Are you saving on credit card transactions? If you are, great! Read on, because PayPal Credit Card Transactions are receiving upgraded protocols to secure all external connections made to their systems. As a result, you may need to update your system, too.

And if you’re not saving on credit card transactions, why not? First, read our blog post on how we are able to help you do this. Second, come on back here and learn about this important update.

PayPal Credit Card Transactions Update Details

As we said before: as of June 30, 2017, PayPal is upgrading the protocols used to secure all external connections made to their systems. Transport Layer Security version 1.2 (TLS 1.2) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol version 1.1 (HTTP/1.1) will become mandatory for communication with PayPal. Given these changes, it is necessary to apply a patch to the Authorization Service Lite (ASL) component used by the PayPal integration with Vantage/Epicor ERP.

an image informing retailers that PayPal Credit Card Transactions are receiving a security update

More information about the reason for the upgrade can be found on the PayPal site.

How do I know if I have the problem?

All companies using Credit Card Processing in Vantage, Vista, Epicor ERP v9, or Epicor ERP v10 will be affected by these changes and need to install the update.

Customers using Epicor ERP version 10.1.600 will not be required to make these changes as they are already supported.

How do I obtain the updates? 

There are two elements that need to be updated and are detailed in these instructions. Both the update to the operating system environment (1) and the Epicor program .dll file (2) need to be made to ensure compliance with the changes.

(1) The operating system patch is available for download from Microsoft support:

Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows 8 & Windows Server 2012

Windows 8.1 & Windows Server 2012 R2

Windows 10 & Windows Server 2016

(2) The Epicor program “.dll” files are located on EPICweb under product downloads:

Vantage 8.03.400

Vista 8.03.400

EPR 9.05.700

EPR 9.05.600

EPR 9.04.500

EPR 10.0

EPR 10.1

ERP 10.1.500

Important Note: There is no HotFix for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (not R2) since Microsoft doesn’t provide support for TLS 1.2 on these Operating Systems. This means ASL will no longer work on those versions of Windows and the installation needs to be moved to a different machine with a compatible Operating System.

Of course, if you have any questions about making the changes necessary in the wake of this PayPal Credit Card Transactions update, you can contact us and we’ll be glad to help. Saving the day, saving you money: That’s the Encompass way.

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of Industry.


Encompass is always proud to share smart solutions and one of the most exciting to emerge recently comes from our partners at Bezlio. Their mobile Epicor CRM Google Maps integration is the latest innovation to come from their development team. What Is Bezlio? Bezlio is a revolutionary platform that allows you to utilize the cloud to access and interact with your data using apps, analytics, and dashboards, all without requiring you to expose your private enterprise data to the Internet. In short, you can unchain your workforce from their desks and workstations with these ‘bezls’. Bezls are mobile device optimized dashboards and interfaces you can utilize on any device, anywhere you go.

CRM Google Maps Integration

Encompass Solutions partner Bezlio has developed an exciting integration for Epicor ERP users that combines the power of any time, anywhere CRM for your sales teams and google maps. leverage these powerful tools to empower your sales teams and improve customer satisfaction through the use of end-user tools, like self-service portals. Watch the video below to learn more about this innovative development from Bezlio.

About Bezlio

Bezlio is, a US-based company with 15 years of experience in customizing and optimizing ERP (enterprise resource management) systems and manipulating data. Specializing in mobile, cloud-based integrations, Bezlio offers many supplemental tool integrations for existing Epicor systems, such as mobile crystal reports, Amazon Seller integration, Salesforce + ERP, tableau write-back, and the recently added self-service customer portals.

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of Industry.


In a global marketplace where speed, change, and the demand for innovation are accelerating challenges, the expectations of ERP have changed. ERP is no longer simply about cutting costs, but rather about enabling businesses to grow and take advantage of new opportunities (and avoid unexpected risks) as they emerge. We at Encompass solutions work with customers in various fields and industries, many of which are in the Pharma sector, delivering Chemicals and Life Sciences adaptive ERP solutions.

an image of a life sciences employee utilizing adaptive ERP to improve processes

Several of our Life Sciences customers have successfully shown how Epicor ERP can be used to manage their business. This proves the flexibility of Epicor ERP from a configuration and customization standpoint, and also speaks to the depth of the product. 

