Author Archives: dearsyst

New Release – 29th MARCH 2020 – Improvements: Production Module, Attachment Tabs for Customers, Suppliers and Finished Goods Assemblies, Reports “More Fields” button renamed to “Configure Layout”, “My Favourites” menu item removed for B2B guest users, Shipping Service Improvements

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New Features

Feature 1: Production Module Improvements

Impact area: DEAR Production Module.

Introduction: The Production module is aimed at addressing the needs of the production process. New production features will provide our current customers with powerful, logical manufacturing solutions to add to their inventory solution.

Following on from our most recent releases, we are continuing to improve the Production module functionality and add features. This release’s new features are:

  • Resource Unit of Time: Unit of time for Resource cost calculation can now be set in seconds as well as minutes and hours. Managing Production Resources – Operational hours and capacity.
  • Production Run – Scheduled start time: Scheduled start date field is added to the Production Run. This is the date on which Production should be started according to the Scheduler.
  • Production Order – Recalculation of order quantities according to availability: If availability of a finished good changes between when the Production Order is planned and when it is released, the user has the option to change the Production Order quantity to reflect this change.
  • Production Order – Related Orders: Changes to which orders are displayed on the related orders tab for a Production Order. See Managing Production Orders – Related Orders. 
  • Production Order – Put Away: Put away for Production Orders can be executed to any location set up in Reference Books -> Locations and bins.
  • Scheduler: Buffer % filter has been renamed to Priority filter and ordered by colour for clarity.
  • Production Overdue Report: “Show Production Runs” checkbox gives the option to toggle between viewing Production Orders or Production Runs on the report. 


Pre-conditions: None.

 

Feature 2: Attachment Tabs for Customers, Suppliers and Finished Goods Assemblies.

Impact area: Sale Module, Purchase Module, Production Module.

Introduction: A tab for Attachments has now been added to the Customer page, Supplier page and Assembly page. Documents < 10MB in size can be dragged and dropped into the tab to be attached.

Documents printed or emailed from the Assembly page will be automatically saved to the attachments tab.

Pre-conditions: None.

 

Feature 3: Reports “More Fields” button renamed to “Configure Layout”

Impact area: Reports module.

Introduction: The “More Fields” button on all reports has been renamed to “Configure Layout”. The function and fields have not been changed.

Pre-conditions: None.

 

Feature 4: “My Favourites” menu item removed for B2B guest users

Impact area: DEAR B2B.

Introduction: The “My Favourites” menu item has been removed from view for guest users of DEAR B2B.

Pre-conditions: None.

 

Feature 5: Shipping Service Improvements

Impact area: DEAR Inventory, Shipping integrations (Shippit, Starshipit, Shipstation).

Introduction: We have made some changes to error handling for shipping integrations to improve our service.

  • When an error occurs while generating shipping labels or getting shipping rates, a link to a downloadable text file with the error data will be displayed with the error. 
  • If the error is unexpected (such as an unhandled error from shipstation), in that case, an email dialog box with attached log file will be generated, which can be used to email the error log to shipping provider support.

When Shipping Labels are generated via Shippit, product information is now sent to Shippit. (this is already the case for other supported shipping services.)

Pre-conditions: None.

The Benefits of WMS Software

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This article is part 2 of 2 in our series, “Why an Efficient Fulfillment Process Starts with WMS Software”. Read the first part here.

Missed Part 1? Check it out now to explore common obstacles to efficient warehouse management.

So manual systems or inventory management software simply won’t cut it for efficient warehouse management. The good thing is, there’s a great solution already at your fingertips: WMS software.

Particularly for businesses that already have inventory and order management softwares, WMS software is a natural extension to those systems that helps ensure your warehouses are run just as efficiently as the rest of the business — the benefits of WMS simply speak for themselves.

Level 3: Obtain Peak Efficiency with WMS Software

Level 3 in the hierarchy of fulfillment efficiency is warehouse management system software.

WMS software standardizes the entire chain of events from order received to order dispatched. It operates as the nervous system for your warehouse, organizing and managing your stock, optimizing your fulfillment process and creating order out of chaos. As a result, warehouse management software solves for fulfillment, drives operational efficiency and improves warehouse management across the board.

Top-tier warehouse management software works like this: it integrates with your other systems (order and inventory management), manages how orders are sent for fulfillment, stores all order details, automates the printing of shipping labels and checks the selected inventory to ensure an accurate pick. To ensure communication, warehouse workers carry a handheld device that’s connected to the system, as well as a barcode scanner that communicates scanned items back to the software. This provides data that’s updated to the minute, and it also reduces reliance on printing.

Operational Efficiencies

WMS software is a dedicated tool designed to solve all the operational issues created by manual or slapstick solutions.

Organizational Transparency & Insights

With its clear-cut systems and overview of the entire warehouse, software standardizes the entire fulfillment process from start to finish. Everyone involved — workers, managers, even those involved in order management — can have a clear understanding of the different stages required for fulfillment to succeed.

Clear tracking of every order, every piece of inventory, its location, its destination and even where workers are at a given time delivers an unprecedented level of insight into the warehouse’s operations. This is a dramatic contrast to paper-based systems, where transparency into existing processes is nonexistent. You’ll be able to identify areas that slow down fulfillment and ensure that all parts of your warehouse are speaking to one another.

This level of insight also enables WMS software to optimize existing systems. For instance, if new orders come in for inventory, those orders can be sent to a worker that’s already at that shelving unit. Because the software knows where all inventory is, orders can be sorted by the proximity of inventory so that workers don’t have to backtrack or wander across the whole warehouse. It can even run wave picks, organizing how and when workers do picks to ensure an efficient flow of traffic.

Error Reduction

The other side to that coin is error reduction. Transparency, combined with the extra checks baked into the software, ensure that human error is at a minimum. For instance, theft or mispicks are nearly impossible when each piece of inventory is scanned and automatically checked against an order. Duplicate orders and miships are a thing of the past, because the software maintains oversight of all orders and isn’t prone to errors like printing the same pick list twice. That results in enormous savings: the software pays for itself quickly simply with the reduction of costly errors, let alone efficiency improvements.

