Mini Enterprise Edition
In addition to the core features, the Manu Online Mini Enterprise Edition has the addition of powerful extra features that can be switched on or off according to the requirements of your business processes.
The full of list of these can be seen from the Licensing screen of the program. Descriptions as follows:
Sales quotations
Description
Sales offers can be created in the system. Offers can be converted to sales orders.
Benefits
- Sales quotations are entered into the system and can be later converted to sales orders
- Items for delivery from a quotation can be included in the material planning routines as a forecast. So it is possible for sales quotations to be included in purchase planning.
- An offer can be linked to a budget for calculating planned margin.
How to start using
- License the extension from the Admin menu.
- On the sales menu, there will be a dashboard for sales quotations.
- On the system settings page there is a link to Offers classes. It is possible to create your own classification system for different offers that can be used in reporting.
Details
Entering a sales quotation is very similar to entering a sales order.
Agreements and periodic invoices (Mini Enterprise Edition)
Description
Allows you to keep a register of agreements in the system. Also allows you to maintain time-based sales invoicing.
Benefits
- Central register of all agreements your company has made.
- Agreements can be linked to sales orders and to after sales product tracking
- Periodic invoicing allows you to set up for example monthly invoicing which is not related to product delivery. This is used for rent or service contracts.
- Can specify item prices if being used in conjunction with the service work order extension.
How to start using
- License this extension from the licensing wizard in the Admin main menu.
- Enter agreements in the Sales menu, Agreements dashboard.
Details
After sales product tracking
Description
Allows you to track product after it has been shipped to the customer.
This extension allows use of a “Product tracking” card where details of a shipped product can be viewed and edited. If a product has serial number specified, the product tracking card will be created automatically.
Benefits
- Central register of shipped product that can be edited for current location.
- View “as-built” product structure and store warranty information
- Can integrate with service work orders to keep a full record of after-sales service.
- Mark a product’s history with notes using the memo extension. Useful for keeping a complete history of activities related to the product after it has been shipped to the customer.
- Extend the functionality by adding custom fields to the data.
How to start using
- Check you have the serial numbers and lot tracking extension licensed.
- License this extension from the licensing wizard in the Admin main menu.
- New product tracking data will be created when product is produced or shipped
- Access the product tracking card from the Sales menu
- Contact support if you wish to make a bulk update of date, for instance to install a list of tracked products from a previous system.
Details
Projects
Description
Projects allow the collection of multiple sources of revenue and costs from different parts of the system to give an overview of project profitability. Projects can include multiple sales orders, direct sales, miscellaneous sales invoicing, costs of products sold, miscellaneous purchase invoicing and miscellaneous material and work collection using service work orders. Also sales quotations can be linked to a project.
Benefits
- Allows cost and revenue analysis across several parts of the system.
- Helps to combine costs of sold goods plus other items such as on-site installation and miscellaneous invoicing.
- Supports both sales of standard products and make to order products.
- Can link miscellaneous invoicing either directly to a project or via a service work order.
- Can create purchase orders based on a certain projects requirements, or combine purchased materials from multiple projects while still keeping track of material allocations.
- Optionally issue project materials automatically to a project’s own service work order on material receipt.
How to start using
- License the extension from the Admin section.
- In the company settings, optionally specify a list of your valid project codes.
- In the Sales menu, Projects dashboard create a new project.
- Throughout the system allocate different business objects such as sales orders, invoices, service work orders etc. to the project.
Details
Sales forecasts (Mini Enterprise Edition)
Description
“Sales forecasts” allows you to drive your planning systems on forecasts demand in addition to actual requirements (open sales orders and work orders).
Forecasts are either of two types:
Comparative: Forecasts the total requirement for a product in the time period. Demand is calculated as the greater of actual requirements or the forecast
Tentative order: Forecasts the additional requirement for a product that is expected in the period. Demand is calculated by the sum of actual requirements and tentative orders. This can be used for rolling (sometimes called “blanket”) orders from your customer. Tentative order forecasts can be generated automatically from a sales quotation, which has the effect of including the breakdown of requirement from a quotation in the purchase planning.