How Adaptive ERP Like Epicor Address Life Sciences Challenges

Life Sciences companies have some unique challenges over standard manufacturing and distribution companies. Some of those challenges include:

  • FDA Regulatory requirements
  • FDA tracking and traceability
  • Unpredictable manufacturing outcomes
  • Challenging clean-room manufacturing environment
  • Stringent Quality Control
  • Cost control and management
  • Managing extremely valuable inventory
  • Gating manufacturing decisions based on critical review status

FDA Regulatory requirements include tracking and traceability on every employee, material, and piece of equipment that comes in contact with the manufacturing process, putting a huge strain on quality control and record keeping. Epicor ERP has built in Enhanced Quality with a quality configure that allows for granular quality attributes to be captured and reported on, as well as the built in functionality of the ERP that captures user and machine events that jointly satisfy this need. Maintaining a Total Quality Record is critical in life sciences, and can be supported in Epicor ERP.

 Forecasting and cost control are also critical for Life Sciences companies. By developing models of what we think our customers should be selling, we can use MRP to predict some predicable demand, which allows for planners to forecast the manufacturing jobs, so that finished goods are not wasted, but are available when needed. Utilizing this MRP process also enables our customers to have a more predictable cost control, and fund the correct projects for maximize the contributions of donors, or use of materials that may have a short useful life.

Manufacturing in a clean room or laboratory, which is a completely sterile environment, poses its own challenges, particularly when coupled with the need to track everything. In traditional manufacturing environments, we can adhere barcodes to material and print on demand on the manufacturing floor. In a sterile environment, we need any traceable identifiers to be produced ahead of time such that they can be sterilized, and a barcode may not be the most appropriate identifier for some material – in some cases an RDID may be better. We have worked through business and application processes to support pre-creating the identifiers and assigning them while maintaining the sterile integrity of the cleanroom or lab.

In Life Sciences, there are critical checkpoints, beyond which point a process should not continue without stringent review by a qualified professional. Epicor ERP has built in ‘gates’ that can be applied where processes, and approvals must take place, before further manufacturing can continue. This is invaluable in a controlled, regulated industry such as life sciences!

We would be happy to share our experiences in this fascinating field – it’s exciting to support organizations that are saving and improving the lives of people, and we are proud to be part of this industry.

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of Industry.


Encompass and Bezlio partner on many projects aimed at enhancing performance through better utilization of barcode systems. For years the gold standard on the shop floor has been to use dedicated barcode scanners to replace time-consuming and error-prone manual keyed entry. Unfortunately, many mobile applications require the user to verify that they are in the correct field prior to scanning a barcode and then re-checking after the scan to ensure that the correct data was entered into the correct field. This removes some of the efficiency of the system because it requires the user to be constantly going between the handheld unit and the task that they are performing.

Adding Field Qualifiers For Barcodes’ Labels

The first efficiency that you can add is by adding field qualifiers to your barcode labels. These can then be interpreted and the data can be automatically filled into the correct data fields instead of relying on the user to have the correct fields selected. Most customers benefit from adding an automated process in their purchase order receipt process to print off an internal label which can be added onto any raw material received. This process ensures a consistent label format for all internal transactions.

The below carton label is printed by the customer as a finished good label, they have listed their part number, job number that produced it, and the quantity in the carton. By having this information to perform inventory movements, pick for shipping or assign a product to a shipment the user can simply scan the three barcodes, have it entered into the correct fields automatically, and complete whatever transaction they are performing.

singleBox   

Adding Non-Visual, Dynamic Feedback

The next efficiency that can be added is providing non-visual feedback to the user. When the user has scanned the necessary data to perform the transaction, you can add an audio or vibration cue for them so that they can focus more on the task than providing constant visual verification of the process. 