Improved Warehouse Management

Because it’s a specialized tool, WMS software also enables numerous warehouse-specific workflows designed to improve efficiency.

Advanced Fulfillment

Advanced fulfillment capabilities genuinely elevate the way your warehouse works. You can orchestrate every type of advanced pick, pack and ship system you need and react to each order in real time, instead of fulfilling orders one by one in a scattered order. That includes picks that simply aren’t possible without software, such as wave, bulk or time picks.

Integrations & Automation

WMS software works hand-in-hand with your existing systems, from sales to order management to inventory to invoicing. Top WMS software can integrate seamlessly to ensure a steady flow of communication across all your operations. This creates a system with immense interconnectivity, and all of it is accessible from each worker’s device.

At the same time, the software automates many of those integrated processes and eliminates manual work. There’s no need for someone to categorize orders or push updates to workers: WMS software takes care of that for you. It can even print shipping labels directly from the app, so that pick, pack and ship becomes one smooth process for fulfillment.

In other words: if you have a warehouse, you need WMS software.

WMS software comes with a myriad of benefits, and the right software will:

1. Improve transparency into the fulfillment process (who’s doing what, where, when and why)

2. Ensure organization as you scale

3. Generate data insights and recommendations to improve efficiency

4. Enable advanced management and fulfillment

5. Automate and eliminate time-consuming manual processes

6. Integrate with your existing systems

7. Solve for the majority of costly human error

By creating operational efficiency and enabling you to implement advanced warehouse management, WMS software ultimately saves you time and money. You can leverage a tool that is specialized for the intricacies of warehouses — and the crucial role they play in your product lifecycle.

Want to learn more about the integrations and features you should look for in WMS software? Check out the power of DEAR’s WMS software in this article.

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Why an Efficient Fulfillment Process Starts with WMS Software

New Release – 15th MARCH 2020 – Improvements: Production Module, New Internal Note Field and Stock Tab with Availability Info Added to Product Page, New Clone Action for Assemblies, Decimal Places for Numeric Data Shown in Generated and Printed Reports are Configurable via General Settings, New UI Improvements

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New Features

Feature 1: Production Module Improvements

Impact area: DEAR Production Module.

Introduction: The Production module is aimed at addressing the needs of the production process. New production features will provide our current customers with powerful, logical manufacturing solutions to add to their inventory solution.

Following on from our most recent releases, we are continuing to improve the Production module functionality and add features. This release’s new features are:

  • Capacity Planning for Individual Resources: Set operational and non-operational intervals for each individual resource. Map labour resource to individual users in your organisation. See Managing Production Resources – Operational hours and capacity.
  • Production BOM – Operation Type: Production BOM operations can now be set to Manufacturing or Setup type. Cycle time for Manufacturing operations depends on the quantity of finished goods to produce. Cycle time for Setup operations remains the same no matter the number of finished goods quantity.
  • Reorder Suggestion – Production: Reorder suggestions from the Inventory Velocity report now include Production as well as Transfer and Purchase. Use this option to generate Production Orders for your reordered finished goods products and nested semi-finished components. See Reordering from the Reorder Suggestions page.
  • Manufacturing Buffer: Manufacturing buffer is a value set in the Production BOM to protect production order deadlines. The buffer is set to allow enough time to complete the Production Order when something goes wrong. Manufacturing buffer now applies a buffer to component lead time when calculating a Production Order Release Date. See Manufacturing Buffer.
  • Production Reports: It is important to have a transparent communication channel between production managers and sales managers. If the production manager implements production changes (e.g. re-plans orders), these changes impact the product delivery date and thus Sales Order completion. See Production Reports for more information.

    • Production Overdue Report: The Production Overdue report informs the Production Manager about any Production Orders/Production Runs that have not been started on their scheduled start date. Only Production Orders with the status Released appear in this report.
    • Production Required By Date Exceptions: Changes in production planning can cause schedules to be pushed forward. The Required by Date Exceptions report is intended for sales managers to check when the Required By Date of a Production Order differs from the Required by Date of a Sales Order, so the new date can be settled with the customer.
    • Production Reports can be scheduled automatically for customers with a DEAR Automation subscription.


Pre-conditions: None.

 

Feature 2: New Internal Note Field and Stock Tab with Availability Info Added to Product Page

Impact area: Inventory > Products.

Introduction: The Product page now includes a new Internal Note field and a Stock tab showing availability info. An Internal Note can be used for any information that should not be shared publicly. The Description field can still be used for information that needs to be shared with your customers on your sales channels.

Pre-conditions: None.

Functionality: When adding a new product from Inventory > New Product, an Internal Note can be included for the product.

Internal notes can also be added to existing products in your inventory. Go to Inventory > Products, select or search for the product to which an internal note is to be added, then enter the information on the Internal Note field.

To view availability info for the product, click the Stock tab on the left.

For more information on these features, see the Product/Service Document Header Fields and Viewing Stock Availability sections in our article on Product Service and Management.

 

Feature 3: New Clone Action for Assemblies

Impact area: Production > Assemblies.

Introduction: The Assembly page now includes the Clone feature which allows copying of the information about an existing assembly into a new Assembly record.

Pre-conditions: Create a new assembly from Production > Assembly.

Functionality: Opening the assembly record shows a Clone button. All your existing assembly records also display this same button. To copy an existing assembly into a new Assembly record, click the Clone button.

For more information on this feature, see Cloning an Assembly.

 

Feature 4: Decimal Places for Numeric Data Shown in Generated and Printed Reports are Configurable via General Settings

Impact area: Reports.

Introduction: Decimal places in reports in DEAR are configurable via Settings > General Settings. Numeric data in all reports generated in DEAR, including those that can be exported to PDF, will have the decimal places set under this option.

