Sage 500 ERP Customizations

Customization is an important feature during any ERP implementation and future extensions. Sage 500 ERP (MAS 500) is an integrated suite of robust business applications, with an open design that helps midsized and large businesses to adapt their management solution to their business needs. Flexible, customizable, and scalable to grow and change with business needs, Sage 500 ERP runs your business the way you want to, with a low cost of ownership and high return on investment. Sage 500 ERP customizations include report customization, screen form customizer, business insights (data explore), and SDK development tool.

Report Customization

Sage 500 uses crystal reports as the report engine to enable the users to preview and print the custom reports. All reports are stored in the reports folder of each module in the client installation folder. For example, all reports relating to PO module will be at PO\Reports folder. The reports can be opened and modified using crystal reports. The report name can be found using the exporting function at the preview module during reporting. Some reports have been defined at Common Information > CI Setup > Set Up Business Forms.

Business Insights

Sage 500 ERP Intelligence Reporting is a powerful reporting tool, based on the familiar Microsoft Excel application, that enables the effortless report creation and then allows managers to quickly and easily obtain/analyze data that is vital to growth and profitability. There are lots of pre-defined standard reports for finance, operations and strategic planning. These reports can be easily customized by the users themselves, such as changing columns, filters etc. Please refer to other blogs for details of Sage ERP Intelligence Reporting.

Customizer (screen customization)

Customizer is a nice tool embedded in Sage 500. After enabling the customizer module, most of the screens and forms can be easily modified to support business needs, such as adding new fields, modifying existing fields or adding new scripts for changing the data processing. The following example is to add some new fields into Project options.

The process of adding new fields is below.

1. Create a new table with the same primary key from the parent table at SQL database
2. Add the new fields to the new table
3. Click Customizer to add the new field (control) on the screen/form in Sage 500
4. Setup the proper properties, data binding and other parameters for the new control
5. Done (refer to the following figure)

Fig.1 – Using Customizer to add a new field on Sage 500 screen

Customizer has its limitations. It’s currently does not support line customization and some special forms. For those areas, the SDK customization tool could be used, which will be discussed later.

Business Insights

The Business Insights module provides the analysis tool for the user to explore and analyze the business history or current information. The Explore function also enables the user to drill down to the data which is relevant, such as having customers view their invoices. The following figure shows the information to be explored.

Fig-2: Business insights – Explore the customer information

The Explore allows the user to filter, group, re-organize, and add/delete columns, and even drill down to other relevant information. Using ‘Edit Columns’ function, the user could add and delete the fields to be explored (refer to the following figure).

Fig.-3: customize the explore view using Edit columns

The SDK Tool for customization

Sage also maintains the source code for Sage 500 while allowing Sage partners to do the customization using the SDK Tool. Using the SDK Tool, partners can easily build the projects to add or customize the Sage 500 modules and functions for supporting the special business process.

The source code of Sage 500 is well organized into lots of small projects so that it’s easier for the developer to do the customization. Using Sage 500 Repository tool, the developer can use the application wizard and report wizard to quickly create the screen/forms and the new reports in Sage 500. Furthermore, Sage 500 uses an open design and it also allows the .Net technology to be used to create the new modules and objects.

Summary

Sage ERP 500 (Sage MAS 500) is a powerful ERP system, which includes almost all business modules in Finance, Project Accounting, Manufacturing, and other operations. Its open design structure not only allows the easy customization, but also enables 3^rd party solutions to be seamlessly integrated. The extended solutions include Warehouse management (RFID), Sage Timesheets, Quality assurance, Sage Fixed Assets, Sage Payment Solutions, Paperless office solutions, Sage Intelligence, EDI transactions and Web browser (B/S) solution. Talk to us at Mantralogix today if you would like to explore Sage ERP 500 and the power of customizations!