These simple changes can provide a dramatic improvement of data integrity and employee efficiency for shop floor operations, but to quote Steve Jobs “one more thing…”

Most modern handheld devices including smartphones or the latest generation of mobile computers for shop floor applications such as the Zebra TC7x and TC5x series include a camera. Now while shop floor selfies may not have a use yet, the camera can still add substantial value to shop floor processing efficiency.

Many of us have used the barcode scanning applications on a smartphone, the problem is that they are much slower than a traditional barcode scanner, they are unwieldy to use, and are not appropriate for the most part in a shop floor environment due to these issues. But that is for scanning one barcode, instead of using the camera you can scan all of the barcodes at once. Using our customer barcode at the top, let’s say to add that box to a picking process the user would need to scan the 3 individual barcodes to pick that box as they put it into a cart. Using that exact image above, we can extract all 3 barcodes our simultaneously and then by using either their data qualifiers or by using their relative locations on the label we can pick with a single operation.

Now scanning efficiency with data qualifiers and a quality feedback mechanism to the user means that often times scanning a single box with a dedicated barcode scanner will be quicker than taking a picture, but there is nothing that limits the transaction to a single box. Take for instance the illustration below:

multiBox

Scanning each of those barcodes although efficient would mean that you would have to perform a transaction for each box. By using the camera we could either choose to perform that transaction on all of them simultaneously, or provide the user with a touch based interface where we present all of the data that we gathered from the image (each box) and allow them to select the boxes that they would like to perform the transaction on. This increases process efficiency dramatically by having a single step to perform many complex operations.

barPhone

In this case, working from our photo we’ve extracted all of the labels that were visible. From there we’ve created a mobile UI in the Ionic framework allowing the user to select the cartons they would like to pick and pick all of them in a single operation.

Hopefully, this inspires some of you out there to look at what else mobile devices can do to increase employee efficiency for shop floor operations. If you have any thoughts or questions please feel free to reach out and we’ll help however we can!

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of Industry.


What business wouldn’t want to save on credit card transactions? Well, we’ve developed a process that will allow you to do just that. We have developed a solution as an enhancement to the base credit card processing module that Epicor provides. With the Epicor credit card transaction enhancement, we replace a DLL with an updated one that looks for events involving capturing of funds or sales (where it is an authorization and capture all in one).

an image of an Epicor credit card transaction enhancement in use

The Epicor Credit Card Transaction Enhancement

When we receive that transaction event, we query the Epicor database for additional information and add that to the request.  This resides at level 3 details, which includes everything for level 2. The nice thing about credit card processors is they will only use the amount of information they need. If it is a consumer credit card, the additional data will be discarded. However, for B2B customers, the enhancement will automatically select the right level and provide those cost savings.

The standard Epicor credit card handling system only provides level 1 information. This is essentially the total and information to identify the customer in terms of fraud protection. Now some of these fees and savings are individually negotiated. The default fees for PayPal Website Payments (which is technically what is used) is 2.9% + $.30/transaction.

Now level 2 will be the level that helps our customers the most. This requires additional details on the purchase. Details can include the amount of the tax, a customer code, postal codes, and tax identification number. For customers that are using corporate cards (B2B customers), you get a lower fee if you provide this information as well. I had seen the most often quoted numbers as .5% savings for level 2 customers. 

Level 3 is the next iteration of that offering something around 1% total savings. This is for business to business (tend to be larger corporations) and business to government purchases. For this, we are sending a lot of additional data in terms of the line-level details about the purchase.

The Epicor Credit Card Transaction Enhancement Level 1, 2, and 3 Comparison

L3

Looking at only level 2 savings (.5%), $400,000 in credit card sales would result in an annual savings of $2,000.

Bezlio is a professional services firm. They provide custom development services and support for Infor ERP Visual (Visual Enterprise/Visual Manufacturing) and Epicor Vantage ERP. 

Here at Encompass Solutions, Inc., we are proud to continue working with Bezlio on many development and implementation projects.

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of Industry.