Pre-conditions: In Settings > General Settings > Organisation, set Maximum decimal in quantity to the desired decimal place (set to 2 by default).

Functionality: Numeric data in all reports generated in DEAR, including those exported to PDF, will display the decimal places based on the value set in the pre-condition.

For more information, see Managing Reports and Report FAQs.

 

New UI Improvements

DEAR announced new UI improvements to make the system more user-friendly and in line with current standards in our 16 February and 1 March 2020 release notes. This week, DEAR Inventory is implementing additional UI improvements in the following modules:

  • Purchase
  • Financials
  • Settings
  • Reports
  • Automation.

Customers will immediately notice these changes in the aforementioned modules. UI improvements in other DEAR modules are set to be implemented in the coming weeks.

We’re currently updating our documentation to reflect these changes.

5 Ways a Built-in Cloud ERP Payment System Increases Your Profit

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“Money makes the world go round” isn’t just a great line from Cabaret. It’s also an incisive comment on the fact that to succeed, you must take money into account — especially in business.

So when it comes to your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, you need more than just resource management tools. You also need a way for payments to flow smoothly in and out. In return, you’ll see your success grow with invoices paid on time, rising profits, increased customer satisfaction and more.

Here are 5 places you’ll see the impact.

 

1. You can accept and make payments within your business’s ERP platform.

The most obvious benefit? Built-in payment processing enables you to send and receive payments within your cloud ERP. Your payments will no longer be separate from your business management system, so every aspect of your business operations can be managed under one roof.

That’s beneficial for a number of reasons:

1. You’ll consolidate business costs into one major system for both payments and operations.

2. You’ll host all your data in one place, without having to double-enter (so you’ll reduce error or redundant effort).

3. It’ll be easier than ever to automatically reconcile your sales and payments with inventory level.

4. If you’re using a cloud ERP system, your provider can offer a fully digital payment platform like Stripe to accept a range of online payment types, such as mobile wallets.

5. The right payment platform also enables you to grow your business internationally.

All of these combine to lower your business costs overall and ensure that you’re running at peak efficiency.

 

2. Payment processing is automatically integrated with multiple ERP functions.

When payments are built right into your ERP platform, you can accept or make payments across a broad range of ERP modules at no extra cost. You don’t just get the benefit of payments for a traditionally customer-facing platform like a shop, but for all the systems you use that need payment processing.

For instance, you can integrate payments with your:

– Point of Sale (POS)

– B2B portal

– Sales Orders

– and more

You don’t need to enable payments for each individual service, with additional integration costs at each step. It’s already set up for you.

The other side of this benefit is that your payment data can integrate with any associated systems — if you have a full cloud ERP suite, for instance, you can link your customer data from your CRM to make payment processing more smooth.

All of these integrations make for a more efficient business with full access to all the data you need across every arm of your operations.

 

3. You won’t have to chase payments or deal with low cash flow.

For growing businesses, low cash flow is a significant obstacle. When you’re forced to wait for payments — or spend 4 hours a week chasing overdue payments — your growth suffers.

With integrated payments, you will no longer have to wait for customers to make bank transfers. Customers can pay invoices directly in your platform, with reconciliation happening simultaneously. When you make paying invoices as easy as possible, invoices get paid quicker — simple as that.

Similarly, by enabling customers to pay online, you’ll gain better control of your cash flow because you’ll be able to see your account balance, payments and payouts history in your payment gateway.

 

4. It adds major value for your customers.

A cloud ERP payment system provides phenomenal value add for your customers. They’ll be able to pay you quickly and easily for product without ever leaving the platform you use.

That’s because cutting-edge cloud ERPs leverage a seamless, white-labeled payment gateway that functions as a native part of the ERP. For instance, DEAR now offers payment features in-house that are on par with major payment providers like Stripe.

This functionality is fully available for your customers automatically, making the checkout or invoice payment process as seamless as possible — customers don’t even need to leave the POS portal, for instance.

As a result, you’re likely to see quicker payments and higher customer satisfaction, because you’re providing a great customer experience.

 

5. You don’t need to lift a finger to manage it.

Best of all, when a payment system is built directly into your cloud ERP, you don’t need to do anything on your end. You’ll see all these benefits automatically, because it’s simply another high-value service enabled by the ERP platform.

The best cloud ERP payment system providers take care of all the back-end integrations and management. In fact, the right provider can ensure that the process is essentially invisible to you. Even things like your onboarding flows, merchant dashboard, payouts, reporting and communication are handled for you. For you, payment processing just works.

That also means that your provider is responsible for all interactions between you and your customers and will do the legwork to collect any information needed to verify accounts. You won’t have to be liable if you don’t have enough cash flow to handle chargebacks or customer disputes — your cloud ERP platform can take care of those frustrations.

With this level of support, you’ll be free to focus on running your businesses while enjoying the benefits of integrated payments.

 

Meet DEAR’s cutting-edge payment solution.

DEAR now offers all these benefits and more with a fully integrated cloud ERP payment system platform. It’s a powerful, user-friendly function that augments the capabilities of the cloud ERP software itself.

With DEAR Payments, reconciliation of invoices is seamless. As soon as an invoice is paid by a customer using a credit card, the payment amount is recorded against that invoice in DEAR, so bank reconciliation is a breeze.

You can also bill your customers in a single click and enable wholesale customers to pay online directly. Every finalized invoice comes with a “Pay Invoice” button, so each invoice functions as a checkout page.

Best of all, payments live in one central dashboard in DEAR. This gives you the ability to easily manage customer orders globally, see your cash flow in real-time and know the status of all orders across the globe.

As a result, you’ll be able to lower your costs by reducing reconciliation efforts, consolidating your systems and leveraging payments across your entire ERP platform. You’ll also see profits rise as customers find it easy to pay you anywhere, anytime. And you don’t need to do anything to oversee the function.

