drive ROP levels to drive strategic build-for-stock programs for the metal pieces.

Standard Packaging, Minimum Order Quantities (MOQ), and Excess Material Minimums Often in a job shop environment or custom manufacturing, strategic product management isn’t an option, and as a small business you may need to protect yourself against eating material cost due to this type of scenario. To address this, you can go to a part record and set Standard Package (i.e. material must be ordered in bundles of x many units) and MOQ (i.e. there must be at least x many units ordered). Any parts quoted with Standard Package or MOQ defined will publish an alert to the quote. Furthermore, when quoting a BOM, you can also define Excess Material Minimum values (which will be pulled from MOQ if it already exists on the part) and choose whether to eat cost or inflate the cost of the item.

For example, per the example at the very top of this FAQ, you could set the following parameters on the respective part records:

std pk. for SUB200 = 10 MOQ for SUB200 = 10

MOQ for RAWABC = 1 Excess Material Min for RAWABC = 1

Be sure to set the “quote_enforce_qty_min_mult” configuration option in Admin » Config Settings!

How do you set labor rate in the system?

Cetec ERP offers variables and settings at many levels for controlling labor rate.

In general, the more specific labor settings will override and takes precedence over the more general ones.

From the most generic to the most specific, you can set the labor rates by going to:

(most generic)

  1. ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings » [search for “rate”]. The variables “Labor Rate” and “Overhead Rate” control the most generic rate for calculating labor and overhead.

  2. ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings » [search for “rate”]. The variables “Labor Rate - (warehouse code)” and “Overhead Rate - (warehouse code)” control warehouse specific rate for calculating labor and overhead.

  3. ADMIN » Maintenance » Data Maintenance » OrdlineStatus. Controls work location specific rate for calculating labor and overhead.

  4. ADMIN » Users » Users » [select relevant user ID] » User Specific Labor Rate (Cost). Controls user specific rate for calculating labor. (most specific)

How do scrap and miscount requests impact the system? Will it automatically debit the system? Will it flag the cycle count? Can I put some sort of control over who enters these requests? There are errors with this now.

Yes, the part request module handles all of this very well. Please see the following support documentation to learn more: Shop Floor & Scrap - scroll to bottom of page.

How To Manage Scrap In Cetec ERP

How do NRE charges work in BOM quoting?

Check out our documentation on quoting tooling costs on a job/BOM - BOM Tooling Cost - scroll toward the bottom of the page.

How do I track overhead / indirect labor in Cetec ERP?

If you have overhead defined (define company wide labor/overhead rate in Admin » Config Settings, and rates per work location in Admin » Maintenance » Data Maintenance » OrdlineStatus), you can log time as “overhead only” with a checkbox on the labor report. Otherwise, work time logged at a work location will track both the direct labor rate and the overhead rate simultaneously to cost the total labor/overhead on the order.

How do I track material movement across the shop floor?

As material moves through the floor, you can track movement of physical pieces of material each time you update the work location.

Use the overall work location status as the tailing location to track where the caboose is, i.e. where the remaining material on order is located.

Then, click Start Work to start tracking work at any work location in your job router. Note that you can track simultaneous work at different work locations, and after each time you Stop Work, you can track the number of pieces completed. This enables one piece flow tracking methodology. For an overview of material movement (i.e. piece movement) across the shop floor, check out the Production » Mgmt » View Work report.

The last piece will still remain at the tailing location to show you how far away you are from shipping the order.

As jobs separate across the floor with work time, you may have to make a decision as to whether to ship partially/separately. The best practice is to split the work order into two separate line items as early as you get an inkling that you want to ship partially. If its a last second split, Cetec ERP does support shipping partially and leaving remaining material on backorder. Note: make sure you have the order_show_piece_complete_with_time configuration option turned on!

How do I set up a SG&A rate?

This is set up via the config settings “sga_rate” and “sga_rate_overhead”. They should be set as multipliers. For instance, if you were looking for a 20% SGA rate, you would set the field to “1.2”. You can view the SG&A total on the BOM worksheets; it is used only for estimating purposes.

How do I look for workorders by creation date?

This is simple to do on the Production Order list! Navigate to Production> Orders> Production Order List. Set the date type filter to ‘Ordered On Date’, and then enter the desired date range. You can also filter by Ordered On Date on the Sales Order List. To get to the Sales Order List navigate to Sales> Orders> Order list.

How do I edit the purchase lead time for a part?

To edit the lead time on a part, navigate to the part record “View” tab. Scroll down to the particular warehouse in which the part’s activity resides, and click the pencil icon. From there, a pop-up screen will populate where you will be able to enter the lead time (standard lead time in Cetec is measured by weeks).

Does this ERP system encompass design, product planning tools (engineering ECO's, schematics)? Please explain.

For design and engineering, Cetec ERP customers typically use CAD or SolidWorks or another graphics platform. Engineering will attach those CAD or SolidWorks (or other schematics files) files to the appropriate business object in Cetec ERP (e.g. a quote, or a BOM revision) which will flow through as “related documents” across the entire transaction flow, e.g. from quote to work order to invoice, can be pulled up on the shop floor at any time, etc.

The system does support maintenance of BOM material and labor revisions, rev rolls, controlled and collaborative ECO process and controlling the ripple through of an ECO. Cetec ERP is very robust for these engineering requirements.

Does Cetec ERP have the ability to set a scrap rate?

Please review our documentation on anticipated versus incidental scrap: Shop floor scrap tracking - scroll all the way down the page.

Does Cetec ERP have a way to generate a Bill of Lading?

Yes! To generate a Bill of Lading navigate to your sales order and click into the documents section on the left hand side of the screen. There will be a section in documents that is called Generated/Related Documents. The Bill of Lading document will be under that header.

