During the final MAS 90/200 User Group meeting of 2010, we thoroughly dissected the subject of year end processing. If you attended that meeting, please let us know what you thought by leaving a comment below or completing this short survey.
In January, the schedule will continue with an online meeting available to all users. After learning about BIE (Business Insights Explorer), SMI (Sage MAS Intelligence), BizInsight, and the retirement of FRx, we will be looking at the reliable and endlessly useful Crystal Reports and our top tips for your forms and reports. Details including time, date, and registration will follow after the first of the year.
Why are we using a software application to manage our financial data? Of course there are several answers (and several of them, if not all are correct), but if we ask a series of “why” questions, we will arrive at the core reason: to understand data and make decisions. To make decisions, the data must be organized.
This is the reason so many users say that reporting (specifically custom reporting) is so important to their organization. The data has been collected, indexed, and stored, but if it cannot be organized into logical and comprehensible outputs, the software application is not serving its primary function of organizing financial data.
There are a number of tools to organize the data in Sage MAS 90 and 200 including Crystal Reports. After including the classroom course Introduction to Crystal Reports on our class schedule for several years, in 2009 we added Data File Structures and Crystal Reports: Beyond the Basics (a total of five full days of classroom education). These five days alone won’t be sufficient to qualify any user as a Crystal Reports expert; practical, in field application of the knowledge is required to master Crystal Reports for MAS 90 and 200, but these courses are a good start.
Introduction to Crystal Reports
(soft prerequisite: Data File Structures)
December 7-8
Data File Structures
August 9
October 25
December 6
Crystal Reports: Beyond The Basics
(hard prerequisites: Data File Structures, Introduction to Crystal Reports)
August 10-11
October 26-27
If you are interested in these or any other courses but your schedule does not permit you to attend, leave a comment below and we will see if arrangements can be made to accommodate your calendar.
The integration with Crystal Reports is one of the most popular features of MAS 90 and MAS 200 and Introduction to Crystal Reports has long been one of our most popular courses. A soft prerequisite for this course and a requirement for the Advanced Crystal Reports course is Data Files Structures.
Each business has one knowledgeable user that serves as the first line support. The person everyone goes to as soon something fishy happens. Sometimes it is someone in IT; sometimes they are in Accounting. I recommend Data Files Structures for these users or for any user that want to master their accounting application. The lessons included in the course translate to skills like modifying Crystal forms, writing new Crystal Reports, diagnosing system messages and advanced tasks such as creating imports and business alerts.
We will be adding this course to our schedule this year. If you are interested or have an employee that needs this course, leave a note in the comments.