October, 2016
From the Editor
Another month is upon us and I am happy to announce that another new workshop is available. This one targets managers and payroll coordinators and demonstrates, using the Employee Master Data – History Range report, how to develop a list of employees who were hired or terminated during a particular period of time. More information about the sessions scheduled for the Charles River and Medical campuses follows below.
In addition, the workshop unveiled in August, BUworks BW Reporting: Review of BW Basics, continues to be popular, especially among employees who don’t use BW reports very often. If you fall into this category, I encourage you to join me for a review of basic BW concepts, including filtering and grouping data, and saving a custom View.
I hope you find this issue of the Newsletter informative. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future BW Newsletters
Bill Stewart
Reporting News
SRM: Vendor Payment Terms
A new Characteristic – Vendor Payment Terms – has been added to the Purchasing Document Lifecycle (PDL) report. This new field shows the payment terms a vendor agreed to when they registered. When brought into the report, this Free Characteristic indicates values like “net 30,” (payment due with 30 days), “net 60” (payment due with 60 days) and “1% 10 days, Net 30.” (payment due with 30 days; payment within 10 days will result in a 1% discount).
HCM: Personnel Administration Folder Changes
This month and next we will be cleaning up the long and somewhat daunting list of reports in the Personnel Administration folder. The folder is accessible only to Payroll Coordinators and Managers, so this news may or may not be of interest to you.
The reports to be removed this month are all associated with hiring and/or termination Actions. Based on an analysis of usage statistics, removal of these seldom-used reports will affect only a small number of users, but what can you do if you need to view activity related to hiring or termination Actions? We have two options for you:
- Refer to either of the recently published Help Guides that contain step-by-step instructions describing how to use the Employee Master Data – History Range report to view either type of action. The Guides:
How to View Employee Hires/Rehires
How to View Employee Terminations
- Attend a 90-minute instructor-led workshop that will cover both Action types and the steps necessary to develop a hire/rehire or termination report. Sessions have been scheduled in early November on both the Charles River and Medical campuses. More information is available in the Training Calendar below.
Training Calendar
October/November Training Opportunities
Upcoming Intermediate-level Workshops
New! Reporting for Hire/re-hire and Termination Actions – the attendees and the instructor will work collaboratively to develop saved Views that display Hire/Rehire and Termination Actions for employees in a given organizational unit during a specified period. All Views will be based on the Employee Master Data History Range report. This workshop is intended for any employee who is responsible for reviewing hiring or termination Actions. Learn more / register to attend.
BUworks BW Reporting: Review of BW Basics – working at a slow pace, we will review the essential elements of Business Warehouse (BW) reporting. The workshop will be structured so that participants can apply techniques under discussion using reports from any of the functional areas they are familiar with, i.e., FM, GM, SRM or Payroll. Learn more / register to attend.
Introductory Workshops
As always, an assortment of introductory workshops will be offered. These sessions present to new employees – or employees assigned a new business role – the fundamentals of reporting for a particular subject area. The sessions are a great way to review material, too. Even if you previously attended an intro session, you are likely to learn new things about reporting – or to be reminded of concepts that you had forgotten.
Click on any of the following links for a course description and/or to register for an upcoming session:
Supplier Resource Management Reporting
Labor Distribution (Payroll) Reporting
Tips & Tricks
Two recent questions from departmental administrators provide the subjects for this month’s tips. If you have a question that you believe would serve as a future newsletter tip/trick, send me email.
Note: all of the Tips posted in BW newsletters are archived on this page.
Understanding SRM Delta Values and Delivery Costs
The questions: (1) How to understand the Delta Value Key Figure in the Purchasing Document Lifecycle (PDL) report, and (2) how can I view shipping costs?
The approach: we will run the PDL to take a closer look at Delta Value. We can then use the BU Spend (BUS) report to examine delivery costs and will tie these to the Delta calculation.
Purchasing Document Lifecycle (PDL) sample output
The Purchasing Document Lifecycle report includes the Delta Value Key Figure (C), a calculation based on the difference between Purchase Order Value (A), the anticipated cost of items on a PO, and Invoiced Value (B), the amount recorded on the vendor invoice. As this example shows, there are several purchase orders for which the invoiced amount is greater than the expected purchase amount (D, E).
One likely cause for this difference is shipping costs, which may not have been included in the purchase order value. To confirm that hypothesis, we need to run the BU Spend (BUS) report, as it is the only SRM report that contains delivery costs. Here’s the BUS output corresponding to the purchase orders displayed in the PDL example:
BU Spend (BUS) report sample output
Our investigation shows that the delta values for each of the PO’s identified by (D) in the PDL results correspond to the delivery costs displayed in the BUS report. Take a closer look at PO 8500234215 (E), though. In this case, the $30 delivery cost doesn’t match the $9.00 delta calculation. How else to explain the difference, then? Note that the BUS Invoice Amount (G) shows a value of $84. This reduced cost of the item plus shipping yields a Total Invoice Amount (F) that is $9 more than the anticipated PO amount. This agrees with the delta calculation. Keep this example in mind, as it demonstrates that a non-zero Delta Value does not always derive solely from shipping costs.
End Notes
Custom Training Sessions
Have you ever thought that it would be really useful if you could get members of your department together with a trainer to focus on BUworks functionality that is specific to the work your department does? I’m happy to work with any department or group that would like to develop and conduct a custom basic- or intermediate-level reporting training session. There are only two requirements for such a session: (1) input from the group is necessary to develop a relevant agenda, and (2) the group should include four or more employees. If you’re interested in discussing the development of a custom session for your department or school/college, contact me via email or give me a call at 617-353-6382.
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