Can users log in to multiple jobs at the same time?

Yes, users with the “Supervisor” role may; regular production users may not.

Can the system handle kanban?

Yes. See relevant how-to video here - https://vimeo.com/132829992

Can labor estimates on a BOM be done per revision?

Yes. In Cetec ERP, labor estimates can be maintained per BOM and per revision. Labor can be tracked against work orders as actual time, or you can apply the labor estimate at invoicing to apply labor cost.

Can a quality control personnel clock in to multiple jobs?

If the QC employee has a Manager and/or Supervisor role, then he is allowed to log time to multiple work orders. If not, he is limited to log time into one work order at a time. Clocking into one work order when he is still clocked in to another work order will kick him out of the older work order.

Can I get my Workorder COC after invoicing?

Yes you can! Go to the order by clicking on the order link on the left hand menu at the bottom. Then click into the blue link on the line that you want and then click into the documents tab. It will list the C.O.C. and you can print the C.O.C. again.

Purchasing

Will the system have the ability to bypass certain requirements on the buyers report? For example, say a part is due on the fifth, but I know it will be late and come in on the eighth. Can I prevent it from showing up on the buyers report?

Yes. You can ignore items on the Buy Report (MRP).

Why is "Cancel Receipt" function disabled (i.e. grayed out)?

You can cancel a receipt by clicking the “Cancel Receipt” link in the left side navigation area. The cancel receipt function will be disabled (i.e. grayed out) if any of the following conditions are met:

  • If the parts on the receipt have been picked for an order.
  • If there isn’t a PO line associated to the receipt.
  • If the receipt has been changed on the bin level (e.g. an inventory/cost adjustment) (for cost adjustment, receipt cancel block only applies to non-average costing customers)
  • If the receipt exists on a paid voucher.
  • If the receipt is from an internal PO - ‘uninvoice’ the linked internal work order to ‘undo’ the receipt of the finished goods inventory.

Canceling a receipt removes the receipt from a voucher if it is on one, removes the receipt from the bin in inventory, reduces inventory, removes the receipt, and increases the open quantity on the PO line by the receipt quantity.

What is the recommended procedure for canceling a backorder?

If the line was not partially received: From the PO screen, please navigate to the Edit View by clicking on the Edit link from the left side navigation menu. From here, check the Drop checkbox next to the lines you want to cancel, and click on Update.

If the line was partially received: From the PO screen, please navigate to the Edit View by clicking on the Edit link from the left side navigation menu. From here, change the Qty Open to 0 on the lines you want to cancel, and click on Update. This will close the line, and if that were the last remaining line on the PO, the PO header as well.

What is the difference between 'lite' and 'standard' mode in the MRP module?

The MRP lite only displays suggested buy quantities based on the net material amount due based on total open demand for material against total open supply of material, i.e. completely ignoring any consideration of the currently assigned Dates on these demand signals (sales orders) or supply signals (purchase orders).

What is the SVOP report and how is it derived in the system?

“SVOP” stands for Sales Value Of Production. In Cetec ERP, the SVOP value is derived from this formula: SVOP = Total resale - Out of stock + Into stock Total resale = Resale of invoices sold Out of stock = BOMs shipped from stock Into stock = Intercompany closed orders

What is the Ext. Vendor ID for inside the vendor header?

This field is for our legacy customers who transferred over to Cetec ERP to use. This can safely be ignored by most of Cetec ERP users.

What is the 1099 checkbox for inside the vendor header?

The 1099 checkbox in vendor header is to mark vendors for which you have to issue the 1099 tax form. Inside the Vendor list, you can filter the list to display only the vendors that have this box checked.

What fields are editable when I reopen a closed vendor return?

Reopening a closed vendor return will allow you to edit any bonus columns that you have created for the Vendor Return, the Description field, and the Comments field. By design, no changes to the vendor return can be made which would affect your ledger or inventory.

What does the Days Early column on the PO list indicate?

The Days Early Column on the PO list compares the PO Dock Date to the need date of the first order needing this part:

If the first order needing this part is a Build order, then need date = work start date If the first order needing this part is a Stock order, then need date = ship date

You can also make the Stock orders use the Dock Date by turning on the config variable, “StockOrder_Default_WorkDate_to_DockDate.”

What do I have to do in order to require an approval before a PQuote can be converted into a PO?

Please navigate to ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings and search for “approval.”

You want to turn off (meaning, give it a value of 0 or have no value in there at all) pquote_no_approval_required and then turn on PQuote_Approval_Anyone_If_Under_Value by giving it a dollar amount (without the $ sign), or, if the dollar amount does not matter, put in 0.01 so that every PQuote entered would require an approval.

What data do the YTD Spent and PO Activity columns in the Vendor List capture?
  1. YTD Spent - Paid vouchers - debit memos for the fiscal year.
  2. PO Activity - For the date range in the header, the sum of all values for the PO lines entered in that period (unit_cost * orig_orderqty).
What are some controls around approving PQuotes?

Only those users with the Purchasing or PQuote Approval role will be able to approve PQuotes.

If you want to change this and allow only those users with the role PQuote Approval to approve PQuotes, then you have to find a config variable under ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings and give the variable PQuote_Approval_Anyone_If_Under_Value a numeric value.

For any PQuote whose total is above the specified amount, the PQuote Approval role will be required to approve the PQuote. Alternatively, if you want every PQuote to be approved, you can give PQuote_Approval_Anyone_If_Under_Value a very small numeric value such as 0.01 and it will require every PQuote to be approved first in effect.