Sales forecasts can be easily converted into sales orders. Note that to include the breakdown of requirements in purchase planning, the automatic purchase planning tool is needed.
Benefits
- Allows you to plan purchasing and capacity even before you have firm orders from your customers.
- Particularly useful if you have material and manufacturing lead times greater than that required by your customers for product deliver lead time.
- Particularly useful if you have complex product structures as the planning system will net out your overall requirements from all sales, purchase and manufacturing activities.
How to start using
- On the licensing menu, select the “Sales forecasts” and license if for the time required.
- On the Sales main menu, there is a new dashboard for Sales forecast. Press New to create a new forecast.
- Enter product, quantity and date. Optionally select a customer. The forecast is to be scheduled or not. This will determine if its breakdown is included in planning or not.
Details
Customer returns
Description
Allows the management of product returns by customers. A return is allocated a number for tracking, and it is possible to return the products back to stock, scrap them or return them back to the customer. Repair costs can be recorded.
Benefits
- Provide better customer service by allowing customers to return product. Particularly useful for postal sales but also for general warranty returns.
- Can allocate repair resources to the return.
- Can scrap, return or put to stock the returned items.
- Can generate a RMA (Return Material Authorization) for controlling returns from customers
- Can optionally be included or excluded from the commission reports for salesmen.
How to start using
- Contact Manu Online support to enable this extensions on your system.
- In company settings, define your own return codes which will be used in reports and classification. Create any standard text elements that you may wish to print on a customer’s return documents.
- In the Warehouse menu, click on Customer Returns and then New to create a new return.
Details
Drop shipments (Mini Enterprise Edition)
Description
Drop shipments are where goods are delivered directly from a supplier to a customer. (Of course this can apply to own manufactured items).
There are two options:
Back to back orders A purchase order is created with the same lines as a sales order but is shipped to your normal warehouse
Drop shipments The purchase order is delivered directly from the supplier to the customer.
Benefits
- Saves on handling costs if an order is shipped directly to the customer.
- With back to back orders, by passes the inventory allocation system. Orders are exactly matched to sales orders.
- Purchase orders are created automatically, so data entry is reduced.
How to start using
- License the option from the Admin menu.
- On a sales order header tab, check the box for back to back order and optionally also for drop shipment.
- Activate the order when the sales order is entered correctly
- A prompt will ask you if you want to edit the purchase order immediately. Do this or later go to the Purchase section and complete the order.
- Activate the purchase order. Note that the delivery address of the purchase order will be the deliver to address of the sales order.
- When the order is shipped, first make a receipt for the purchase order and then a shipment for the sales order.
Details
Supplier quotations (Mini Enterprise Edition)
Description
Quotations from suppliers can be stored in the system. They can be used together with the purchase automation extension, selected from a purchase order, or just viewed from the item card. Supplier quotations can be entered to the system directly or transferred in bulk using an Excel spreadsheet.
Benefits
- Can be used together with the purchase planner option to fully automate purchase order creation against a supplier’s own quotation.
- Supports mapping of item id’s to manufacturer part numbers
- Supports foreign currency exchange rate tracking
- A preferred quotation can be set to override other quotations.
- The purchase planner can be set to select from the best of several quotations.
How to start using
- License the option from the Admin menu.
- On the Purchase menu, go to the Supplier Quotations dashboard to create a new supplier quotation.
- Optionally use the Excel upload facilities to upload a supplier’s price list in bulk from the Other operations dashboard.
Details
Multi-location inventory (Mini Enterprise Edition)
Description
“Multilocation inventory” allows you to keep inventory in different locations. It is possible to purchase items to certain locations, sell from different locations. It enables a material transfer screen that allows you to send batches of materials from one location to another.
It is possible to configure the scheduling system so that sales orders are scheduled from their own location, or make all inventory available from all locations.
If used together with the multicompany option it is possible to open work orders at a subcontractor’s location. In this way you can configure a “virtual manufacturing” organisation. Material can be ordered to a subcontractor’s site, work orders opened there, then product shipped directly to the customer.
Benefits
- Allows stock to be kept at multiple physical locations e.g. sales office, subcontractor etc.