It’s a win-win-win.

Ready to learn more? Get a Consultation today!

 

DEAR Payments FAQs

Who is DEAR Payments most suitable for?

DEAR Payments will work best as a B2B payment gateway for any businesses dealing with B2B transactions.

Which countries does DEAR Payments currently support?

DEAR Payments is currently only available for businesses in Australia but we have plans to roll the compatibility out to the United States, United Kingdom & Canada next!

What are the transaction fees for DEAR Payments?

For all domestic Visa, AmEx and MasterCard transactions, we charge a fee of 1.9{cb377218d5687e54e8ee9149518f87201a393a7c1db5e8076e9d750029ec0dc3} of the transaction total, plus $0.30. For international, we charge 3.3{cb377218d5687e54e8ee9149518f87201a393a7c1db5e8076e9d750029ec0dc3} of the transaction plus $0.30.

Is DEAR Payments secure?

DEAR Payments is powered by Stripe. Stripe has been audited by a PCI-certified auditor and is certified to PCI Service Provider Level 1. This is the most stringent level of certification available in the payments industry.

Does DEAR Payments work with DEAR Inventory & DEAR B2B eCommerce Portal?

Yes – DEAR Payments seamlessly integrates with all sales orders in DEAR Inventory, including those from the B2B eCommerce Platform . Customers using the B2B eCommerce Platform can make payments within the portal check out page for immediate processing. DEAR Payments works with all invoices generated in DEAR Inventory. In fact even if you have B2C orders coming from platforms such as Shopify you can still use DEAR Payments platform to collect payments from your customers.

 

Start your free 14-day trial today

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Get a Sneak Peek of DEAR’s Cloud ERP Manufacturing Module

New Release – 1st MARCH 2020 – New Features: Production Module, DEAR B2B Portal Improvements, New UI Improvements

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New Features

Feature 1: Production Module Improvements (Split Production Orders, New Scheduler Views, Manufacturing Buffer View)

Impact area: DEAR Production Module

Introduction: The Production module is aimed at addressing the needs of the production process. New production features will provide our current customers with powerful, logical manufacturing solutions to add to their inventory solution. Following on from our most recent release, we are continuing to improve the Production module functionality and add features.

Pre-conditions: None.

Functionality:

  • Split Production Orders: Production Orders in Draft status can now be split into multiple independent Production Orders.
  • New Scheduler views: In addition to the Production Orders view we have added the Planning, Resources and Sales Order views.
    • Planning View: View a Gantt chart schedule of planned and released production orders. See notifications of problems such as lack of resource capacity. Release orders directly from the Scheduler.
    • Resource View: View a Gantt chart schedule of resource utilisation. See which resources are used in which Production Order operations across your locations.
    • Sales Order View: View a Gantt chart showing the schedule of sales orders containing produced goods. Orders appear in this view once the Production Order has been released.
  • Manufacturing Buffer: Manufacturing buffer is a value set in the Production BOM to protect production order deadlines. The buffer is set to allow enough time to complete the Production Order when something goes wrong. Manufacturing is visible in the Scheduler in the Planning view, Production Orders view and Sales Order view.


For more information, see Scheduler and Managing Production Orders.

 

Feature 2: DEAR B2B Portal Improvements (Sorting Options, Home Page Guest Access, Drag-and-Drop Menu Items)

Impact area: DEAR B2B Integration, DEAR B2B Portal front-end

Introduction: Sorting options are now available for products listed on your DEAR B2B portals, allowing your customers to more easily look for products in your Catalogue. In addition, guests who browse through a DEAR B2B portal do not need to log on anymore before they can view the product catalogue. Menu items in custom menus that have been set up as a horizontal navigation bar can also be dragged and dropped into place, allowing easier rearrangement of menu items.

Pre-conditions: DEAR B2B Licence, new or existing DEAR B2B portal

Functionality: For sorting options, go to Integrations > B2B Portal, click the General tab on a DEAR B2B portal, then navigate to the Sorting Options section.

The Allow Guest Access setting under the General Settings section on the General tab lets anyone, even uninvited customers, to access a portal’s Home page directly without requiring them to log on. Previously, this setting would take guests to the portal’s Login page, where they needed to log on before they could access the Home page. 

To see how the drag-and-drop functionality for custom menu items works, go to the Navigation tab on a portal’s Integration page, set up a horizontal navigation bar using a custom menu, add at least a couple of menu items, then drag an item to another position on the custom menu.

For more information on these features, see Getting Started with DEAR B2B Portal.

 

New UI Improvements

DEAR announced new UI improvements to make the system more user-friendly and in line with current standards in our February 16 release notes. This week, DEAR Inventory is implementing additional UI improvements in the following modules:

  • Production
  • Inventory
  • Financials.


Gradual UI changes in the Purchase module are also being implemented.

Customers will immediately notice these changes in the aforementioned modules. UI improvements in other DEAR modules are set to be implemented in the coming weeks.

We’re currently updating our documentation to reflect these changes.

Get a Sneak Peek of DEAR’s Cloud ERP Manufacturing Module

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Don’t miss the first part of this series: How Cloud ERP Solutions Will Revolutionize Your Manufacturing.

With our latest update, DEAR’s complete suite of cloud-based ERP tools can now go toe-to-toe with the most robust legacy ERP solutions — without the hassle, manual work and headaches. It’s everything you need for complex manufacturing processes, in one place, tied to everything else you need to run your business: accounting, sales, inventory and more.

We’re here to give you a sneak peek at what this cutting-edge manufacturing solution looks like.

The quick version? It’s streamlined, automated and easy to manage.

Manufacturing, From Start to Finish

Let’s start with a sale. When a sale is entered into your system (automatically if you’ve connected your sales features), the software checks your stock and inventory to see if a product is available. If not, it automatically creates a production order. You can then authorize that order.