Returning rejected material to vendor

You can use the Vendor Returns feature in Cetec ERP!

Check out the how-to tutorial for vendor returns here:

How To Process Vendor Returns

On the MRP, if we ignore some parts because we know what the issues is, will the parts come back to the MRP after a few days?

Yes, the parts will come back if/when you ‘Refresh’ MRP. If you want to remove the parts from MRP with more permanence, then you need to adjust whatever supply/demand date or signal is driving the purchasing signal (e.g. push the date out on the PO, etc.)

Is there a report to run for purchasing requirements? If not, what is the process for defining what we need to purchase? Can I run a report specifically for long lead time parts to avoid lead time problems?

Yes. Please see our article on MRP for more information: click to read

In MRP, the vendor filter's dropdown menu changes the content automatically. What's going on?

Inside of each MRP rows you will see a vendor column. This column displays the last vendor from which the part was purchased (if there is no vendor data, it will say “unassigned”). Only the vendors listed in that column is displayed in the Vendors dropdown menu. This is because the vendor dropdown menu exists to filter the pre-existing MRP data.

I want to breakdown a purchase quote and send to appropriate individuals so they dont have to send the whole quote to each vendor.

You will do this via RFQs, i.e. pQuotes in Cetec ERP. See following doc for how to process pQuotes - How To Enter RFQs and POs

I have a part ABCSAMPLE's Re-order Point set to be > 0. I see 0 ABCSAMPLE on the shelf, but ABCSAMPLE is not appearing on MRP. Why is that?

There are two reasons why MRP would show any part to be purchased. 1. Supply/Demand and 2. ROP. If ROP > QOH at any given point, then a signal is sent out MRP.

Quantity on Hand (QOH) refers to the the total quantity of a part within the four corners of your warehouse including the parts that are reserved. The only time that QOH ever changes is when you receive or ship the part, or manually adjust its quantity.

This means that you could find a QOH > 0 while you see 0 part in your warehouse.

We handle QOH this way because at any point in time a picked or reserved part could be canceled and be put back on shelf. So until the picked/reserved quantity are shipped out, you cannot be sure that you would need to purchase more of ABCSAMPLE.

I have a closed PO. I reopened the PO, but only my PO header re-opened. My PO lines stayed closed. How do I reopen my PO lines?

We let you reopen a closed PO so you can add new lines on it (under the same authorized PO). But that’s not supposed to reopen all the lines - that might cause some chaos if you were just trying to add another line to an otherwise closed PO (the lines might be closed because they were received, or the user might have closed them because they were invalid, etc).

So, to reopen a PO AND reopen PO lines, simply add the lines as new lines to the newly open PO.

How does the system calculate on-time requirements for vendors? Can reports be run to track this instead of doing everything manually?

Yes. Cetec ERP tracks receipt date against the commit date on POs from vendors to generate Vendor Performance reports.

How do you use the Economic Order Quantity?

The EOQ works in conjunction with the ROP (reorder point) to determine the suggested buy quantity in Cetec ERP. You can edit both the EOQ and the ROP inside the warehouse profile of the part screen.

Once a part’s QOH (Quantity on Hand) falls below the ROP, the part will show up on MRP. This is the equation that Cetec ERP uses to come up with the suggested buy quantity: ROP - QOH + EOQ.

Inside of ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings, you can turn on the variable ROP Buy Qty EOQ Only in order to make the suggested buy quantity equal the EOQ.

How do you enter freight expenses for a purchase order?

If you are aware of the freight expense at the time of creating a PO, please enter the amount on the PO as a note.

Once you find out what the freight expense will be, please enter that amount in the Break Down area of the voucher, select the appropriate general ledger account. Not that doing this will not retroactively update the PO.

If you really need to add the freight expense on the voucher, you could add it as a non-inventory line as well.

How do I make purchases that have no inventory implications?

If you want to create a Purchase Order to track your purchase… If you want to create a Purchase Order (PO) to track your purchase, then you have to create a Prcpart to use on the PO. This part does not have to be a unique part to represent the good you are buying; essentially, all this part is doing is working as a placeholder to capture the purchase cost. So if you have a generic part, you can use that.

Add this part to a PO, and inside the Edit screen of a PO, make sure that the Non-Inventory? checkbox is checked. This tells the system that the PO line should not impact inventory in any way. Comment 1, Comment 2, and Source Comments External fields in the PO Edit screen can also be used capture unique information about your purchase.

Afterwards, simply voucher these PO lines to close them and to pay your vendor.

If you do not care to create a Purchase Order to track purchase… If you do not need additional traceability provided by creating a PO for your purchase, then you can skip the whole PO and voucher it instead. So for instance, if you are getting plumbing services, you can make the voucher out to the plumber, add a split for the service, and proceed to pay the plumber.

How do I cancel a receipt if a bin has been split?

To cancel a receipt with a split bin you have to move the qty back to the original bin. For example if you have two bins for PRT2 and one is NEW and the other is NEW-1 you would need to consolidate the qty to NEW as it was the original bin. To do this set the qty for NEW-1 to 0 with an inventory adjustment. Then adjust NEW to your full qty. This will allow you to cancel the receipt. NOTE: This process only works if none of the inventory has been shipped yet.

How can you make a vendor inactive?

To deactivate a vendor, use the “delete” function on the vendor edit screen. Navigate to PURCHASING » Vendors » Vendor List. Then choose a vendor. When you go into the vendor header, you will see the Delete button next to the Update button. Clicking that will delete the vendor and remove them from appearing on any vendor selection field in the system.

Note, Cetec ERP never actually “deletes” anything from the system permenantly; we simply inactivate the record, preserving any associated historical data, and allowing the vendor record ultimately to be recoverable if needed, e.g. if accidentally deleted.

