Florida Miami Image

Blog

Want our new blog posts delivered right to your inbox? 


How to Create Specialty Manufacturing Reports in Sage X3

When you listen to a sales pitch on business intelligence, you may walk away more confused than when you started because, if you’ve been around long enough, you’ve seen many reporting tools – from Lotus to MS Excel to FRx to Crystal Reports, etc. You then hear about other reporting tools that are better suited for reporting financial data versus operational data; all of this can be confusing and overwhelming.

 


Ultimately, you come to the realization that many tools can do many things, as long as you have the expertise and the imagination to develop what you need. As we always tell our clients, one thing is for sure: if the data has been captured in the system, we can report on it! Here's how to create speciality manufacturing reports in Sage X3.5 Sage X3 Tips, Tricks & Tactics to Make Your Life Easier

Out-of-the-Box Options

Sage X3 comes with many reports, inquiries, and graphical requesters right out of the box, with no customizations. Another tool, Sage Enterprise Intelligence (SEI), also comes with many predefined cubes, reports, and dashboards.

 

One area we found lacking was in comparing manufacturing standard data points vs. actual data points. This became sorely evident with a customer that “manufactures” pies. The operations team was coming off an implementation where manufacturing functionality wasn’t being used; one of the main motivations to implement Sage X3 was to gain detailed insights into their manufacturing performance.

What the Customer Wanted

The customer did a fantastic job of learning how they wanted to use Sage X3 and implemented the system in record time. When the time came to compare actual performance versus the standards they had defined, however, they were disappointed. You can do it out of the box, but it’s very cumbersome – one work order at a time – and there are reports that provide comparatives by product or work center, but they lack enough details to see trends and don’t work well in Excel.

 

We used the customer's criteria when creating the specialty manufacturing reports in Sage X3:

 

Contact Us to Request a Sage X3 Demo

How We Gave It to Them

In order to provide this information, we built views (cubes) that would be used within Excel using the SEI Excel add-in. Additionally, we used the power of macros in Excel and built a macro that takes the raw data and creates worksheets by Work center so the customer doesn’t have to do this manually each time they refresh the data. And, since the customer wasn’t asking for something extremely detailed, we were able to develop a few reports that can be used by all. Here’s what each of the reports looks like (with data removed to protect the innocent):

 

creating specialty reports in Sage X3

creating specialty reports in Sage X3

 

creating specialty reports in Sage Enterprise Management

 

Ultimately, this is another example of what we always say at Southeast Computers Solutions: “If you can imagine it, we can build it.” Let us build something for you.

 

If you have questions about creating manufacturing reports, or just questions about software in general, please contact us – we’d love to help!

The Return of Sage X3 Tips, Tricks & Tactics to Make Your Life Easier

 

Talk to Us About Sage Software Support

 

 

# # #
 
About Southeast Computer Solutions
Southeast Computer Solutions is based in Miami, Florida and has additional operations in Mexico. For over 30 years, we have positively impacted the success of small and mid-sized businesses with effective business management implementations that improve our clients’ operations. We listen, we are accessible, and we care. Learn more by visiting our website or calling 305-556-4697.
 
Sage Partner Logo   Sage Enterprise Management
SHARE THIS STORY | |

Related posts


Automating Shipping in Sage X3

By Benjamin Partout July 5, 2017

In this blog, we’re highlighting another one of Sage X3’s great features: automating tasks. This is an important feature because it..

Pick Ticket Security in Sage X3

By Benjamin Partout June 27, 2017

Sage X3 is a highly scalable solution – it can adapt to companies with as few as ten users and enterprise companies with thousands of..

Search


Recent Posts