Quick: Think of something scarier than navigating and understanding the tax code! Okay. Are you done? If your top three looks like ours—which are navigating and understanding the tax code, giant spiders, and regular-sized spiders—then we’ve got good news for you! Here’s a hint: it comes in the form of a business software tax deduction.

Epicor ERP Qualifies For A Business Software Tax Deduction

One of the things we’re not afraid of is finding ways to make our ERP systems affordable enough for any company. IRS Section 179 is one of the ways we do this: It covers all the software that you bought for your company in a tax year. It’s right there on line 5 of Eligible Property. That means you can deduct the full purchase or leasing price directly from your gross income. This was implemented by the U.S. Government to encourage businesses to buy equipment from other businesses, while investing in themselves at the same time. It’s a fantastic reason and a serious incentive to upgrading your ERP system.

an image of an office worker filling out forms to collect his company's Business Software Tax Deduction.

How To Collect Your Epicor Business Software Tax Deduction

To get into a little bit more detail, the software you purchase has to meet all of the following specifications:

  1. The software must be financed (only specific type leases or loans qualify), or purchased outright by you.
  2. The software must be used in your business for income-producing activity.
  3. The software must have a determinable useful life.
  4. The software must be expected to last more than one year.

In addition, these three specific stipulations must be met:

  1. The software must be readily available for purchase by the general public.
  2. The software must be subject to a non-exclusive license.
  3. The software must not have been substantially modified. Basically, the software can’t be custom code.

Now for some more good news: We know about some software that fulfills all of Section 179’s requirements. It’s a brand new Epicor 10 system, installed and maintained by Encompass Solutions, Inc, of course.

Contact your accounting professional today to see how implementing Epicor 10 will allow you to take advantage of IRS Section 179 tax deduction.

There is bad news, though: We can’t do anything about the spiders.

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of Industry.


The essence of reaching out for help is never an easy task. We live in a “can do” society, where independence and self-sufficiency often define who we are or at least how we are perceived by others. The acclimation of stating that you just clearly do not know the answer to an unspoken question can be daunting for some and often forbidden. Therefore, we “spin our wheels” for hours on end, attempting to solve our own issues or enlighten ourselves with the answers to our own questions. Here’s where managed services providers can step in and lighten the load or deliver clear direction that leads to clear results.

an image of encompass solutions managed services providers at their desks helping Epicor customers.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

-Albert Einstein

How Managed Services Providers Can Help

How many hours can you state that you have worked on something that you had a burning question on and you either never discovered the answer, or you just chose to ignore the unanswered question- with the constellation of thought that the issue would magically disappear one day. We are all guilty of this one thing. It occurs daily- at work, at home, at school, we all experience the clouded thought/ question mark experience.

In our ever-changing technological world, we will always have questions, but how we choose to handle these unknowns is what determines our success individually, as a business and as a technology community. With this in mind, we have developed an ERP Community Support system- our Epicor Help Desk Support organization, known as Managed Services- is here to answer any and all of your Epicor questions.

As Managed Services providers, Encompass delivers a program that includes the ongoing maintenance of Epicor environments (typically a Test, Pilot, Live and Training environment), application of one off bug fixes (SCR’s), restarting application servers and setup and maintenance of user accounts.

As part of implementing this service, Encompass Solutions, Inc. will provide standardized procedures for environment management, which must be adhered to by all resources – for example, installing an SCR on a test system prior to deployment in live.  Environment refreshes can be requested and scheduled through managed service tickets.  To ensure stable operations, the SQL maintenance plan will be reviewed to ensure that preventive maintenance is taking place, consistency checks are being performed, that load balancing has been performed, and that hardware is correctly specified for optimal operations.

Beyond our Help Desk Support organization, we also provide assistance with Epicor customizations through our Incident Base Support program. In this instance, a help desk ticket would be logged by you- the end-user, and if flagged for Incident-Based Support, we would write up the requirement(s) for approval, and provide an estimate for the services which must be approved.  These requests may still be logged through the helpdesk, but will typically be quoted separately outside of Managed Services.

