Sage User Network Sage Auditing Presentation September 17 th

Contact: Steve Littlewood sl-ect limited Mob

Auditing 3 Don’t ever complain about the System Log again! Some real world examples of the Sage Auditing module How the Auditing module can help your business For example:  Track changes to standard costs – who did it, when and what were the values before and after. How did it affect the company value if the product had physical stock? When was the product code created?  Report on daily changes to the SO and PO order books. Including changes to existing lines, not just new additions of order headers.  Track a time for each Stock History movement  How Auditing can help resolve Support Logs

Auditing The System Log 4 But what was changed? By who?

Auditing What is it? 5  A Sage module that lets you choose to track almost any change to the database.  As long as the change is made via Sage programs, not bespoke or SQL updates.  You don’t just switch it on and expect it to have the answer in 6 weeks time when you want to know who changed the credit limit on a customer record 2 weeks earlier.  You have to configure it to watch the tables / fields that you are interested in.  So it tends to work with hindsight leading to foresight.

Auditing What is it? 6 A = Addition C = Change D = Deletion Auditing tables: System Log:

Auditing Comment Lines 7  Fields that are being watched can also be set to pop up an extra form to force the user to say why they changed the data.  Example here is a comment entered after changing the price on a PO line. System key says whether something must be entered: Field changed Before and After values User comment (mandatory in this example)

Auditing Comment Lines 8  BEWARE: Requesting a comment on changes to, say, standard costs can be impractical.  A BOM Revaluation will ask for a comment on EVERY change made!

Auditing 9 How do I set it up? I’m not going to tell you right now! Follow the presentation made by Chris Blythe at the 2007 conference.

Auditing 10 Examples “Necessity is the mother of invention”

Auditing Standard Costs 11 In manufacturing companies it is important to keep an eye on costs. Tracking changes to standard costs on stock can reinforce operating procedures and build confidence that the system is working correctly. Next screenshot shows Auditing in use:  Who, what, when and how for each change.  Nett increase or decrease in the company stock value due to the change. (Could run at period end!)  You can also see the date of creation of the product code.  And an Auditing comment.

Auditing Standard Costs 12 Product CREATED date! Change in the Std Cost Associated change in Stock Value Auditing Comments

Auditing PO Value Changes 13 With Auditing, PO lines are tracked for any change that affects the value –Addition of new lines –Deletion of lines –Changes to the price –Changes to the quantity ordered –Receipts made a for a quantity greater than that ordered A purchasing manager would like to know what recent changes have been made to the order book in Sage. In particular the changes that have affected the value on the PO. You can’t just look at new POs and their “Date Entered” because there may also have been changes or additions to existing orders.

Auditing Purchase Order Value Changes 14 A = Addition C = Change D = Deletion In PO Receipts there were 3 extra booked in at a cost of £60 Change in the line value Comment forced in PO Entry when price changed

15 Auditing Sales Order Value Changes Same deal here on Sales Orders Track all changes that have affected the value of the lines

16 A = Addition C = Change D = Deletion Eg. Price changed from £0 to £10 leading to a £7150 increase in value Change in the line value Auditing Sales Order Value Changes

Auditing Stock History TIME Field 17 I’m frequently asked if Stock History can show the time of a transaction.  Perhaps because you run Period End in the middle of a day and want to sort out which movements were before / after the switch.  Or to see how long a user takes for lunch!  Nice side effect of using auditing is that you can also see which program was used to do the transaction.

Auditing Stock History TIME Field 18 Audit Date is different to transaction date. User must have backdated the receipt! Time of confirming the transaction For W/O you can see if the stock was ISSUED or BACKFLUSHED

Auditing Stock History TIME Field 19 To track the time field and link it back to the stkhstm table I had to tell auditing to save EVERY field and record into the stkhsta table. You may think this is a BAD thing as you will get another big set of data on your server. OR Thinking laterally this could be a GOOD thing because you could think of stkhsta as a permanent archive table. So you can run Stock History Cleardown often, knowing that you always have a full history to call up when needed! So Auditing can be used for Archiving too!

Auditing Support Log Support 20  Being able to track what was changed by who and when is clearly a great support tool for resolving system problems. Eg. Stock Recalc showing errors in SO Allocations ************************************************************************************************************* * warehouse : NC * * product : * * ************************************************************************************************************* Changed 15/09/09 10:02 pm by kd01 in Quotations Reference : Column name Value Previous value allocated_qty Changed 16/09/09 11:08 am by scl in Recalculate Stock - Single Co. Reference : Column name Value Previous value allocated_qty Stock recalc put this right Look which program caused a change in allocated qty!  If you are tracking a field and it changes without you getting an audit record then you probably have some bespoke!

Auditing SQL Triggers? 21  Use Auditing to avoid applying triggers to Sage tables  If you still need a trigger to do something then consider firing it on the audit event tables rather then the opdetm etc

Auditing Reports 22 Standard Auditing Reports? Audit table structures are complex. For example a change will write 2 records – the change and the previous values just before the change. In the reports in this presentation I have used some SQL Views to pull the data into one row for easier analysis. ************************************************************************************************************* * warehouse : NC * * product : * * ************************************************************************************************************* Changed 16/09/09 11:08 am by scl in Recalculate Stock - Single Co. Reference : Column name Value Previous value allocated_qty

Auditing Reports 23 Auditing works very well with alerting tools. For example a Reporting Services subscription every night to the department manager to tell them all the POs added / changed in that day. Manage by exception! This screenshot show an of PO Price Lists changed in the previous 7 days

Auditing What Else Could you Audit? 24  Changes to Due Dates on PO/SO, with auditable comments to explain the reason for the change.  Credit Limits.  Settlement Discount codes.  GL Categories.  Who Closed / Re-opened a Works Order.  Changes to Price Lists.  BOM / Routing audit trails.  Etc

Contact: Steve Littlewood sl-ect limited Mob

Auditing 26 The End