How can I capture a discount on a PO?

There are three options here. You can: 1) Lower the price on the PO to capture the discounted cost. 2) Reduce the price when you voucher the PO. The first is better if it’s recurring discount, i.e. something you’ll get in the future. You’ll want to see it as last buy cost. 3) For an early pay discount, you can add this into data maintenance ‘9TERMs’. Set the discount percent, and the number of days you have to receive the discount.

Grading vendors

Use Cetec ERP’s vendor evaluation report to grade your vendors on on-time performance. To account for modified PO dates, you can compare dock date or original dock date. Original dock date is what the vendor PO commit date was when it was entered; dock date is the one you update from the edit screen.

Correcting PO or receipt prices

There are times when prices of materials on vendor’s bill does not match the prices you had on the corresponding purchase order or receipt.

To correct this, you have to determine which price is correct. If the receipt/PO price is correct, contact your vendor and request another invoice with the correct prices, or request that your vendor write off the discrepancy.

If the PO receipt prices are incorrect, then you have to adjust the PO receipt price to the correct price you actually received the goods in at. One way of doing this is to cancel the receipt and re-process the receipt altogether.

Alternatively, if your received goods are in inventory and have not yet been shipped out on an order, you can go to the part, find the “bin-level”, i.e. receipt level cost in your warehouse info, make an inventory adjustment with reason code to adjust the receipt cost of that part. That adjustment will propagate to the part’s average cost, and will then be appropriately costed when it is used on any BOMs or assemblies in the future.

If your received goods have already been used and shipped out on an order, you will need to the Sales History for the part, find the invoice the goods were sent out on, edit that invoice, and adjust the material cost therein.

Can you make the ROP to work off of different part values when using the MRP?

Yes, there is a config variable called ‘rop_against’. The options are ‘avail’, ‘qoh’, ‘qoh and qoo’, and ‘avail and qoo’.

While ROP works off of a part’s QOH by default, by setting this config variable value to one of the values indicated above you can make the ROP work off of some other part value.

Can the system generate a monthly receiving report to know whats scheduled to be received in?

Yes. Simply sort the open POs report by commit date.

Can I attach prints to part numbers to ensure accuracy in purchasing products from vendors? This would help eliminate getting the wrong parts.

Yes. You can attach prints or documents of any file type to part records via the document management tool.

Quality

Is there a way to handle non-conformant items, such as early shipments, wrong parts, wrong quantities, quality issues, etc.? If I use a spreadsheet now, can I integrate that into the ERP and track/log it on there?

Yes. The NCR module is fully integrated. When you fail a receiving inspection or inspection on the shop floor, an NCR is automatically generated. For more information on NCRs, read more here: Non-Conformance Reporting in Cloud ERP

How are failure codes setup, categorized, and how do they work within the process?

You can set up and maintain your own list of failure codes, which may be assigned to any component failures that occur when you log an inspection on a work order.

Does Cetec ERP contain any canned validation protocols to help solve 21 CFR 11 for medical device companies facing FDA audit requirements for software validation?

Cetec ERP is a true cloud/SaaS manufacturing business platform. Our program has numerous unit and functional tests that can test input and record output for validation purposes, tests which may be run on any regular or recurring basis.

However, the exact content of which modules, functions, and fields should be tested, logged, and validated is something determined by your auditor. Our recommendation will be to acquire an external FDA consulting and auditing resource that can assist you with CFR part 11. Im assuming you already have that lined up, but to reiterate, though our software will provide the platform and the tools to streamline compliance, we are not a superb consulting resource for the actual FDA certification body.

Frequency of triggering revalidation could be adjusted. Continuous Validation also possible (see this article: https://pharmaceuticalcommerce.com/information-technology/cloud-based-systems-address-fda-validation-requirements/)

Receiving

Will we continue to use the receive dates and the date the invoice was received in the mail?

Regarding receiving:
The system will automatically default the receipt date as the System DateTime once you click the Receive button. You can change this date. Note however that changing the receipt date on a receipt will only affect the general ledger (i.e. financial reporting); the date change will NOT change the inventory activity reporting. Regarding billing/vouchering: Heres an outline of voucher dates and how they are supposed to work entered on == date you created the voucher (uneditable), primarily only used for reference. received on == date you received the bill in the mail (editable), primarily only used for reference. invoice date == date on bill from vendor, drives Aging, A/P summary for vendor payments. pay by == leveraged in A/P summary. Once you enter the invoice date, the pay by date defaults based on: vendor terms vendor pay at days (override to the terms) or manually on the field

Why can I receive more parts than what my PO called for?

This has to do with a config setting called PO Line qty over percentage allowed. This config setting set to its default (-1) allows the qty received on a PO line to be greater than the qty of the PO line itself.

If you set the configuration setting “PO Line qty over percentage allowed” to “0”, you will see a pop-up warning if you try to receive a qty greater than the PO line qty reading “Qty too high to receive! Check config setting or adjust qty”.

Where do the inspection notes that you enter when receiving parts appear?

Simply navigate to WAREHOUSE » Receiving » Incoming Inspection. You can filter and display all inspection notes you have entered by looking at the comments column.

What should I do when I accidentally receive an Invoice that was linked to an internal order?

This can be easily fixed. Simply follow these steps: 1) Reopen the PO 2) Inventory adjust down the dup receipt 3) If there is a ledger entry for the PO receipt, set the values to 0 4) If there is a ledger entry for the inventory adjustment to cancel the receipt, set the values to 0 5) Invoice the order 6) If the goods were consumed/shipped, get correct cost from the PO and fix the cost on any related invoices.

