Sage 100

Purchase Agent v4.50 has been released. Although there was no announcement on the main JobOps site, it was on: http://www.jobops.com/purchaseagent/downloads/pa_downloads.html . What is significant about this release: 1. It's available for v4.50 of Sage 100 ERP. 2. There is a Bill of Materials Explode Sub-Assemblies option. This is a huge enhancement, since it will now explode multi-level bills. Previously it was thought this would compete with the full JobOps package, but this provides the functionality for those operations where there is no WIP tracking. (Thanks to @MoiraGoggin for asking about this, so I would tell Synergistic we ""could sell many of these"", if this feature were there. Now Ryan wants to know when we are going to deliver on that statement!) 3. There is now a User Guide! 25 pages double spaced with wide header and footer on each page. At last count, there were 19 Purchase Agents sold and installed. This week there will be 20, since I have a client on 4.50 who has been waiting for this. This is a great addition to standard Sage 100 that sits outside, changing no standard code. And currently it's also at a bargain price.

ok to blog this @JohnHoyt ?

What's your site URL ?

@WayneSchulz Yes, please.

Use www.hbllp.com

And what's the pricing on this if you know - tx

List price is $1,495, plus annual maintenance of $250. There also may be a current promotion. I'll check Monday to see how long that would be effective.

Thanks. We can amend if more info on pricing becomes available. Cross posting to LinkedIn now. http://community.90minds.com/2012/06/10/purchase-agent-by-jobops-v4-5-now-available/

@JohnHoyt - does this take into account Options entered in Sales Order?

@BethBowers I have not actually tested that, so I'll look at it on Monday.

Fingers crossed!

I agree it is a great product. I had sold 2 of them.

Those sales numbers are sad. 20x, $800 (net to jobops) is $16k for a solution they had to somewhat build (I know, most was taken from CEM), market, brand, support etc. This has been out, what like 3-4 years? That's not going to make many payrolls.

Is MRP necessary for this to function?

I do not think so - I believe this is more a replacement for MRP ?

That's another thing I'm curious about. When I sat in a Job Ops demo, I'm pretty sure they said the PA will take into account Forecasts entered in MRP. I hope so. If it does that and does the options, I have a client who will buy it.

If client is already running JobOps and MRP, does this add anything to the mix?

This particular client looked at Job Ops but said no.

If a client has MRP, yes Projected Demands may be included in the PA analysis. That is the only advantage of having MRP as it relates to PA. If a client does not have MRP, then the projected demands may be represented by prospective sales orders. PA is a replacement for MRP, because it considers inventory levels, reorder points, open purchase orders and open sales orders, as well as the bill of materials levels. It is much more accessible than MRP in terms of ease of use, is faster when working with large volumes, and does not impact any other operations. Going forward, since MRP is not planned to be converted to business framework, PA will serve as the MRP function with compatibility to current versions. Although not in SQL yet, this is planned even though it may be awhile.

@BethBowers With regard to bill options, here's the answer from development at Synergistic: ""When looking at a sales order and exploding the kit parent, if options are present, they are used in the exploding of the kit item."" I hope this is the correct answer. I haven't tested it yet.

I agree with @MarkChinsky on the lack of sales for PA. This product should have 1,000 sales by now. As a JobOps Solution Provider, I take part of that responsibility. Until this year I basically ignored it, while going after the much bigger JobOps sales, where I have this functionality in CEM. This year, however, I am selling MAS to companies that only have the need for BOM, so PA fits very well. Now that we have success in 3 places, I feel that any distributor should be able to see value in this product.

@JohnHoyt - not sure I like them saying KIT instead of BILL, but hopefully they mean all types. I could get excited!

We sold PA when it was just released and that was a mistake. It didn't completely work and the client was unhappy and now they don't use it. I guess we've shied away from it since that experience.

I think we should make a demo video and post it on 90 Minds. Explain what it is. Who is a good fit. The costs. Etc.

There is a 7-minute demo video from Synergistic. I'll talk to them about using that as the demo portion.

@JohnHoyt Do you have a link to that 7 minute video? I don't see it anywhere. Thanks

Attached is the demo video for PA.

We have discovered that Sage made a change in the last PU for 4.50 that requires a patch for the downloaded 4.50 version of PA in order to make sure option bills work. And . . . a bonus with 4.50! It works with Sage 100 ERP Premium too.

Yes, let's make sure option bills work!

I converted the WRF to youtube if anybody is interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI3B_4uhEe4