HIGHLIGTS OF THE 9805 HFS RELEASE

Encumbrance

Direct Update Screen - In ENUPTR, regular and temporary vendors can now be added on-the-fly by typing "ADD" or "ADDTEMP" in the PE-ID field.

PR/PO Deletion - In POMAER, both the PR and PO will now be erased from the EN database.

General Ledger

Inquires:

Key Parts (GLIQ-PK) - The display was enhanced to display more of the Part names by adapting to the widths defined in GLUPGN screen 2.

Quick Query (GLIQ-QQ) - This feature has been ported forward from IFAS 4. By typing GLQQ from the main menu or QQ from the GLIQ menu, an extremely abbreviated one line prompt is provided allowing the user to run a yearly budget-to-actual inquiry. Typing MENU returns you to the GLIQ menu.

Budget-to-Actual (GLIQ-BA) - For clients whose fiscal periods do not match calendar months (such as those with 13 or 14 periods), an option has been added to allow selection by fiscal period instead of by calendar month. This option is enabled by changing the default answer from "M" to "P" on quiet question GQ37 using NUUPJB.

Transactions (GLIQ-TR) - An option was added allowing accounts with no activity in the specified period to also be displayed (prior balance and totals). Also, the totals were broken out for EN, DR, CR, and NET, and the totaling logic was corrected.

Standard Reports:

General - Under certain circumstances, the core data extraction program would not retrieve the correct budget value. It has now been corrected to work properly.

Detail Trial Balance (GLRESR01) - The object description was corrected when running in sorted mode.

FASB 117 (GLRESR04 and GLRESR06) -- Several enhancements were added in support of FASB 117: the "\UNREST" control code was added in the >VALUES section, and the "\NETREL" and "\NETEND" control codes were added in the >LINES section. Several bugs were also corrected: column 18 was missing, undesired heading truncation occurred to the column width, and headings were repeated every line when not suppressed.

General Ledger (GLRESR02) -- This report was enhanced to auto-format dollar amounts so huge values can be displayed in narrow fields when required.

To-Date Hierarchical Report (GLRESR16) - The displayed dates and prior year reporting were corrected.

Report Definition File (RDF) Editor (SYRDUB) - The RDF editor was changed to default to showing pennies instead of whole dollars.

File Listings:

Ledgers (GLREFLGN) - The extra lines of zeroes erroneously appearing for unused Parts of Groups have been removed.

Transactions (GLREFLTR) -- Starting dates entered without a year are now assumed to be in the current year.

Journal Entry Batches:

Reserve for Encumbrance RJE's -- The "E" type Calc-Code was enhanced to allow creation of either GL or EN transactions instead of just EN transactions. This enables it to calculate and split out a reserve for encumbrances.

Journal Entry Distribution (GLJEDS) - A change on the 9802 release made the JE Batch Proof utility slow down on extremely large JE batches. A change on 9805 corrects that slowdown. Some BLOCK/WARN issues were also addressed.

Recurrent JE's -- The RJE program was sped up to pre-CUTIP levels.

Most of this occurred in the internal handling of transaction dates. In addition, several bugs were corrected: when selection dates now fall within the 13th or 14th fiscal periods, transactions in those periods are correctly selected and processed. The number of big screen selection entries was increased to 120 so the calculation table can not overflow.

JCL was corrected to prevent an ARG file wrong size error under certain conditions, and a bug in Average Daily Balance (ADB) date processing was corrected.

Multi-Date Distribution (GLJEDM) - The posting dates on secondary transactions (from an automatic RJE) now match the dates on the corresponding primary transactions.

Multi-Ledger RJEs -- RJEs were changed to disallow using GL-side keys or objects on the JL-side, or vice versa. This can be overridden by creating the common code GLRJALLOWCRS.

Direct-Update Screens:

General Information (GLUPGN) - Now there can be multiple budget versions which display actual information from various years. Budget versions which display actual values are created by placing "AC" (or "-0001AC" etc.) in the date code field on GLUPGN screen 5. If more than one is created, it is strongly recommended that no budget version be named "AC".

Organization Keys (GLUPKY) - The Override Budget Version field (version to use for a specific Key) is now automatically up-shifted.

