I don't reply to these often but you were so helpful at the User 4
User conference that I had to respond. I used the ODBC connection
extensively with a competing Progress-based system (before my recent
job change to a company using Vantage.) The best usage for the ODBC
that I found was a gross profit pivot table by product type. In
Vantage, it would be created by using the InvcDtl table and pulling
the selling price and cost out of there. Group them by customer type
or product type, depending on which grouping has the largest
dispersion in gross margin. Since it is a pivot table, you could do
both. This can eliminate the excuse that margins declined due to a
mix variance. I plotted the margins by each group each month so that
we nailed down what was actually happening.
I have also used ODBC to pull out inventory transactions and do pivot
tables on them. If you don't use Vantage's Bank Reconciliation, you
can use ODBC to pull out the check register and then do a VLOOKUP in
Excel against the bank's cleared checks to findout which checks have
cleared and which checks cleared at the wrong amount. E-mail the
Controller's phone number if he/she would like to talk about more
ideas off-line.
User conference that I had to respond. I used the ODBC connection
extensively with a competing Progress-based system (before my recent
job change to a company using Vantage.) The best usage for the ODBC
that I found was a gross profit pivot table by product type. In
Vantage, it would be created by using the InvcDtl table and pulling
the selling price and cost out of there. Group them by customer type
or product type, depending on which grouping has the largest
dispersion in gross margin. Since it is a pivot table, you could do
both. This can eliminate the excuse that margins declined due to a
mix variance. I plotted the margins by each group each month so that
we nailed down what was actually happening.
I have also used ODBC to pull out inventory transactions and do pivot
tables on them. If you don't use Vantage's Bank Reconciliation, you
can use ODBC to pull out the check register and then do a VLOOKUP in
Excel against the bank's cleared checks to findout which checks have
cleared and which checks cleared at the wrong amount. E-mail the
Controller's phone number if he/she would like to talk about more
ideas off-line.
--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "Todd Caughey" <caugheyt@h...> wrote:
> Fallout from the User-4-User Conference.....I attended a session
detailing connecting Excel to the Vantage DB via ODBC. Told my boss,
the Dir. of Finance, about it and he now would like to try this for
some financial statements.
>
> Does anyone have any samples of Excel based Vantage financial
reporting using ODBC that they could share? Something we could use
as
a starting point without having to start from scratch?
>
> Thanks,
> Todd Caughey
> Harvey Vogel Mfg. Co.
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]