- Transfer process for moving stock between locations
- Allows sales from, and purchase to, different locations
- Stock in remote locations can be generally available for scheduling or not
How to start using
- Contact Manu Online support to enable this extensions on your system.
- Inventory can be stored at any partner location. To create a specific inventory location, create a partner for it.
- On sales orders and purchase orders use the deliver from or deliver to address. On the Warehouse menu, create a material transfer operation to move items from one location to another.
Details
Serial numbers and lot tracking (Mini Enterprise Edition)
Description
Serial numbers and lot tracking permit extensive traceability of materials in the system, including in multilevel product structures.
Serial numbers track individual items. Lot numbers track batches of items.
Benefits
- Trace which serial numbered or lot numbered items have been received and where have they been used or to whom have they been sent.
- Serial numbers can be strictly enforced so that only serial numbers that have been created can be used. Alternatively serial numbers can be recorded only, in which case product serial numbers are recorded on dispatch without regard to previously creating them in manufacturing.
- For critical materials, forms part of your quality system.
How to start using
- License this extension from the licensing wizard in the Admin main menu.
- In the item card, technical tab specify that the item has either serial number tracking or lot number tracking. Optionally specify a prefix for serial numbers. Normally you will have zero stock for items when you start using this feature so that all items are covered as they received or produced.
- If necessary contact support if you wish to have a bulk update of items in your system according to some criteria, or if you wish to set up lot numbers or serial numbers for existing stock.
- At receipt, manufacture and product dispatch, enter the serial numbers or lot numbers as prompted by the system. It is not possible to complete these documents if the correct data is not entered.
Details
Item card screen shot:
The prompts for serial number or lot tracking are on Receiving, Production work orders, Service work orders, Dispatching and Stock change.
Note: If you wish to use the extension “Product tracking” for after sales product tracking, you need to have serial numbers in use.
Production planner
Description
A screen to allow manual scheduling of work orders.
The system will automatically schedule work orders based on required date, but taking now account of available capacity. Use this extension to schedule production work orders to the days or weeks you require, at the same time having visual display of available capacity and material availability.
Benefits
- Allows you to schedule work orders in one screen.
- Allows “offline” scheduling. Changes can be taken into production or cancelled.
- Drag and drop functionality.
- Increases reliability of your deliveries when work is scheduled and compared to promise dates.
How to start using
- License this extension from the licensing wizard in the Admin main menu.
- The production planner screen is available from the Production menu, Scheduling dashboard
- To utilise the capacity grid, enter a “Rough cut loading” value in the Item card, technical tab for each item
Details
Multistep routing (Mini Enterprise Edition)
Description
Allows work orders to be routed across multiple steps. Each step is in a cell, so multi-cell routing is available. Control of the movement of work orders from step to step can be done on screen or by barcode. It is also possible to see which work orders are queued and which work orders are under work. Extensive support for barcoding allows materials and machine and work times to be recorded by scanning. Alternatively item usage can be marked on screen or back-flushed automatically. Without multistep routing, the system uses one route with one step and one cell for all manufacturing.
Benefits
- Allows for finer control of manufacturing.
- Can control location of a work order between different cells, possibly at a subcontractor’s location.
- Can use the production planner tool to schedule work orders between cells and so control loading.
- Barcodes on the work order traveler can be used to progress work orders along their routes.
How to start using
- License the extension from the Admin section
- In Factory menu, go to Factory Setup, then Cells and create a number of cells. Optionally add capacity to the cells. A cell can also be at a subcontractor’s location.
- In Factory setup, go to Routes and create one or more routes. On each route create a number of steps. Specify which is the start step or steps, the sequence of the steps and whether steps will have queuing or not. Also specify the default number of days throughput time for each step.
- On the item card, manufacturing tab, routing sub-tab, specify the route to be used for manufacturing this item. Enter consumed items on the product structure for the different steps of the route as required.
- After opening a production work order, edit the steps of the route as necessary.
- On the Production menu, Work cells dashboard, use screen buttons or a barcode reader to progress work orders along a route.