Encompass Solutions has a team of over 65 resources spanning 4 countries globally, with combined experience in ERP reaching over 250 years.This makes it clear that we are an ERP support organization dedicated to being much more than managed services providers.  As an Epicor certified Platinum Services partner, Encompass resources attend training and complete certifications alongside Epicor’s internal consultants, developers, and other departmental staff.  Additionally, as a partner of the highest tier and a more condensed organization, we provide not only a more personal approach to your implementation support, but an additional level of agility and resource escalation to facilitate your success.

We have been providing infrastructure support for Epicor ERP for over 15 years, on numerous platforms. With our coverage, and deep Epicor infrastructure experience, Encompass is uniquely positioned to offer effective and responsive services.  Allow us to work with you to resolve those burning ERP questions.

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of Industry.


Excel continues to be such a key tool in business today, that Enterprises of all sizes – big and small – use it extensively. It is such a universally known tool that despite the sophistication of many other available programs, it is fair to say that Excel is very much at the heart of the workplace, particularly in Financial departments. The rub is that Financial data and other important metrics normally are held in your Company’s main IT system, ERP and Enterprise Management Database. So what if you could create and refresh reports in Microsoft® Office Excel®, combining ERP data with additional lookups and calculations to get the answers you need without the usual challenges of gathering source data and refreshing reports? This is where Epicor XL Connect comes into the picture.

An image of a tall building and the text "epicor xl connect".

Epicor XL Connect

The XL Connect solution is designed with pre-packaged content packs for Epicor ERP but is also available for other ERP Platforms. We have helped many customers implement this bridge between their enterprise source data and Excel.

With XL Connect, you can access real-time data from your ERP system with built-in functions that let you combine ERP data with non-ERP data, run lookups or calculations, and arrange and format data exactly as you want.

For the technical users, here’s what’s happening under the hood.

When you launch the XL Connect client, it reaches out to an Admin File Share. This is typically on a server, but technically it’s just a basic file share that can be copied anywhere.

When you drag in a function from the XL Connect tree view to your MS Excel spreadsheet, you are simply reaching out to an SSRS Report Server to grab the corresponding XL Connect report, and then pulling in data from your data source, which could be for example an Epicor database, so that you can populate the report in your spreadsheet.

XL Connect can be licensed for users who can run drill-downs, and also for developers who can build advanced, cross-platform queries that can be run directly from Microsoft Excel.

For more information about XL Connect please click here. We are happy to help!

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of Industry.


From time to time I’ve needed to have a popup form appear on an Epicor form to ask the user to take some action or enter information. Since the toolbox does not have “EpiForm” as a choice, the form and its controls have to be programmed. This is not a big deal, though you do have to take the time to get the controls all laid out the way you want.

Of course, programming entails changing the code, running it, seeing where things are, changing the code to fix, repeat. I have some formulas I use to help speed up the process but I still typically need to do some fine-tuning by hand. Also, keep in mind: If you need to create events associated with the controls, you’ll have to code them manually.

Another option is to use Visual Studio to build the form, adjust the items where you want them, and then take the associated form.cs file and copy the code into your program.

Since you don’t always have Visual Studio an alternate approach came to me. When adding an EpiCombo box to a grid column, I add an EpiCombo to my screen someplace, adjust the properties so that it gets the list of values I want using the BO. Then I hide it before associating with the grid column.

How To Create Your Epicor Pop-up Form

It occurred to me I should be able to do a similar thing with controls for my popup. So, when I need a popup form, I do the following:

  1. Add a sheet to the screen using the Sheet Wizard 
  2. Next, Add a groupbox to this sheet that is the same size as the popup form you will be using
  3. After that, add the controls that you need to the group box, locating them where you need them. Since the groupbox is the same size as your form the location information will be the same.
  4. Change any properties on the control, such as EpiBinding, if appropriate 
  5. In the Initialize code section make the sheet invisible 
  6. Create your popup form as usual except you just need to add the controls you created above, no need to set their location or size etc.

myPopupForm= new EpiForm();

myPopupForm.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(700, 500);

myPopupForm.StartPosition = FormStartPosition.CenterScreen;

myPopupForm.Controls.AddRange(new Control[] {grdEchoOrders, 

btnOK,

btnCancel,

txtProgress);

myPopupForm.ShowDialog();……

If needed you can use the event wizard to add events for any of these controls; there is no need to code them manually. The controls are also global so you can reference them anywhere in the code.

