I have two more questions I would like to ask:

1) Under EDIT/DEFAULTS, I changed the fiscal year start month from '1' to '7'. I then tried to use several Period 8 fields in a view - thinking that it would give me the numbers for this past February. It didn't. If I use 'Period 2' fields instead, I do get the correct numbers. I read under HELP that changing the fiscal year start date allows the use of filters with that new fiscal year start date. Am I correct to assume that changing this setting has no effect on the built-in fields. They will always go by calendar year?

2) I enabled and changed the 'Run date' to 02/29/2008 and tried to run a couple of reports - thinking that they would reflect a 'as of 02/29/2008' date. They still show 'as of 03/03/2008'. I have been unable to find any information on the 'Run date' setting. There is nothing in the manual as far as I can tell. How does this feature work?

Thanks,

Andre

Hi Andre,

1) How did you try to get period 8 fields? Basing a GridView view on the fiscal period field and select 8? Another way? There are particular functions in GridView that are sensitive to the fiscal start day, such as FISCALSTART() - the first day of the current fiscal year. Having a fiscal year starting on a day other than Jan 1 doesn't adjust all the usual date formulas. Perhaps if you post here what type of view you want (ie list all period X transactions from the GL transaction detail file), we can suggest a way.

2) If you change the run date, you also have to click the 'Enable' checkbox on the same screen to use the entered run date. Then you need to base your formulas/filters on the TODAY() formula (where the updated run date will replace today's date).

{Invoice Date} >= TODAY() will select invoices later than or equal to the run date.

Perhaps post an example of a formula you want to be affected by the run date and we can suggest a way of getting there.

Hi there:

1) Yes, I did everything in GridView. The report/view was supposed to get us the sales history for a range of items within a specified period. GridView would prompt for an item# range and then tell us how many of these items were sold during a particular month. For testing purposes, I wanted it to report the numbers for the month of February (2008). Our fiscal year started on July 1, 2007 - so February 2008 would be fiscal period 8. (As I had mentioned before, I had changed the beginning of the fiscal year to July 1.)

I selected the following table in GridView:

I/C Items (1)

I selected the following fields from that table:

Item #
Base Price
Units Sold Period 8
Amt Sold Period 8
Units Sold Period 2
Amt Sold Period 2

When I run this report, all the numbers in the 'Units/Amt Sold Period 8' columns are for August of 2007 - indicating that GridView still thinks the year started on January 1. The numbers for Period 2 are the ones for February 2008.

I saw two workarounds for this: One was to simply go by calendar year and select 'Units/Amt Sold Period 2' instead of '... Period 8' for February.
The other one was to prompt the person running the report to enter a start and end date. I chose the latter. Here is the filter I created:

and(
{Item #} >= QUERYSTRING("Start Item:"),
{Item #} <= QUERYSTRING("End Item:"),
{Last Shipment Date} >= QUERYDATE("Start Date:",TODAY()),
{Last Shipment Date} <= QUERYDATE("End Date:",TODAY())
)

One idea I had was to create another report that shows a range of item numbers and how many were sold for every month of the fiscal year. I would want to list the item number in the first column, followed by the units sold in July 2007 (Period 1), then August 2007 (Period 2), then September 2007 (Period 3)... and, finally, February 2008 (Period 8). How would I do that if GridView continues to 'think' the year started on January 1 of 2008?

2) Yep. I did enable that checkbox.;-) The problem here is not the TODAY() date used within the report. The problem was/is that even with the Run Date set as, for example, March 1 2008 - the printed report will still say " ... (as of Fri, Mar 07,15:38)". (Please see attached screenshot.)

Hi Andre,

The periods in IC Sales History are not fiscal periods, and are not connected to GL in any way. They are how often you run Period End in Inventory, based on the period end dates you see in the IC company profile. If you view an item (with sales and costs) and look at the Sales History tab, you will see these statistical amounts. Period 2 is 2 periods ago. Period 8 is 8 periods ago.

It doesn't matter what you set as the Fiscal Period in GridView, this will have zero affect on the Item Sales History period selection. Same with the Run Date - zero influence. This is because the Sales History amounts are not calculated based on date but are simply stored amounts on the item master record. If you indeed wanted date-sensitive reports, you should be doing this on the Transaction History table, not the Items (1) table.

Softrak support,

Is 'Period 1' the current period or 1 month end procedure back?

Thanks,
David

Hello Andre,

The numbers stored in the period "buckets" in Inventory are set depending on when period ends are done in that module. The dates you are prompting for will have no bearing on the numbers reported.

You'd only need to ask for a date if you were reporting from a transaction file such as SalesAnalysis or OrderEntry.

Thanks! I'll dissect all this information on Monday. My brain is too wrecked right now.;-)

Thanks again!

Andre

Hi David,

Current is period 1. Previous month is period 2. Period 8 I guess would be 7 months ago. So I was off by 1...

Thanks for clarifying....
I have been using Periods 2 thru 13 to calculate reorder points and EOQ due to assuming period 1 could be a partial month.

David