Utilities:

Account Rolling (GLUTRIRL) - The new utility GLUTRIRL has been designed to allow new Keys, Parts, Objects, and Groups to be converted from a comma delimited ASCII files to the "BBB" formats which can be loaded into the GL Chart of Accounts.

Rule Check Chart Of Accounts (GLUTDIRS) - The new utility GLUTDIRS has been added to check the currently defined Chart Of Accounts (COA) against the currently defined Rules (GLUPRU).

Rule Check Transactions (GLUTDIRT) - The new utility GLUTDIRT has been added to check the account numbers on transactions in the GL against the currently defined Rules (GLUPRU).

BBB File Viewer (GLUTRIFV) - The new utility GLTURIFV allows viewing of various "BBB" files loaded into and unloaded from the GL data-sets by SY975 and SY970, respectively. This tool is particularly useful for validation of data during initial rollovers.

Recompute (GLUTDICA) -- The new mask GLUTDICA can significantly speed up GL recomputes on UNIX machines. It skips locking and unlocking records and so should not be run while any users are in IFAS.

Budgeting:

New Adjustment Batch Screen (GLBUBAAJ) - A new budget batch adjustment screen was added preventing inter-fund adjustments, unbalanced entries, balance changes, or action against user definable object codes.

New Annual Changes Batch Screen (GLBUBAAN) -- A new batch screen was added for annual budget changes with limits similar to  GLBUBAAJ above.

New Transfer Batch Screen (GLBUBATR) -- A new batch screen was added for budget transfers with limits similar to GLBUBAAJ above.

Checked Budget Version -- The budget checking logic was corrected to only check budget blocking if the version being modified contributes to the checked version.

Budget Text -- Unlimited extended text can be attached to each budget reference number (BU-ID) in GLBUBAUB. Text is defined on a second screen. Once posted, the text can be viewed by the budget changes reports GLREFLCB and GLIQ-BC.

Transferring to New Budgets -- Budget batches can now transfer budget amounts from an existing account to one that does not exist. The new budget account will be created when the batch is distributed.

Budget Date Blocks -- On GLBUBAUB, budget date blocking was corrected, and date blocks now show up at the bottom of the screen.

Direct Update Screen (GLBUUP) -- Several corrections were made to the budget update screen. Data is no longer internally stored in summed versions which are calculated on-the-fly. Budget flags are now shown when date codes such as "-0001AC" or "+0002AC" are specified on GLUPGN screen 5. Values entered in the change column can again be preceded by "+" or "-" to indicate adding or subtracting a relative amount instead of setting the budget to a specific absolute amount.

Automatic Budget Models -- Automatic budget models were erroneously updating budgets when running trial payrolls (PYTPTP). The programs were changed to inhibit this activity for PYTPTP.

Monthly Budget Display - Monthly budget spreads can be stored either in dollars or percentages. When they were stored as dollars, reports displaying monthly budget spreads suffered rounding errors due to conversion to and from percentage amounts in the processing. This was corrected to just retain them as dollars, thus reducing errors significantly.

Other:

Faster Security Checking - The routines which process security are now faster for IFAS users having many nucleus security constraints.

Faster Data Selection -- Special Fast-keys (MPE) or indexes (UNIX) now accelerate data gathering when selecting GL information by reference, PE-ID, date, job number, or work order.

Faster on Sites with Many Ledgers - An additional ledger column and Fast-key (MPE) or index (UNIX) were added. This improves performance on sites which have many ledgers.

Automatic Master Data-sets Eliminated - On UNIX, the automatic master data-sets were redundant and have now been eliminated.

Fiscal Year on Budget Blocks -- Over-budget Block and Warn messages now include the fiscal year in front of the budget name.

Block/Warn Handling -- Under certain conditions, the Block/Warn flags from the wrong object group were used. This was corrected.

Accounts Payable

A new status code has been added to Open Hold. In addition to the existing DS, WP, PD, RV status codes, hold codes of H0 through H9 have been created. Hold codes allow the user to place a payment on hold, preventing payment until the hold is released. Users may choose different hold codes for different situations, and all transactions on hold will still be reported as an unpaid entry.

MPE sites will see a performance increase when selecting Open Hold entries for payment (APOHPPSP). The internal process has been streamlined to allow making the same updates in less time. Users will not notice any differences other than the time necessary to update the entries.