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of Industry.


Patrick Miskill’s technical series on ERP tools, particularly the Epicor DMT, wraps up today with a look at all the variables you’ll run into when building your ERP system and how learning about your errors is even more important than learning about your successes.

My actual experience with a manufacturer of fabric belts for large conveyor systems (Fenner Dunlop Americas) saw two uses of DMT: One for a major upgrade, a second for updating their Method of Manufacture/MOMs.  In the first case, we used DMT scripts to upload data from an older version of Epicor to a newer one.  Similar to a new installation, we pulled data out of the source system and formatted it in several dozen spreadsheets for uploading to the new target system. Knowing how the data was structured in the old Epicor system was a big help. For new Epicor customers, extracting and massaging the data from a non‐Epicor legacy system is quite a project; in such cases DMT is an invaluable tool.

Where The Epicor DMT Comes Into Play

In the standard product, an engineer would have to run a “where­‐used” report to determine which part revisions used the raw material; it could be just a few dozen or it could be over 100. Each part revision would require changing in the Engineering Workbench, one by one. It is a time consuming and manually intensive process.  So we developed a process starting with a Business Activity Query (BAQ) which went out and extracted only the MOMs affected by the change. The BAQ was developed specifically for subsequent use in DMT, i.e. column headings matched those required by DMT, we extracted all columns required by DMT (because we already knew the “rules” for MOMs) and only those optional columns we needed to update.  We then entered Excel column formulas specific to the change(s). E.g. if the old raw material was a polyester yarn and the new material was a nylon yarn, unit weights and other factors specific to the textile industry (ever hear of a “twist contraction” variable?) could be entered into a formula that resulted in the new variables for the MOM.

Once the extract and validation of the Excel data was completed, it was simple to format the final output for use by DMT.  Testing a few rows in a copy of the LIVE database, we could easily validate the final updated MOMs.  In fact, we could use the original BAQ extract programs to look at the updated data in the TEST system and quickly evaluate the results. Once we got the process down, we turned what would have been a 100+ hours of manual updates in Epicor to an electronic process that ran in just a few hours.  Once documented, the process could be reviewed, validated (the client was ISO compliant) and repeated as­ needed.

Of course like any software tool, DMT has its quirks. We learned the hard way that despite how illogical a data template may appear, it was critical to supply the required information in exactly the format requested. And interpreting the error logs is sometimes an exercise in the art of editing.  I highly recommend acquiring and using the free “Notepad++” data editing tool; it can help you read a jumbled up error log file and it is essential to always check the final DMT file you create from Excel, prior to uploading it to DMT.  A common mistake is to save an Excel spreadsheet as a comma­‐separated variable file and the resultant ASCII file has extraneous commas and/or columns or just plain garbage. And if your data (e.g. Descriptions) contain commas, you must enclose them in double­‐quotes (or just use a wacky character as the delimiter­‐even safer).

Words Of Caution For Epicor DMT

Just remember that “with great power comes great responsibility…”. So before you change data in a system, make darn sure you’ve chosen the correct target database, since DMT will not issue any warning whatsoever if you update LIVE instead of TEST (not that I’ve EVER made that mistake!) and will merrily chug along, processing the data with the full expectation that the operator knows what the target database should be.

This is why it is CRITICAL to always test your DMT script before you run it in a production environment. Note that if you don’t have a recent copy of LIVE for test purposes, you should seek out technical services that can assist you (usually by taking a copy of your most recent backup of LIVE and bringing it up on a similar environment) this is something that Encompass Solutions as an Epicor certified partner does on a regular  basis and offers as a managed service.

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of Industry.