1. Linda Downes System Accountant
Life After Upgrade MS4
Linda Downes
System Accountant

2. About Us University with 5600 students 640 fte staff
Campus split over 2 sites – Creative Campus in city centre, Hope Park in Childwall

3. Agresso Implemented Agresso 2006. Vsn 5.4 Upgraded to 5.5.3 May 2010
180+ Agresso web users
20 Smart client users
Use Financials, Logistics, PCB
No major issues with 5.5.3
A bit of background to our Agresso history…

4. Benefits of MS4 Incoming invoices – 1 entry screen
Single project record (no draft project)
Master file approval – new customers and suppliers
Information Pages
Being able to enter all invoices via one screen seemed to be an advantage
We use a number of flexi fields to record pre-award information on projects. In these needed to be set up against the draft project attribute and the project attribute with an AG16 query updating the fields against project when is was approved in the workflow. Also, any attachments to the draft project record had to be re-attached to the project record when it was created so a single project record was considered an improvement.
3. Master File approval for customers and suppliers
Information pages

5. Timetable Started Oct 2014 Re-installed Dec 2014
14 days consultancy from Integra Associates - 8 days functional, 6 days technical
Practice data migration (end Feb)
Training mid- April, 2 weeks
Go-Live 8/9th May 2015

6. Major Developments: Incoming Invoices
Complex workflow process
-No PO required so invoice to be coded & approved (relation on supplier)
-No PO but it is required - PO to be created task
-Missing Goods Receipt
-Out of tolerance (>£10 and >5%)
In order to use the new features, some development work was required so MS4 would work as we wanted it to
In 5.5.3, ALL invoices were entered with PO via Logistics.
If there was no PO, we used a dummy PO which the workflow picked up and generated a ‘create requisition’ task. This allowed all invoices to
be entered through the same screen
By MS4 – acceptance that some invoices could be entered without a PO and the workflow used to send them to the appropriate person to code them
1. When AP enter an invoice with no PO, they use ‘responsible’ to determine who task should be sent to
1st split in workflow determines whether a PO is required or not, based on a relation on the supplier record
and therefore which task should be sent. This can be task to create a requisition if one is required, or task to code invoice.
If task is to create a requisition, we use the workflow log to enter PO number once requisition approved. Generates IntelAgent report to AP
4. Workflow also has to check for missing goods receipt
5. Introduced value check on tolerances as well as % check. Had to use DB view to calculate amount of discrepancy and route
accordingly as existing parameters didn’t appear to handle this.

7. Major Developments: Project Approval
Use number of flexi fields to record pre-award information
Master file workflow – project rejected = no record
Created +ve workflow
Moved to Forms
As mentioned before, Flexi fields are used to record pre-award information and now these only needed to be set up against projects.
I Set up workflow for projects but found that if project rejected at any point, it didn’t create project record and all
Information was lost
3 I created a workflow where every step was a +ve one so a project was always created. I then tried using an AG16 to set the status of the project based on
the point it left the workflow. Nonsense!
4. Decided to buy Forms.

8. Example of Form for new project
Using Forms, we created a form to record all the information that is required for a project.
The workflow routes the form based on department and also directly incurred costs

9. Development Issues
Incoming Invoice Workflow- MGRN bypassing tolerance check
Customer/supplier workflow – DB view to identify user
Amendments to project master in smart client – no workflow. IntelAgent /amendment logging
1. Issue with invoices which were out of tolerance and where PO had not been goods received. Goods receipt screen was changing Amount received to = Invoice amount so the invoice always passed the tolerance check
Found solution was to Change DEF_OVERRUN_PCT from V to A
2. Needed workflow to identify user as changes made by AP or Procurement or credit control did not need to be workflowed. Since these people were all smart client users I had hoped that this would be sufficient to identify them but all changes, whether from web or smart client are sent into workflow . Needed DB view to identify user.
3. Conversely, I needed to track changes to projects by all web users and some smart client users too but only changes to projects from web are sent for approval. Changes made in smart client just accepted. Had to use IntelAgent and amendment logging to alert to changes made via smart client users.

10. Go Live Benefits Incoming invoices – single entry screen
Ease of use of web screens
Easier to view scanned invoice image attached to tasks

11. Post Live Issues AP/AR enquiries – payments not aggregated
Jumbled screen display
Resource load now PR43. Remove CS15 from update
Customer load now CS15- auto numbering
PO19 – Transfer complete requisition
Workflow tasks ‘disappearing’
1. BIG issue….payments in AP and AR enquiries are shown split for each invoice paid so you cannot see amount of full payment easily. Can tick ‘aggregated’ on enquiry but then can’t drill down to the individual invoices making up the payment.
Introduced in MS4 by R&D with no work-around.
2. Some users had issues with screen display. Didn’t seem related to one browser. Solution seemed to be to enter web address in browser rather than launch from icon.
3. Used to use RESNO load to load resources but no longer available. Replaced by PR43 which is more long – winded as have to run load then run update which may need to be run twice if there are new and amended employees in the file. PR43 assumes all employees are also suppliers so need to create a variant which does not run CS15
We sometimes load student records into Agresso as customers if we need to make refunds to them outside of the SITS system. In we used APAR load to do this keeping the Student ID as the customer ID. In MS4, APAR load is not available and you have to use CS15 load instead. This insists you have an auto-numbering series for customers even if you want to use customer ID in your file and that ‘manual’ numbering is ticked on the series. The issue is that if you have multiple series for customers, you have got to have manual ticked on ALL of them even if they are not used in load. This affects the creation of new customers where you just want the ID to be created automatically.
In 5.5, if requisition had multiple lines, some of which were approved and some rejected, the rejected lines were sent back to the initiator. If they rejected them, the PO19 would pick up the approved lines and generate a PO. Now it doesn’t do this unless you untick ‘transfer complete requisition’ but this will also transfer any requisitions which are genuinely partly approved and where some of the lines are still in the workflow. I raised a ticket with Unit4 and was told it was ‘probably a bug’

12. Future Developments Forms – travel expenses? Information pages
Going forward, I would like to develop forms further but they seem quite limited at the moment as you do not appear to be able to do calculations which would be useful for mileage rates etc.
Developed info pages but seem to be problems with speed.
Issues with the display on web – scrolling seems to be a problem. Drill down doesn’t always work

13. Questions?