Details
Barcodes in production (Mini Enterprise Edition)
Description
Use barcode readers to do a number of different data entry actions when handling work orders. For instance step completion, work time recording or material issue.
Benefits
- Automates process flows in manufacturing.
- Saves data entry time.
How to start using
- License the extension from the Admin menu.
- Evaluate the different uses of barcodes to automate your manufacturing process flows. Document your process.
- Print out the necessary barcode reports, or create your own barcodes in an external program such as Excel or from a specialized barcode label printer.
- Procure barcode readers. Best are the USB laser scan types.
Details
The system supports a variety of barcode commands. Bar codes can be used for the following:
- Step start pause completion on multistep routing.
- Record material usage to work orders.
- Record work time to work orders.
- Print out production related labels at a certain point in production.
- Clock-in and clock-out for operators.
- Receive materials from purchases.
- Miscellaneous data entry in various places such as recording serial numbers to work orders.
Service work orders (Mini Enterprise Edition)
Description
Service work orders allow the creation of work orders for non-manufacturing purposes. These work orders can be used to collect costs and also consume material items from stock, but no manufactured product is produced.
Benefits
- Track work time and material usage for non-manufacturing activities, such as after sales service, support costs, installation time, helpdesk etc.
- Allow invoicing of activities other than product deliveries.
How to start using
- License this extension from the licensing wizard in the Admin main menu.
- In the Production main menu, it is now possible to create service work orders.
Details
Service work orders screen shot:
Sales/purchase advance invoicing (Mini Enterprise Edition)
Description
Allows prepayment for customers and suppliers.
Benefits
- Allows you to pre invoice your customers, also with multiple prepayments
- Allows you to prepay for purchase items.
- Increased flexibility in invoicing and greater security in cash flow.
How to start using
- License this extension from the licensing wizard in the Admin main menu.
- In sales invoice lines details tab, there is a tab “Advance”. When entering the sales order, enter the prepayment details here. After activation of the sales order create invoices prior to shipment.
- For purchase invoices, click the check box “Prepayment” on the invoice header for the prepayment invoice. When the final invoice is entered, go to the “Linked invoices” tab and select the prepaid invoices to credit against the final invoice
Details
Purchase invoice approvals (Mini Enterprise Edition)
Description
Facilitates purchase invoice checking and approval.
Benefits
When different people are responsible for checking or approving
How to start using
- License this extension from the licensing wizard in the Admin main menu.
- On an under construction purchase invoice, go to the Approvals tab.
- Select a user to either check or approve the invoice.
- The selected user can see the invoices that needed to be checked or approved in the dashboard.
- The selected user presses the button to mark the invoice as checked or approved.
Details
Multicurrency (Mini Enterprise Edition)
Description
Facilitates purchase invoice checking and approval.
Benefits
Operate internationally by issuing sales orders, purchase orders, sales invoices and purchase invoices in currencies other than your systems home currency.
How to start using
- License this extension from the licensing wizard in the Admin main menu.
- In Admin – System settings, add the foreign currencies that you wish to use. Set the rate for each of them.
- On the partner card, set the default currency for each of your partners.
- On orders and invoices, the partner’s default currency will be used. It can be changed if necessary.
- Periodically update the rate used in system settings. (Note that this will be automated in a future release).
Details
Analysis Reports (Mini Enterprise Edition)
Description
Allows on screen data analysis with drill down and pivot tables. Reports can also be emailed as Excel attachments with core data and also predefined pivot tables.
Benefits
- Significantly enhances the reporting features of the system.
- Users can set preferred layouts of pivot tables. Also company standard layouts can be configured and enforced.
How to start using
- License the extension from the Admin menu.
- On each dashboard there will be a section for Analysis reports in the reports drop down list. Open a report. Set a filter criteria (it will improve performance if a filter is set on the popup rather than using the filters on the pivot table). Either press open or send. Open will open an on-screen pivot table. You can adjust the data, page, column and row fields. If required save the adjusted format as your own, or company default layout. Send will send the same underlying data as an Excel spreadsheet to you as an email attachment. For large data volumes it is recommended to send the data so that the pivot tables can be processed on your local machine.
Details