What happens to the rejected quantity when receiving a shipment?

Rejected quantity is logged with the inspection data, and all incoming inspection data can be reviewed.

Sometimes you may want to receive the rejected quatity; sometimes not. Whatever the intention is, quantity you type into the quantity field will be received.

If you want to receive the rejected quantity but segregate it, please do it as a separate receipt so that it can be put away to some type of non-conformance bin.

Is there any way to change the default bin (NEW) to which parts are received?

No, there is not a way to do this in Cetec ERP.

Is it possible to add the vendor part number and part description to the Receiver page so the receiving person can compare to a Packing List sent by the vendor?

The part description will show to alert the receiving person. Cetec ERP doesn’t display vendor part number (cross part reference), because when the PO comes in from the vendor to the receiving clerk, the receiving clerk just pulls up the PO number and Cetec ERP auto-populates the part number, cost, and everything.

How/when does the DTS inspection requirement reset?

The DTS inspection requirement defined in your config settings will reset for the part and vendor when there is a failed inspection. All progress will be lost and the total required inspection number will have to be fulfilled in total.

How do I set universal Incoming Inspection Instructions across all acts of receiving?

Navigate to Admin –> Config Settings –> Config Settings. In the “Name”, search “Incoming Inspection Instructions”. In the “Value” box, enter the instructions that you would like to populate on the receiving screen, and hit “Set”. Note that these instructions will populate automatically for each received part.

As a receiving clerk how do I look up potential purchase orders that I will be receiving? Is there a way a receiving clerk would be able to search open purchase orders? What role would that be?

Give the receiving clerk the Purchasing role, go to Purchasing » Purchase Orders » List. View open POs there.

Reporting

What is the best way to run a report or export data that will help me to measure On Time Delivery to my Customers (Promised Ship Date vs. Actual)?

In order to look at the OTD data, please navigate to SALES » Invoices » Invoice List. From here, please change the View By filter to Invoice Lines. After doing this you will see two columns: Ship Date and Ship Target (date). Ship target date carries over from the date that you had set during the order stage. Ship date is the actual date on which it was shipped.

You can combine the View By filter along with other filters on the invoice list to get the report you need. Also, you can export the list to reorganize data.

What are some reports mangers can use to find daily bookings and shipments?

You can use the canned reports in Cetec ERP, e.g. bookings, invoices/shipments, etc. etc. – then you can export any of those to Excel for further massaging of data if needed. The Executive Dashboard would also be something handy for mgmt potentially; very similar to the Pulse Report.

Is there a report that shows on-time delivery stats?

To get a report of on-time delivery stats (henceforth OTD stats), please navigate to SALES » Invoices » Invoice List. From here you want to change the View By filter to Invoice Lines and click Search. Doing so will give you a new set of columns. Two of these will be the Ship Target date and the Ship Date. The Ship Target date is the indicated ship date for an order; the ship date is the actual ship date i.e. the date on which the order converted to an invoice. By comparing these two dates, you can tell whether and how long the order was late. Furthermore, you can specify the date of this report by changing the To and From filters of the invoice list.

Sales

Who gets credit as the ISR for the order?

In order for this feature to work as intended you must have one of the customer association types set as “Primary Sales” under ADMIN » Maintenance » Data Maintenance » CustomerAssociationType.

Then please navigate to ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings » oe_initials_autopop.

Put in the value “quote_override” to make the ISR on the quote the ISR for the order. Put in the value “owner” to make the owner of the quote the ISR for the order (this person must be set up as an ISR in the owner profile). Put in the value “cust” to make the ISR assigned to the customer for the quote the ISR for the order.

If there is no value for the variable oe_initials_autopop the default behavior is to set the user converting the quote to order as the ISR for the order (this person must be set up as an ISR in the user profile).

When issuing a quote for the same part at multiple quantity breaks, which amount is used to calculate the quote total?

The quote total adds the first line breaks (The first qty break that appears when you edit line) for different lines.

When does an order go into 'Pending Invoice' status? When does it go out?

The current logic is this: when you change the freight or ship qty info on the order, the status changes to ‘Pending Invoice.’ It changes to Backorder if you only partially ship, and it changes to Shipped when it’s fully shipped; both of which move the status out of ‘Pending.’

What is the difference between a scheduled/unscheduled order?

Scheduled means that the order is scheduled based on the shipdate/duedates on the order. Un-scheduled represents that it should ship as soon as possible.

What is the Bookings Report in the Sales Overview section?

Bookings reporting tracks detailed bookings activity per day or across periods of time, and is useful for representing the change in the customer backlog for a certain period.

A booking is an order or any change to an order, which includes… addition of a line deletion of a line change of part change of cost change of date

What are the three different estimate types for charge order lines?

They are a different ways of deriving at the charge order’s resale value.

Capped and actual are only used if you are logging labor time that has a resale value.

Fixed bid: That’s the amount that will be charged, even if more or less labor time is logged. Capped: That’s the max resale that will be charged Actual: Whatever labor resale is accrued will be charged

We have Forecasts we've created. How can we see these under the Prcpart Waterfall? Will these show under MRP after Refresh?

Yes. Forecast orders will show in MRP and the part waterfall report with a special designation as “forecast orders” if you have the configuration variable “Include Forecast For MRP” turned ON.

You may see a waterfall report with the Forecast demand included by going to Sales -> Forecasts -> Overview, and then clicking on ‘View’ for the part you want to see.

Lead Vs. Opportunities

Leads are for tracking potential new accounts/customers.

Opportunities and opportunity pipelines are for tracking new business opportunities with existing accounts.

Is there a way to edit Target Ship dates after the order has been invoiced?