A new method of defining AP check stock formats is now available.  This new method is referred to as "user defined records" and will allow the printing of almost any field related to the accounts payable process and general ledger. Making use of this new method will require redefining the entire check format, as a format cannot be a combination of old and new methods.

A new method of extracting payments against POs has been introduced.  The "Summary" method will show one line on the extraction screen for each PO line item defined. In other words, PO items split across multiple accounts will be summarized into one line for extraction, simplifying the payment process.  Payments will still use the accounts and splits as entered on the PO, but accounts payable will not have to mark a line for each account.

Person/Entity

A new utility has been created to load zipcode information from the U.S.  Postal Service into the PE zipcode table. The data file from the U.S.P.S.

contains all 5-digit zipcodes in the U.S. and its territories (42,866 as of June 1998). The utility will create any zipcodes that are not in the database, and update those that have changed. The latest data file is included with the 9805 HFS, and quarterly updates will be available for download on the internet from Bi-Tech's FTP site.

Purchasing

The PR Notes screen of POUPPR has been modified to check PO security. Only users with appropriate security access will be able to use the PR Notes screen.

The encumbrance processing portion of PO was updated, namely the POMAER and POMADE utilities. POMAER was not erasing the pre-encumbrances, and POMADE was changed to close encumbrances by posting a DE transaction instead of an FP.

Stores Inventory

A general information screen (SIUPGN) has been added to consolidate many of the primary settings of the subsystem. The HFS installation includes an update program that will read the current settings on the common codes, and move the values into the new screen. 

Stores Inventory has also been modified to accept alphanumeric Order IDs. Previously, all Order IDs had to be 8 digits, but now the user may include letters and the length of the ID may be less that 8 characters.

Systems

Column Renaming for HFS. Will allow cleaner HFS updates when a database structure change requires only the renaming of a column.

DEC Alpha port. IFAS has been successfully ported to the DEC Alpha platform, tested for Operating System versions 4.0B and 4.0D.

Oracle Support. Transport now supports both Informix and Oracle as a Database Server. This applies to Base IFAS only, not TRIAD. TRIAD support under Oracle expected in near future.

Sun Solaris Support. IFAS has been successfully ported to the SUNOS 5.5, Solaris 2.51 through 2.6.

Preserve client specific indexes. HFS process would potentially remove client specific Informix indexes. Changed so that HFS will preserve any index with the prefix cs_

Nucleus

NUUPUS (1) The ability now exists to exclude allowable commands (commands entered after a ":" in text mode, or with the "Execute Host Command" menu option from Insight) from a user definition. Previously, you could enter up to five(5) commands in the NUUPUS screen to limit users, or an "@@" to allow all commands, or the first few letters of a command (e.g. SHOW would allow SHOWOUT and SHOWJOB).   These fields will now allow an "!" (exclamation point) at the beginning of a command to disallow use of that command. For example, a !KILL would disallow the UNIX kill command. A "@@" in the first field and a "!SHOW" in the second would allow all commands, except for those that begin with "SHOW".

Nucleus Security Speedup. Changed Nucleus security routines to store the user's security in memory during the execution of a program. This eliminates the re-reading of security every time a transaction is read, resulting in faster standard reports.

Enhanced Error Reporting. Added parameter substitution capabilities to error reporting facility, which will result in more meaningful error messages in the future.

MPE only, new version of SQUISHER for HFS updates.

MPE only, GLUTDICA had problem with UNIX specific code, which is now ignored on MPE machines.

Job Ledger reporting. Fix problem where the ledger would become corrupted after switching to the JL side in a report.

Usefile ASKME questions. When running a usefile, IFAS would not catch an invalid response to an ASKME question. Invalid responses are now rejected.

Printer Question being dropped: Certain IFAS masks which dynamically add questions based on responses had an error causing the Printer question to be skipped. This has been fixed.

NUUPJB Job Type and ROOTROLLS. When an HFS performs a ROOTROLL to update masks, the Job Type (e.g. IN = interactive, JB = Job) was being overwritten. ROOTROLLs now preserve the clients Job Type.

JCL case sensitivity. IFAS would crash if certain JCL commands, such as RUN, were not in upper case.

UNIX only, ":" commands. When entering commands after a colon in text-mode IFAS, the command itself would be overwritten by the output of the command. Nucleus now preserves the text.