Then, the program checks whether you have enough raw materials to fulfill that production order — if not, it automatically sends out a purchase order for the required amount. The software also calculates the required release date and determines when the process needs to start to meet the required due date.

When everything’s ready to go, you can start a production run to begin completing that production order. You can even auto-pick resources, so that all your resources — from goods in certain bins, to machines, to workers available for a task — are allocated to the run automatically based on availability.

The catchwords here are efficient management and easy visibility into production. All of these tasks are instantly recorded in their relevant categories, so that purchases are listed within transactions or allocated resources are marked as “consumed” within your resource planner. You can also load the BOM to get a complete overview of the production run. There’s also a handy overview chart where you can see all simultaneous and scheduled production runs or reorder them by simply clicking and dragging within the scheduler.

Ready to get started? Get a Consultation today!

Take a Closer Look: Breaking Down the Module Functionality

So, looking for more details into how this all works? Here’s a breakdown of the parts that enable this unrivalled Advanced Manufacturing software.

DEAR’s Advanced Manufacturing solution has two main facets: settings and production planning. While manufacturing management is necessarily a complex process, this clear breakdown and easy oversight makes it an approachable, easy-to-digest process.

Settings for Production

Production settings need to be configured when you first implement manufacturing management. These provide the guardrails for all the work you actually implement through the tool. That includes settings for:

– Factory calendar

– Logistics paths

– Work center

– Resources

– Bill of Materials (BOM)

All these systems interconnect seamlessly to set a solid foundation for your manufacturing process.

When: Factory Calendar

The calendar settings control all time requirements for production, from work hours to holidays to break times. It passes all its information to functions like the scheduler and capacity planner — ensuring that no work is ordered on a weekend, for example. Once you’ve inputted your desired time ranges, the calendar tool handles the rest.

How: Logistics Path & Work Center

Your logistics path essentially connects your warehouse and retail functionality and defines the route for all components required to manufacture your goods. It details a path for tasks and locations from bins full of components to shop floors.

The work center settings enhance that setup by defining exact bins for a component pick and identifying a specific place of production, or work center. Essentially, it helps you define the right production center for each component and add specificity to your identified logistics path.

What: Resources & Production BOM

Your resources settings help you define all the resources that you have available to take part in the production of a good. That includes people, raw components and machines. You can even fine-tune settings to define capacity maximums or whether the resource is finite. Best of all, the hours you’ve already defined in your calendar can be automatically associated with your resources to define capacity. By adding associated costs for each resource and a dedicated expense account, you’ll enable analysis and assessment capabilities, too — for instance, the program can automatically calculate costs, allocate appropriate resources and calculate minimum cycle durations.

Next comes the all-important BOM for production. The Bill of Materials acts as a summary or recipe of how to produce your finished good, including lists of components, resources, operations and quantities required, broken down into steps. The system then can determine the order of each operation within available cycle times or whether adequate resources are available.

Planning and Production

Identifying and configuring all these settings enables you to move smoothly into production itself, with the peace of mind that everything is set up in the most efficient way possible. All settings communicate relevant information to production processes, and the software automatically ensures that your process is as optimized and cost-effective as possible.

DEAR’s advanced manufacturing solution provides you with several tools for production (fed by the calendar, resources and other settings), including:

– Capacity planner

– Production scheduler

– Production order

All of these tools cover the needs of production processes, from the most simple to the most complex. They’re also geared to minimize cost, schedule manufacturing to ensure highest production and least downtime and ensure that you’re never behind on your schedule.

It’s manufacturing, as it should be in an ideal world.

But don’t just take our word for it — get a consultation today to see it for yourself!

For more details, check out these support articles:

– Getting started with our production module

– Setting up a logistics path

– Production order lists

– Managing production orders

– Managing production resources

– Production BOM

– Production scheduler

Start your free 14-day trial today

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How to Find the Right Inventory Software

DEAR New Release: How Cloud ERP Solutions Will Revolutionize Your Manufacturing

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Why You Need an ERP for Manufacturing

If you’re in manufacturing, you need a manufacturing platform — seems obvious, right?

Manufacturing is huge category that covers how finished goods are created and produced, and particularly the machinery needed to accomplish that. Production takes a magnifying glass to that concept, turning raw materials into finished goods that you can sell.

In both discrete or process manufacturing, efficient production requires a ton of moving parts to work cohesively, from machines to supply chain orders to workers to schedules. Without software to manage those diverse pieces, you’ll struggle with higher costs, slower timelines, errors in capacity estimates and more.

Yet manufacturing solutions on their own can be a bottleneck to production. They often:

  • Lack complex workflow management tools
  • Offer limited manufacturing tools, such as cost calculators that can’t provide a breakdown of individual project costs
  • Exist in a vacuum separate from your other business process tools
  • Rely on third-party integrations for other tools, which are slower or prone to failure

 

In other words, manufacturing platforms on their own are limited. For businesses looking to scale, an ERP is vital.

 

The problem? Legacy ERPs.

Picture your ideal state of manufacturing. Is it full of manual work, complex integrations across multiple systems and a cumbersome platform that creates as many problems as it solves?

Probably not.

But that’s the reality of manufacturing with traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions. It’s one of the reasons many growing businesses have been reluctant to transition from smaller-scale manufacturing solutions to a full-fledged ERP.

 

The solution? Cloud-based ERPs.

Cloud ERP solutions encompass more than just the foundational manufacturing process. They pull in more comprehensive production needs and tools, from inventory management to sales integrations to accounting. Typical manufacturing software, even if they’re based in the cloud, simply can’t cover all those business needs.

There is a catch, however: some cloud ERPs can do more than others when it comes to manufacturing. That’s why it’s essential to look for a provider that offers a complete cloud ERP suite, including advanced manufacturing capabilities.

Moreover, elite cloud ERP suites can also integrate directly with other business tools, such as XERO or HubSpot, via open APIs. These holistic solutions essentially provide you with a tech stack that covers all inventory, production, shipping, marketing, sales and accounting needs.