To modify the Target Ship date after the order has been invoiced, please navigate to PRODUCTION » Orders » List then changed the Transcode / Status to All Closed and search for the relevant order.

Once you’ve found it, click on it, then press Ctrl + F (CMD + F if you are using a Mac) then type in “Schedule”. This will take you to the Schedule link next to the Work Start Date field.

Click on the schedule link, and you can modify the Target Ship date after an order has been processed!

Is there a way to default your sub-orders to either "Yes," "No," or "With Top" on the Commit to Order screen?

Yes - To change the default setting, please navigate to ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings and search for, “default_suborder”.

There are three possible values for this config variable: Entering “1” in the config variable defaults the sub-orders to “No”, entering “0” in the config variable defaults the sub-orders to “Yes”, and entering “phantom” in the config variable defaults the sub-orders to “With Top”.

Is there a function we can utilize to see the quantity of each individual part that will be consumed over a year if we can estimate the total # of finished goods that we will sell in a year?

Try pulling the component use data from the Sales History As Used report (Sales » Invoices » As Used), and work from there. That data will be historical, so you’ll want a reasonable period of sales to work from, but if you can generally scale from 1 quarter of history forward reasonably.

Is there a CRM module available or an add on system that will help track after sales activity?

Yes. Cetec ERP includes full customer and contact management, followups synced to calendar reminders, Lead management, Opportunity and pipeline management, document management, notes / knowledge base, and collaborative workflow around quotes, leads, and opportunities.

Also, Cetec ERP includes an ISO 9001 compliant Customer Case (complaints, satisfaction cases, etc.) management tool.

How is customer information imported from Excel? How do you create a new customer? Can the system handle special shipping instructions and multiple shipping addresses?

Please contact a Cetec ERP representative to work with you and your data import needs.

Yes the system handles shipping instructions per ship-to address and multiple shipping addresses. To create a customer and manage it’s addresses, see the following how-to: How To How To Create a Customer

How does the customer return process work?

Please see this article for complete information on our returns process: RMAs and returns

How does the Sent/Emailed? filter on the invoice list work?

“Auto Only” option displays invoices that have been emailed out automatically by the system.

“Manually Only” option displays invoices that have been emailed out manually by a user.

“Printed Only” option displays invoices that have been downloaded and/or printed by a user.

The Sent/Emailed? filter displays invoices that has been automatically sent out (Auto Only), manually sent out (Manually Only), and/or downloaded/printed (Printed Only).

The Unsent filter displays emails that has not been sent/emailed in the system.

How does Cetec ERP determine DSO (Days Sales Outstanding)

DSO measures the time it takes to collect receivables. It reflects the organization’s internal collection efficiencies, and it requires three pieces of information for calculation:

-Total receivables for the period. -Total credit sales for the period. -The number of days in the period.

Here is the formula for the DSO calculation:

(Total Receivables / Total Credit Sales) Number of Days = DSO

Here is an example scenario:

-Total Receivables = 4,600. -Total Credit Sales = 9,000. -Number of days in period = 90.

Here is the calculation:

(4,600 / 9,000) 90 = 45 days

In this example, it takes 45 days to collect the receivables.

Further you can specify the number of days that you want to track DSO for with this configuration name “dso_days_in_period”; the default is for 90 days.

How do you take off a restocking fee when you are issuing a credit memo from an RMA?

To take off a restocking fee before issuing a credit memo for an RMA, please navigate to SALES » Invoices » RMA List and create an RMA for a customer in question. Note that creating an RMA directly from a specific invoice will not work. This is because you have to add the restocking fee as an RMA line which you cannot do when creating an RMA from an invoice.

Once you have created an RMA for a customer, add a restocking fee line to the RMA. You do not have to use a pre-existing Prcpart for this - the part field will take any descriptive name given to it. You want the Return Qty to be 1, and the restocking fee to be charged should be put in the Unit Resale field as a negative value. Click on Update to add the line.

From there, the process is just like going through a regular RMA.

Once you issue a credit memo, the restocking fee line will be deducted from the return merchandise value.

How do you stop users from invoicing an underpicked order in Cetec ERP?

By default, Cetec ERP does not prevent users from invoicing underpicked orders. However, you can override this and make Cetec ERP prevent underpicked orders from going through.

Please navigate to ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings and search for the variable, “Stop Under Pick Invoice.” You want to set its value to “1” which turns on the functionality.

(If the variable does not exist, you have to create the variable first. You do so by creating an invoice from any order. Once you do that, the variable should appear in Config Settings)

Once you do this, attempting to invoice an underpicked order will trigger an error alert and prevent process from going through.

How do you edit permanent shipping instructions for a customer?

Permanent shipping instructions is maintained per customer’s shipping address. Since one customer can have many shipping addresses, this means that each one of those addresses can have different permanent shipping instructions.

To edit shipping instructions, please navigate to SALES » Customers » Customer List » [click on customer]. Once you are in the correct customer screen, screen down the Addresses section of the page and click on the Pencil icon to the right hand side of the screen to edit the permanent shipping instructions.

How do you add a discount to a Sales Order?

The main way users indicate a discount - especially if they want to list that discount on the order PDF - is to create a new line with a negative resale value. The best practice is to create a non-inventory part for this purpose - a common example would be something like “ ZZZ Discount”. Then you would edit the order, select add a line, change the transcode to “charge” and select your non-inventory part. Set the Estimate type of the charge line to “Fixed Bid” and type the value you would like for the resale into the estimate field.

How do quotes transfer to BOM? How does the BOM process work?

