Suite Wide Features - Logistics - In Depth

At the heart of the S5 Logistics are a range of core features, which are readily available from anywhere within the suite, from Purchase Order through to Sales Order Processing. One such feature is Expediting, which exemplifies de Facto S5's power and ease of use.

Expediting is one of the most important facilities in any logistics system. In de Facto S5, a dedicated expediting button is available at all times within the Logistics Suite. The expediting window allows direct access to stock levels within any warehouse, free stock levels current and forward by date, details of batches of stock held.

Additional facilities offer options for making temporary reservations against stock, splitting and combining stock reservations to ensure the most effective use of available resources. The expediting window also allows easy visibility and maintenance of stock and orders which have been locked or are involved in back-to-back transactions or are being held for use on particular jobs.

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Logistics Expediting Window

The S5 Expediting window provides quick snapshot information on the stock status of any item, and allows subsequent access to product history or current order details. The Expediting Window also allows the user to manage the expediting (forward planning) queue of transactions for the product.

As with the Expediting features, a dedicated button gives instant access throughout the Logistics Suite to product and order history, viewed by customer, supplier or product. This window also offers instant answers to product tracking issues, such as establishing where a particular stock receipt has been used, etc.

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Product History and Traceability

de Facto S5 provides quick and easy access to product, customer, and supplier related history. Any transaction can be immediately traced for both source and usage.

This highly flexible facility allows the easy ordering of products on a sales order from suppliers, and the stock receipts to be held specifically against the originating sales order. Options are provided for automating direct shipments, adding to existing purchase orders and exclusively linking orders.

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Back to Back Orders

de Facto S5 provides flexible options for bi directional back to back ordering.

Customer and Supplier Complaints can be recorded against a specific sales or purchase order. These complaints can be linked to other related complaints and can be analysed and costed in various ways, using user definable codes. A history of the handling of the complaint, as well as a detailed description can also be held.

de Facto S5 offers easy navigation, all the way from all modules, down to originating transactions, such as navigation from sales orders to deliveries through to invoices, or from a goods received note to all of the resulting sales made from the products received. Equally important is the ability from any transaction to view the postings made from it, and to be able to quickly and easily reproduce relevant documents, such as invoices.

de Facto S5 provides a series of Comprehensive Reports, many of which can easily be parameter-driven by the user. Standard reports can also be built into reporting sets for routine printing if required. These reports can also be included in the security system to prevent access to data.

Transaction batches offer facilities for the importing of transaction data from external sources. Data is imported from text files for which a public file format is published. Special import options are available for the importing of opening balance transactions when the system is first set up.

When transaction types are posted, they are immediately updated to their respective ledgers, including the nominal ledger. Automated postings for such items as stock, cost of sales, work in progress, and accrual accounting are made.

Options are available for Batch or Individual Processing throughout the logistics suite. These facilities allow easy selection of orders which are to be processed.

All types of logistics transactions allow the user to define their own list of status codes for the transactions. These can be updated either individually or via a batch process window. The batch process function is also ideal for bar code based input, which is often used for works order status updates, etc.

de Facto S5 offers standard facilities for defining multiple levels of analysis codes, on all types of records and transactions, at both the header and detail levels. These codes can have user-definable titles and choice lists. Many of the standard reports can then use these analysis codes to select and sort data.

The new enhancements to the de Facto S5 Logistics suite allow completely user definable quality control profiles to be created and linked to product groups. Each profile allows unlimited test methods to be defined and data to be recorded for each sample / batch tested. Positive release facilities are available including conditional and restricted use option. Data capture can be undertaken either through the normal entry windows or via handheld dockable and RDT based devices.

The de Facto S5 Logistics suite now provides powerful facilities for the control of forklift / pallet based warehousing. All pallet movements can be scheduled and managed from a central management window and communicated directly to the forklift via RDT based networks. This provides a considerable time saving and optimisation in the use of warehousing resources.

de Facto have added facilities to provide for the accurate and efficient control of bonded stores. The facilities include all of the required options for handling both normal import and excise duty for beer, wines, spirits and tobacco. These facilities have been incorporated as standard options into the powerful de Facto S5 Logistics suite of sales order, purchase order and stock control modules. Feature allow for the accrual accounting of all aspects of duty and pricing as both duty paid and under bond.

The new Advanced Landed and Delivery Costs facilities provide for unlimited accrual or notional accounting in respect of delivered and landed costs. Features are provided to calculate and analyse any number of landed costs, based around standard contract terms. This feature is especially important in the sales order and purchase order processing modules.

A new option in the Production module provides quick and easy data capture via handheld devices for production data entry. The handheld devices include bar code scanners.

de Facto S5 filing cabinets now offer (from v5.0) a fully integrated document storage and retrieval solution. This allows the definition of a series of folders within each category of filing cabinet. Cabinets are available for all main record types such as customers, suppliers, products, orders, jobs, projects etc. The latest release of S5 includes a new facility for Filing Cabinets on Lot/Serial Numbers records.

1 - Picking Controls
New Picking parameters (in v5.0) are available to allow SQL statements to override the normal stock physical selection process.

2 - Unit of Measure Maintenance
Units can now be entered in an easier to use pallet / floating style window.

3 - Picking Zone Usage and Pick Types
A new lookup list of 'Picking Unit Types' is available from stock control lookup codes.

Each tracking group element can now (from v5.0) have a choice list and default entry defined. This can be used to ensure data conformance during any stock receipts of products which are flagged for tracking.