Without these partnerships and advanced manufacturing management, cloud ERPs aren’t a complete solution for business management. Only comprehensive cloud ERP suites can truly rival the functionality of legacy ERPs — with none of the downsides.

 

Meet DEAR’s Comprehensive Cloud ERP Manufacturing Suite

With our latest upgrade to our material requirements planning (MRP) tool, DEAR’s cloud ERP solution now offers a truly comprehensive suite of manufacturing tools. This solution was created to help you accomplish key production goals and go from managing to optimizing your manufacturing.

MRP is a planning tool geared specifically to assembly and production that allows each manufacturing unit to tell its supplier what parts it requires and when it requires them. It’s created to tackle the problem of “dependent demand,” where you need to know the number of finished products to determine how many components are required.

 

Specifically, it’s designed to enable you to:

  • Implement demand-driven manufacturing, which helps you execute manufacturing orders efficiently and capture the benefits of inventory management
  • Organize a smooth production process capable of timely delivery of finished goods
  • Manage the capacity of all your production resources
  • Plan out all the components you need for production
  • Control and schedule each step of production
  • Automate and visualize the planning and scheduling process
  • Enable complete supply chain management

 

MRP rounds out our manufacturing suite — here’s how.

Any complex manufacturing requires tools that can handle complexity, particularly the advanced planning and scheduling functions that come with our MRP module.

This upgrade has elevated our cloud ERP solution into a truly comprehensive suite of tools and closed any gaps in our manufacturing model. You can now evolve your manufacturing from a simple production process to a fully planned and optimized process with finite control over capacity and resources, including complex workflows like logistic paths.

Our manufacturing module now includes these functions:

1. Master Production Schedule (MPS), which accounts for known demand and forecasts products that will be created.

2. Explosion of Bill of Materials, which includes production time as a resource and includes the multiple steps required to complete a production run; the levels of production are “exploded” from the MPS down to final assembly.

3. Inventory netting, where any stock on hand is subtracted from the required production resources you identified through explosion; this determines the quantity of each item you need to begin your manufacturing.

4. Offsetting, which determines when manufacturing should start so that the finished items are available when required and leaves a “lead time.”

5. Creation of purchase and production orders, which automatically account for the quantities and timing of resources that you need.

6. Creation of stock transfers to ensure your materials are where they need to be

These processes all speak automatically to one another. The end result is that before you begin production, a complete list of requirements and timings can be automatically ordered from your outside suppliers. That means no more backtracking, coming up short or running manual calculations to determine how to best complete your production run.

 

Together, these benefits transform your manufacturing process.

With all of these capabilities packed into one powerful software module — which is fully connected to DEAR’s broader ERP suite of solutions, including inventory management — you’ll see tremendous return on investment in your production process.

Increased control and oversight helps you deliver high-quality products, on time, with a higher operating margin. Leveraging these features to implement demand-driven marketing will help you reduce expenses, particularly in inventory.

Best of all, our cloud ERP solution enables advanced manufacturing that’s easy to use, with a low barrier to entry. You can run production seamlessly and reduce costs without deep knowledge in economics theory or a heavy investment of management time.

DEAR’s cloud ERP solution is ushering in a new age of collecting, storing, managing and analysing business data. With this upgrade comes greater efficiency, cost insights, stock control and reporting, to name a few. And our latest manufacturing tools elevate our cloud ERP solution to be truly on par with the capabilities of legacy ERPs.

 

Get started today — book a consultation now!

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How to Find the Right Inventory Software

New Release – 16th FEBRUARY 2020 – New Feature: Production Module, Custom Menus as a Horizontal Navigation Bar on DEAR B2B Portals, DEAR Payments (BETA), New UI Improvements

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New Features

Feature 1: Production Module

Impact area: DEAR Production Module

Introduction: The Production module is aimed at addressing the needs of the production process. New production features will provide our current customers with powerful, logical manufacturing solutions to add to their inventory solution.

Following on from our most recent release, we are continuing to improve the Production module functionality and add features. This release is focused on capacity planning, production scheduling, and bulk authorise and release actions for production orders.

Pre-conditions: None.

Functionality:

  • Capacity Planner – The Capacity Planner is a resource allocation reporting and re-planning tool. It shows the capacity for a selected planning period (available, allocated and consumed resource capacity), which resources are overallocated and allows re-planning of capacity to ensure smooth delivery of produced goods.
  • Scheduler – The DEAR Production Scheduler visualises production order information. Order information can be viewed in the form of a Gantt chart. It provides transparency for the production process so that the user always knows what should be produced and when it should be completed. Production orders, production runs and operations can be rescheduled directly from the Scheduler.
  • Production Orders List – The list of Production Orders shows all Production Orders and Production Runs with their general data in one place. Production Orders List allows the user to search and filter Production Orders and consolidate Orders. Orders can be authorised and released singly and in bulk directly from the list view.
  • Production Process Customisation Settings – New settings allow the following:

    • A Production Order can be created from sale authorisation for a finished good.
    • Production Orders can be created in Draft, Planned or Released status (Orders can be automatically planned and automatically released).
    • Created Production Order quantity can be set to produce just the sales order quantity, produce the sales order quantity and maintain minimum stock levels, or produce the difference between the available quantity and the quantity required in sales to cover a shortage.


For more information, see Getting Started with the Production Module.

 

Feature 2: Custom Menus as a Horizontal Navigation Bar on DEAR B2B Portals

Impact area: DEAR B2B Integration, DEAR B2B Portal front-end

Introduction: Custom menus can now be used for horizontal navigation bars on DEAR B2B portals. The colour schemes for these custom menus are also configurable. Custom menus are only available for use in horizontal navigation bars – they cannot be used for vertical navigation bars. Previously, only product categories, brands and tags could be used in navigation bars on DEAR B2B portals.