BOMs can be maintained per revision in Cetec ERP; these are the permanent BOM files. New BOMs can be quoted and existing BOMs can be edited/maintained on the Quote level. When a quote is converted to an order, the BOM will propagate to the permanent BOM file. For more information on BOMs, please see the following doc:

How To Estimate BOM

How do I issue an RMA for an order that isn't in the system?

Simply navigate to Sales » Invoices » RMA List. From the RMA list you may create an RMA for an item/order that doesn’t have an original/linked source invoice.

How do I issue a credit for an RMA when I've already clicked the issue credit button?

You will need to create a separate credit memo if you have already clicked the issue credit button. You can only issue credit once on an RMA but you can always issue a separate credit by going to Accounting> A/R> Credit Memo list> Create Credit Memo.

How do I exclude an invoice line item from being taxed?

In Cetec ERP, tax groups are assigned per customer’s ship-to address. This normally means that every line that belongs to the same invoice will be taxed the same amount. To exclude one or more lines from being taxed, please navigate to the Edit Invoice screen by clicking on the Edit link on the left side navigation menu of the invoice screen.

Underneath every line, you will see a checkbox labeled, “Exclude from Tax?” Please check the lines that should be exempt, and click Update. Doing so will recalculate the tax owed while excluding the checked lines.

How can I quickly see the cost of materials for an order with multiple invoices?

The Invoice As Used report under the Sales module will display components with their respective quantity and cost as it was used on an invoice. In the invoice field filter of the report, you can type in the order number (minus the dash and additional number), and then use a wildcard at the end. For example, invoices 1234.1-1 and 1234.1-2 can both be filtered for by searching 1234%. Both invoices will populate in the report and display all component quantities and unit costs.

How can I add a return address to the return label for RMA's?

To do so, please navigate to ADMIN » Config Settings » Config Settings and search for config setting “rma_carrier_info which is where the RMA carrier information goes into.

If you search for config setting “company_shipto_address” will be displayed above the rma_carrier_info.

The value you set of there will appear on the RMA Return To box.

It will look like the following on the label: company_shipto_address rma_carrier_info Contact us for carrier account info.

How are different warehouse locations managed in Cetec ERP? Can I choose which warehouse to pick stock from?

The quote/order location is specified at the quote line level before a quote is turned into an order.

Although a quote can have different lines with different locations, at the point of conversion to an order, quote lines for different locations will be split, creating one order for each warehouse location.

For CHARGE orders (service only, bill only) for services, non-inventory sales, drop ship sales, etc. - I want the estimated cost to move to the invoice record of sale so as to properly account for cost and profit margin. How can I do this?

By default, CHARGE order estimate costs are logged for historical reference, but not used on invoices (they net down to $0.00 on invoice lines) because CHARGE orders do not post any COGS to invoice ledger entries.

However, if you would like to write the order line estimate cost to the invoice for margin purposes only (no ledger impact), you can turn ON config setting “Use Order Cost On NN Invoices (no ledger impact!)”.

Does Cetec ERP support phantom BOMs?

Yes!

Inside the Convert to Order screen of a quote, Cetec ERP will display every subassembly that goes into the quoted Top-Level Assembly.

Underneath the Build? column you can opt for one of three options:

  1. Choose “Yes” and create a suborder for the subasembly in question.
  2. Choose “No” and forego creating a suborder for the subassembly in question.
  3. Choose “With Top” and forego creating a suborder for the assembly in question but grab all its components and include them in the parent assembly work order.

Opting for option #3 accomplishes the key goal of Phantom BOMs - the ability to structure BOMs according to engineering requirements without creating a distinct suborder for every level in a multi-level assembly.

Can you take an Excel spreadsheet into the system for quoting?

Yes, you can import quote lines from Excel into the system. You can also import BOMs into a BOM Quote worksheet.

Can you search for like parts in the system when entering a quote

Yes, you can search for parts and/or part descriptions from the Part list or directly within the quote line to pull up any/all parts that match (via smart match) what youre typing.

Can you put an order on hold before a certain % of its total has been prepaid?

You can put an order on hold until a certain % of its total amount has been paid. To do so, please go into ADMIN » Maintenance » Data Maintenance » 9Terms. In it, you want to turn on Is Credit Card Or Prepaid by putting in “1” and then specifying the percentage required under Prepay Percent. From that point on any order using that terms code will require the % you specified before it comes off hold.

Can you link different customer accounts and have them set up as child/parent?

Yes, for a bigger customer with several divsions Cetec ERP provides a way to link several different customer accounts using the parent/child relationship. Customer accounts set up this way allow for a consolidated statement across all of their open A/R, as well as one payment that can be applied to open invoices across all child customer acounts as well.

To set up a parent/child relationship between customer accounts, you need at least two active customer accounts. Once they are set up, navigate to the child customer account’s profile page (SALES » Customers » Customer List » Search for the child account), then click on the EDIT link from the left side navigation menu.

Near the bottom of the page you will see a search field for Parent Customer. Type in the parent customer account name, select, and click Update. Doing this will set the selected customer as the parent account; there are no corresponding steps you must take on the parent side to confirm this relationship with the child account.

Once this parent/child relationship has been successfully setup note that a parent can have many child accounts then you can navigate to the parent customer account profile and click on the A/R STATEMENT link to the left side navigation menu to view the consolidated statement across the parent and all its child accounts. From this screen, you have an option to create a A/R payment that applies across various customer accounts.

Can you invoice an order for a customer that is on credit hold?

Credit hold can be overridden for any order by users with the admin or accounting admin role. To do so, please navigate to the order edit screen and check the box “Ignore Credit Hold” (add comments optionally).

Can you default the user who makes a quote as the sales rep to override any set customer sales rep?

