Epicor® Multi-Site Functionality
Deciding Between Multiple Companies, Multiple Sites, or Both.
Before implementing the multi-site license functionality of Epicor®, you need to consider the available functionality to decide what is best for use in your organization.
Companies and sites are considered two different things for business activity. Companies are the top levels of financial activity within your organization. Setting up companies allows you to define various child profit center companies and define the parent company. Each company has its own data sets, such as financial books and currencies. A company can post financial transactions in its main currency using its unique fiscal calendar. Then the information can be converted for different currencies or fiscal calendars in separate books. The parent company within the system houses the primary Book for the whole organization. All other companies consolidate into the parent through consolidation books so that all final values use the organization’s base currency.
The Epicor® Administration Console allows you to create companies and set up the primary company values in the database. On the subsequent launch of the Epicor application, newly created companies will display as a separate node in the Main Menu.
Sites are sub-sections of companies and identify areas of production within that company. Each site will manufacture a specific set of products, so sites define overall scheduling parameters such as Production Prep Time and Production Calendar used by-products. Sites also define how parts are costed and how inventory is controlled between each site through available methods.
Global Data Structure
After defining your companies and sites needed in your multi-site environment, you will then need to determine the records that must be set up, and which to share among your companies and sites.
Once thoroughly planned out, you can start implementing the structure to your main database. There are several things you need to consider when defining records. The needs of your multi-site environment help you discover what you need and which needs to be linked between companies.
The records you determine have to be shared between part or all of your organization will determine your setup process.
Multi-Company and Multi-Site Functionality
The following section is primarily the functionalities of your multi-company/multi-site environment. Multi-site functionality within Epicor includes features that share data throughout areas in your organization.
You can leverage these features to share global master records such as charts of accounts (COAs), parts, customers, suppliers, coordinate purchasing with divisions, consolidate financial data, and other data sharing activities internal to your organization.
There are three levels of database interaction:
1. Multi-Company (Service Bus) – Microsoft Service Bus needs to be installed for multi-company to transfer data between two companies on separate databases.
2. Multi-Company Direct – If two companies, each with a unique federal tax ID, reside within the same database, Service Bus is no longer required. Instead, XML messages can be sent and received directly between companies held in memory.
3. Multi-Site – A multi-site environment consists of separate sites which maintain records within a single company. This functionality is used if you have multiple production centers within a company; each site record will define inventory quantities, costing methods, and scheduling parameters for product production.
Through Multi-company and Multi-site functionality you will find many features designed to work uniquely with your organization.
Global Records
Through the use of global records, you can define specific master records that are shared across your multi-company organization. They are synchronized across the database to use the same data on sales orders, invoices, packing slips, and other entry records.
The following are master records you can define as global records.
- Customers
- Chart of Accounts (Includes segment values and GL accounts)
- Suppliers
- Parts
- Currencies
- Currency Rate Types
- Multi-Company GL Accounts (For multi-company journals and allocations)
Global Customer Credit
You can create and enforce a credit limit for specific customers for all companies without your organization through Global Customer Credit functionality. When AR invoices are created with a global customer record attached, the amount on each AR invoice will be subtracted from the available credit. When apartments are received, they will be added to the credit amount. Accounts will be placed on credit hold if a customer’s credit reaches zero or lower.
Inter-Company Purchase Orders
Creation of Inter-Company Purchase Orders (ICPOs) and suggestions between many companies within your database.
AP Invoice Automation
Automation for creating AP invoices for inter-company trading transactions.
Consolidated Purchasing
Consolidated purchasing allows you to centralize all your purchasing and AP functions throughout multiple companies. Using this functionality, you can define a company and the central purchasing, or a parent company. You can define receiving or child companies that will then receive purchasing order releases from your parent company.
If a child company receives purchased parts, a receipt record is made. The receipt will be sent to your central purchasing company to generate an AP invoice. Finally, the AP invoice will be sent to the receiving companies.
Central AP Invoice Payments
With Central AP Invoice Payment functionality, you can pay subsidiary AP invoices at the
parent company level.
Multi-Company Journals, Allocations, and AP Allocations
Multi-Company Journals, Multi-Company Allocations, and AP Allocation functionality can be used to distribute amounts from your parent company to any number of child companies. Multi-Company journals can be set to distribute amounts from a GL journal of the parent company to specific journals in any number of child companies.
Multi-Company Consolidation
Multi-Company Consolidation Process module pulls together the fiscal books from any number of child companies to a parent company.
Multi-Company Dashboards
Multi-company dashboards are useful at being able to easily review data from multiple companies through global business activity queries. You can also use them to review data you need to see from another company.
Multi-Company Configurator
The Epicor application gives access to several functions that allow the management of configured parts for multi-company enterprises.
The following is an example of a typical business scenario made automated using multi-company configuration functions:
- A Multi-national enterprise based within the United States with several domestic and foreign sales companies, and one or more manufacturing companies, domestic or foreign.
- The enterprise sells items that are defined as manufactured parts in the manufacturing companies and defined as purchased parts in the sales companies.
- The enterprise maintains general configurations within one of the manufacturing companies. These defined configurations are used by sales companies when receiving customer orders for items.
- The manufacturing company can then build configured products based on the configuration sales information received from the sales company for ordered items and the manufacturing rules defined in the manufacturing company database.
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