Pre-conditions: DEAR B2B Licence, new or existing DEAR B2B portal

Functionality: Go to the Navigations tab on a DEAR B2B portal, then select Custom Menu from the list of options for use with a Horizontal Navigation Bar. To set the colour scheme for the custom menu, go to the Appearance tab of the DEAR B2B portal. For more information, see Getting Started with DEAR B2B Portal.

 

Feature 3: DEAR Payments (Beta currently ongoing for Australia-based customers with active DEAR Inventory subscriptions)

Impact area: DEAR B2B, DEAR POS

Introduction: DEAR Payments is DEAR’s own payments platform, designed to let your customers pay for their transactions with ease. DEAR Payments complies with PCI standards, uses TLS 1.2 encryption for both transactions and checkout, and works with all invoices generated in DEAR. The platform is especially handy if you are using DEAR B2B Portal (DEAR POS support is coming in a future version). Customers in Australia with active DEAR subscriptions may already join the beta testing program for the service. DEAR hopes to roll out the service in other locations soon.

Pre-conditions:

  • Active DEAR Inventory subscription
  • Business registration in Australia

Functionality: DEAR Payments is available on the Integrations page. There are three (3) major steps involved in signing up for DEAR Payments:

  • generate and sign the DEAR Payments Service Agreement
  • complete the DEAR merchant account application by entering business and related information
  • DEAR verifies applicant’s information and approves the application.

For more information, see the following KB articles:

 

New UI Improvements

DEAR Inventory is gradually implementing new UI improvements to make the system more user-friendly and in line with current standards. For a start, we have updated the following:

  • Subscription
  • Reference Books
    • Default field values for Customers/Suppliers/Products
    • Warranties
    • Discounts
    • Order Routing
    • Taxation Rules
    • Deals
    • DEAR to DEAR Networking
  • Inventory Module
    • Product Availability
    • Inventory Write-Off
    • CSV Import.

We’re currently updating our documentation to reflect these changes.

Customers will immediately notice the UI changes on the above modules. UI improvements for other modules are already scheduled and will be implemented in the coming weeks.

Why an Efficient Fulfillment Process Starts with WMS Software

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The Obstacles to an Efficient Fulfillment and Warehouse Management System

This article is part 1 of 2 in our series, “Why an Efficient Fulfillment Process Starts with WMS Software.” Stay tuned for more!

You sell a product. The product ships to the customer. Simple, right?

Of course not. That simple logic hides the messiness, complexities and tight deadlines of a crucial process: fulfillment. And when you add a warehouse full of inventory to the mix, you absolutely need an effective organization system for your business to function, hence a warehouse management system (WMS). That system is the backbone of your warehouse.

To run a warehouse, you need an inventory management system. To run a warehouse efficiently, you need WMS software.

Fulfillment comprises a series of tasks, from order management to warehouse management. You may feel that your current system is adequate, whether it’s manual or based on some combination of order tracking and inventory management.

But the truth is, a highly efficient and streamlined fulfillment process simply isn’t possible without WMS software. Without it, you’ll be stuck at a lower level of efficiency for both time and cost. Here’s what that looks like:

Level 1: Manual

Some businesses still run fulfillment manually on printed lists in their warehouses, either because they have yet to upgrade or because they’ve only recently expanded enough to need a warehouse. While a well-organized manual process does represent a warehouse management system, it’s a pretty low-level one.

A manual WMS will cause you all sorts of headaches, including:

-Human error & associated rising costs

-Lack of transparency

-Difficulty of optimizing based on data insights

-Inability to do complex picks like wave or bulk

These factors combine to create rampant inefficiency across the board.

Human Error & Costs

Human error is incredibly common — and incredibly costly. A misprint could result in an incorrect shipment; a list distributed twice could result in a whole slew of duplicate orders sent out; theft can result in immediate losses; even simple mispicks or incorrect packaging might send orders in all the wrong directions.

The ramifications of these errors are the real problem. Inventory is an incredibly valuable asset, and when it’s sent to the wrong place, it’s a sunk cost. That’s not to mention disgruntled customers who received the wrong order or no items at all, as well as associated costs of retrieving misships or having to send out the same order again. A manual warehouse management system, even with the best oversight, can do little to prevent all of these errors.

Transparency & Data Insights

A manual system is also more challenging to optimize. Without clear data insights via a software program, you can’t make small but impactful improvements like reorganizing your inventory or ensuring that workers are using the fastest route between shelves.

Complex Workflows

Manual WMS also limit you because they don’t facilitate more complex (and more efficient) order fulfillment. For instance, you can’t run something like a wave pick to mastermind the flow of workers within the warehouse with just a pen and paper. If you’re picking orders as they come in or relying on a print-out, you can’t do bulk picks to satisfy multiple order lines, because you simply don’t have the oversight of the whole system to do that.

Level 2: Order & Inventory Management

A significant step above the muddle of manual management is software that’s adjacent to warehouse management systems. Most commonly, that means order and inventory management softwares.

For growing businesses, this is a great intermediary step. It ensures that your inventory is properly tracked, that orders come through automatically based on inventory availability and more. Early into warehouse management, this system will work just fine.

Here’s the catch: with these non-specialized softwares, you’ll end up running into many of the same problems as a manual warehouse management system. You’ll have more insight into your inventory, but still no data on your warehouse itself. You’ll have better control over orders, but still struggle to efficiently manage complex workflows like bulk picks. You’ll also still rely on manual processes such as printing out order lists for workers.

Inventory management is pretty much a necessity to any business with physical goods — but for a company with a warehouse, it’s simply not enough. It comes down to this: if you have a warehouse, you need WMS software.

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How to Find the Right Inventory Software

New Release – January 2020 – New Feature: Production Module, Improved Xero Consolidation and Payments, Put Away Option for Stock Transfers, Pack/Ship/Tote Numbers optional for WMS, Enhancement for M2, Smart Reordering for Assemblies/Finished Goods, Stripe Authentication (SCA)

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New Features

Feature 1: Production Module

Impact area: Production Module of DEAR Inventory

Introduction: The Production module is aimed at addressing the needs of the production process. In its current state, it allows for simple Assembly/Disassembly operations but does not address our customer’s more complex production needs.