Config: Default Primary Sales To User: This config overwrites the default behavior for customer associations when creating a quote. The following values are accepted: ‘1’ = If no customer association is defined, set them to current user. ‘2’ = The current user will be set for all customers.

Can you create a new revision from a quote in Cetec?

Yes, when making a quote for a new BOM, on the line item, you can hit the pencil icon and where it says ‘Revision’ fill in the new revision name. The ‘Bom Data’ only applies to when you select a new bom, it either keeps the current bomquote worksheet or makes a blank one, either way it will have the new revision set.

Can we set thresholds on quotes?

Yes, we have to configurations for this. Quote - Minimum GM To Order (admin/manager can override) This config lets you set a GM percent, and if a quote is under that percent, an admin/manager will have to approve the quore before committing to an order. Quote - Minimum Value To Order (admin/manager can override) This config uses a set value, and if the quote is under that value, an admin or manager will have to approve before the quote can be committed to order.

Can the system generate an expedite report to know what parts I need to focus on getting in ASAP?

Yes. This is called the Shortage Report. If the shortage report lists items you already have on order with a vendor, you can call the vendor and expedite.

Can I put in an order for a part that is not in the inventory? I also want to avoid creating this part.

If you want to avoid creating a part when adding a quote line, type in a pre-existing PRC, and give the part an ad hoc name. So for instance, if you have a PRC of ABC in the system, you would type in ABConeofforder.

And make sure that the order type is Charge.

Putting in an order this way will not create a part named ABConeofforder. However, using build or stock will create a part named ABConeofforder in your inventory.

Can I edit my customer after committing an order?

Yes you can edit the customer after you have committed an order, as long as it is not an internal customer. If the customer is set as internal (or, your own company), Cetec will gray out the customer field and will not let you edit.

Can I change the customer on an order after it has already been committed?

You can change the customer on a previously committed order by navigating to the “Edit” tab on the left-hand menu of the order. You can remove the current customer and search for the one you’d like to change it to.

NOTE: If the order has been prepaid, Cetec ERP will not let you change the customer on an order. You will have to unlink/remove the prepayment, change the customer, and then reapply the prepayment to the order.

Can I add images of my products to Quote PDFs in the Cetec Sales/CRM modules?

Certainly! Just upload an image (png, gif, or jpg) to a part record (in the Documents section) and it will appear as a selectable option in your Quote PDF to send to your customer.

Can Cetec ERP automatically set the transaction code for me, based on how many I have in stock versus qty due?

Most systems require you to build internally, then sell out of stock. Cetec ERP lets you build&ship. If you’re doing a combo of both, then that will have its wrinkles.

Your options are:

Send an invoice with two line items for the same part, one for 5 and one for 7 (i.e. one stock order and one build order respectively)

or

Build to stock. Build the qty 7 to stock. Then, issue a stock order for qty 12.

Setup/Configuration

Why are some of my LNAME locations not showing up?

If all of your LNAME locations are not showing, it is likely that you are a user for multiple companies. Check your user profile. If your profile is set to one company, this is the issue. Set your profile company to all.

How do you change the currency symbol in Cetec ERP?

Currency control in Cetec ERP is handled by going to Admin » Data Maintenance » Currency. You can put all of the currencies you will need in there. To set the default currency, please contact support@cetecerp.com and we will set your default to your preference (this is handled directly by Cetec ERP to reduce the risk of a user accidentally changing the default currency value).

How do I setup users with barcodes for badge scanning in and out of work orders?

Your company needs barcoded badge capability in order to make this work. Use Cetec ERP’s barcode printing capability in WAREHOUSE » Barcodes » Generic Barcodes.

You must print out the barcodes based on the following parameters:

1) If you are using Cetec ERP’s user ID (which you can find on the User’s ‘profile’): For user ID “cetec,” the barcode has to be encoded with code 128 group separator, the text ‘USER’, the group separator again, and then the user ID. e.g. ^029USER^029cetec

2) If you are using the employee ID (which you can find on the User’s ‘profile’): For employee ID = “2993,” the barcode has to be encoded with code 128 group separator, the text ‘EMPLOYEE’, the group separator again, and then the employee ID. e.g. ^029EMPLOYEE^0292993

Then, you can scan those barcoded badges to clock in to work orders and track time.

Warehouse

What is the difference between a full order plate and a license plate? Is there a difference in how license plates show up for build vs stock orders?

A “license plate” is a unique document used to track and manage components throughout production. The full order plate is composed of all of the license plates for each line being added together in a single print-out. If the lines on an order are stock lines, and those stock lines are set to ship, all the stock lines for the top level order will print on the license plates for each stock line. This is so that you only need to print a single license plate to pick all your stock lines on the same order. Build orders will allow you to view components by line because you often have multiple components to pick for each line when building. The full license plate is typically useful when you have multiple build lines on a single order, then it will print up multiple license plates in a row with unique pick lists & work lists.

What allows a user to pick parts for an order?

A user can pick parts for an order if:

  • User’s Default Production Location (set in the edit user screen) is set to a location that is a picking location (set in ADMIN » Maintenance » Data Maintenance » OrdlineStatus) or
  • User is the assigned picking user or
  • User is an Admin
How does the shipping system work? Can I print labels easily?

Shipment and invoices work simultaenously. The shipping system will also print packing slips and labels automatically. Please read the following documentation for more information: How To Ship & Invoice.

How does bar coding work with this system? What about the hardware? Where do we have to get it from, and how is it setup with the system?

The system will generate some barcode labels for you (e.g., receipt labels) and is compatible with scanning hardware. We do not sell or support hardware, however. For suggestions on hardware, please read our support documentation here: Mobile warehousing hardware recommendations

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