Sage 100

Has anyone done a Statement of Cash Flows in SMI? I'm at a loss even where to begin. I have SUCH a mental block on this darn thing.

OMG. Thank you Beth - I thought it was just me. I was thinking I am just getting older and dumber. Sorry, I am no help on SMI.

I had two guys spend a week on SMI and they didn't get all that far so we abandoned it. We are beginning to look at it Again for other flash reporting and dash boarding but sticking with BizInsights for financials.

BTW, we even spent a couple hours on sessions with guys from S Africa. I keep hoping I will experience a Paradigm shift and everything I have been missing will come to me in a giant epiphany. However, until then, I just don't get it.

And I felt bad by only spending an hour with Eric Anderson. I keep looking for the light switch!

LOL. Well, you guys may not have helped me get a Statement of Cash Flows going (and I Googled it and found some doc on Alchemex that I haven't had a chance to look at yet), but you certainly made me feel better, anyway!!!!! And @ShawnSlavin - I have to tell you, I actually sort of like SMI for NON FINANCIAL reporting. It's just the GL that drives me batty.

Hey @BethBowers Can you elaborate on what you ""sort of like ""for the NON FINANCIALS reporting? Maybe something I need to look into?

@DianeRuth - I did a little demo in an end-user group with another reseller I work with last year and demo'd how to do some dashboards - I put top 5 customers, items, then sales by slsmn, ctgy, customer all on one spreadsheet in a graphical form and it was SO easy to do. Some of the end users got really fired up seeing that. And some, did not. :-( My demo was based on a Summit session.

Thanks @BethBowers Good to know. Might have to relook at it for non financials.

If I were building a cash flow statement, I'd use the balance sheet. Prior Period balance - Current Period Balance = Change in cash. This is, of course, the indirect method. I've always done this in Excel, and I probably always will. Attached is a template. It's a very simple cash flow statement. A direct statement would be based off of both income statement and balance sheet. For example, cash revenues would be Revenue - Ending AR + Beginning AR. The new version of #intelligence is really good for financial reporting. I like it a lot. It's very easy to use, and it demo's well.

@AaronClark - THANK YOU! Now I have something to keep me occupied all weekend. :-(

Wow Beth - this is your weekend activity? Never mind, we need you to keep at it so you keep giving us the latest info - thanks! :)

We are way overdue for a 90 minds web meeting. @BethBowers would you be willing to do a demo in a webinar for us. I bet I can also talk @MyronStevenson to demo the new SMI features too. Anyone interested? May be in the next 2 or 3 weeks.

Thanks for sharing that @AaronClark !

@ThereseLogeais - not by choice - signed on for these darn reports with a deadline of the 24th, and since I just wasted 2 days teaching Crystal Reports (oh, wait, $800/customer - not such a waste), I'm running out of time. But that's the good thing about working from home - I took off Tuesday AM to do my shopping, so I'm willing to give on the weekends. @JimWoodhead - maybe the week before Summit? Have lots of upgrades and on-sites coming up.

@JimWoodhead I would be interested if the Oasis newbie's are included in that invite? I too would prefer week before Summit or when we get back. Also Thanks @AaronClark !

I am coming around for the use of SMI for non-financial data analysis. But most customers are going to need the connector to do really nifty stuff and at $2K a pop it is still a hard sell. I think the new approach for financial reports will be the ticket for acceptance for the FRx replacement.

Jim, I would be interested as well in a demo. Thanks.

I put together a really basic demo that includes the use of a UDF table and related fields for capturing a project ID. Then pulling revenue and costs by project into an SMI spreadsheet. No dashboards or anything, just simple spreadsheets. It seems to be an effective way to show the power of custom office and SMI.

Glad to be of service. Looking forward to the webinar.

OK, I've had a small mental breakthrough on this. I spent about 5 hours working on an income statement because there were no columns for % of Sales (and this was multiple spreadsheets - used a tree). While I'm sure it would have gone faster if I knew more about Excel, I at least got the IDEA - that sometimes you just have to START with the Designer, and then modify the hell out of it in Excel. So, while I was having heart palpitations about the side by side Balance Sheet these folks want, with a column that is combined - I realized as long as I can get it to finally generate the side by side part, I can create the column that is combined and simply add the other 2 columns together. The only down side I see of this (which so far is making me feel a bit more generously towards SMI, although it was nice in FRx that FRx did all the work and you didn't have to manually change anything) - once you have modified the format, it seems to stop giving you some of the options when it runs, like the prompt for the tree (but I may have just missed it). Also, you will not be able to use the Designer for changes if the client adds new accounts, etc, correct? Once you have modified the format, ALL further changes have to be manually done in Excel and you can never do it via the Designer ever again?

But I wouldn't get too hung up in learning the Designer as it stands right now because the approach now in BETA will be the preferred tool for financials. I doubt if the Designer would even be used since the approach is totally different. More like F9 or Biz.

@alanniergarth - good point. Also, I think I found a bug with the PreviousYTDActivity column calculation. It looks OK if you choose to Edit the Formula in the Designer, but if you look at the actual fields on the spreadsheet, they are adding the Beg Bal into the calculation, which they do not on the YTDActivity calculation. Ruh-Roh. I'm using this on my Stmt of Cash Flows. If you use that on an IS, it works fine because the Beg Bal will be 0 for those accounts, but it is screwing up my SCF. If they don't acknowledge this and fix it pronto, I see me manually fixing about 700 fields over 3 statements. UGH.

DOUBLE UGH!