New production features will provide our current customers with powerful, logical, manufacturing solutions to add to their inventory solution, and at the same time attract new customers who are looking for an easy and convenient tool to automate their production process.

The production process covers the steps through which components and raw materials are transformed into a final product. The goals of the new Production module features are:

  • implementation of demand-driven manufacturing which provides the benefits for inventory management and timely manufacturing orders execution
  • organising a smooth production process capable of timely delivery of finished goods
  • components planning for the production process
  • resources capacity planning for the production process (coming soon)
  • scheduling the production process steps for control and timely execution (coming soon). 


Pre-conditions: None.

Functionality:

  • Factory Calendar – Factory Calendar defines the working days and working hours for the year. The calendar can then be used to ensure accurate capacity planning and scheduling (Capacity Planner and Scheduler coming soon).
  • Work Centres – Work Centres define the area where a production operation takes place within the business (for example, a specific workshop, room or section of the shop floor). All components for a production operation should be delivered to the work centre in order for the production operation to begin picking.
  • Logistics Path – A logistics path in DEAR reflects the physical movements of components and finished goods. This is used to generate Transfer Orders from storage locations to production locations and factor in the lead time for production components.
  • Production Resources – Finished goods production is made possible with resources, e.g. tools, machines and people. For many businesses, resource capacity is the constraint when planning production runs.
    Knowing the capacity and cost of the resource, it is possible to calculate how much time and expense is required to produce a finished good (Capacity Planner coming soon).
  • Production Bill of Materials – The Production BOM defines each step of a production operation, its duration, and the components and resources required to complete each step. Unlike the simpler Assembly BOM, it can define multi-step production processes.
  • Production Orders – The Production Order defines the finished good to be produced, the location where production will take place, the date and time of production, and the quantity of components and resources required. The Production Order also defines the sequence of operations to be performed and the costs of finished goods. It is a vital part of the production process.


For more information, see Getting Started with the Production Module.

 

Feature 2: Improved Xero Consolidation and Payments

Impact area: Xero Integration

Introduction: Payments are consolidated based on the invoice ID in Xero, type of transaction (payment or refund), and account code. COGS and COGS Credits transactions are consolidated by Effective Date, Debit and Credit Accounts. If any changes are applied in DEAR to COGS or COGS Credit transactions, in Xero all transactions for COGS or COGS Credit are updated for the effective date.

Pre-conditions: Xero payments option on the Xero Integration page is set to Sync both ways or Pushed to Xero.

Functionality: All sales and credit notes in DEAR are displayed together with the corresponding consolidated invoice in Xero under the Consolidated Sales section of the Xero Integration page. For more information, see Xero Integration – Basic.

 

Feature 3: Put Away Option for Stock Transfers

Impact area: Stock Transfers in DEAR Inventory

Introduction: When applied to a stock transfer with or without a transfer order, the Put Away option allows you to specify the exact bin(s) in the destination warehouse where you want the stock to be ‘put away’ for future use.

Pre-conditions: None.

Functionality: When performing a stock transfer via Inventory > New > Transfer, check the Put Away option box. Once the goods reach the destination warehouse, click the Put Away tab and select the products to be put away. For more information, see Managing Stock Transfers.

 

Feature 4: Pack and Ship, as well as Tote Numbers, are now optional in DEAR Warehouse Management System (WMS)

Impact area: DEAR WMS Integration, DEAR WMS mobile apps

Introduction: Currently, when completing a Pack function in DEAR WMS, the Ship tab is also authorised. These steps are now optional to accommodate customers with more than one freight carrier and who do not know which carrier to use until orders are packed and the total number/dimensions of cartons known. In addition, since some customers do not use totes, tote numbers are now optional.

Pre-conditions: None.

Functionality: On the DEAR WMS Integration page, the Sale Order Packing and Sale Order Shipping options are disabled by default, meaning packing and shipping are always performed manually. To automate one or the other or both, set them to Automatic.

The Use tote # option, on the other hand, is enabled by default. If this option is disabled, the tote # will not be required when using the DEAR WMS mobile apps.

For more information, see Using DEAR Warehouse Management System.

 

Feature 5: Support for Multiple Stores and Added Capability to Update the Manage Stock setting in Magento 2

Impact area: Magento 2.0 Integration

Introduction: Magento 2 Integration is now capable of loading sales from multiple stores. In addition, the Advanced Inventory > Manage Stock setting for the products in your Magento 2 account can now be updated via an optional setting on the Magento 2 Integration page.

Pre-conditions: None.

Functionality: Go to Integration > Magento 2 and set the Multiple Store option to either all stores or a specific store. Sales will be loaded into DEAR based on this option, which is set to Do not load sales by default. In addition, enable the Update Manage Stock in Magento option to have DEAR update the Advanced Inventory > Manage Stock setting for the products in your Magento account. For more information, see Magento 2.0 Integration.

 

Feature 6: Smart Reordering is Now Available for Assemblies/Finished Goods

Impact area: Smart Reordering

Introduction: The Smart Reordering feature in DEAR allows forecasting of future product sales and generating email alerts to reorder products from merchants. You can track inventory levels for each of your locations and configure the Inventory Velocity Report to run at scheduled intervals so that you can be kept informed when there is a need to reorder a product. This feature has now been made available for assemblies/finished goods.

Pre-conditions: None.

Functionality: For more information on DEAR’s Smart Reordering feature, see Smart Reordering.

 

Feature 7: Stripe Integration Support for Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)

Impact area: Stripe Integration

Introduction: The integration between DEAR and Stripe now meets the Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements set forth in the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) introduced in Europe in September 2019.

Pre-conditions: None.

Functionality: For more information, see Stripe Integration.