Tomerlin Knowledge Center

Epicor® XL Connect

​With Epicor® Kinetic XL connect, businesses can get real-time data sent to pre-configured Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Executives need accurate and up-to-date information when making important decisions about their company.

How much time does your business waste looking up information? According to one study, employees spend 1.8 hours a day looking for and gathering the information they need. The number of hours spent collecting data increases for specific industries, such as aerospace and defense.

If your business has yet to upgrade to XL connect, read on to learn what you’re missing.

What Is XL Connect?

XL connect is an add-in for Microsoft Office Excel. The program pulls Epicor Kinetic ERP data into Excel, making it accessible to everyone that needs the information. You won’t have to rely on IT or the infamous super-user to modify reports. You’ll have a complete picture of your organization at your fingertips.

XL Connect links Excel together with Epicor and other databases. You’ll get accurate real-time reports that are board-room ready without having to spend hours preparing them.

What Reports Are Available?

You can pull up types of reports that your business may need. A few examples are:

• budget reports
• invoice analysis
• sales analysis
• financial statements
• cashflow

General ledger, accounts receivable, and account payable modules are ready for you from Epicor. You’ll be able to perform drill-down analysis on any cell returning live data from your existing Epicor Kinetic ERP.

But XL Connect is not limited to financial reporting. If the data has been collected in the Epicor database, you can use XL Connect to create reports, like:

• inventory reports
• on shipment analysis
• late jobs

You can create your reports, tweak them as needed, and distribute them to the key members of your team efficiently. As long as your team knows how to use Excel, they’ll have no problem mastering XL Connect.

Since XL Connect works with Excel, you won’t have to worry about training your team on new software. Almost every aerospace, defense, medical parts, and equipment manufacturing team member already knows and uses Excel daily.

Benefits of XL Connect 

The most important benefit you’ll realize is the minimizing of human error. Many companies combat modern reporting challenges by manually transferring data from Epicor Kinetic ERP to Excel. This creates an increased risk of data entry errors.

A small mistake could lead to significant inaccuracies and require hours to fix. Even when no mistakes are made when entering the information into Excel, you can see the formulas and links being accurate.

If any of these mistakes go unnoticed, you could face compliance issues and government audits. These consequences could cost your company time and money. Even in the best-case scenario, you’ll waste hours fixing the problem in which you catch a mistake.

With XL Connect, your information is reliable. The reports are accurate. You open your reports and manipulate your data with Excel tools, like, pivot tables, etc. Your information is easier to analyze. XL Connect’s drill-down and drag-and-drop abilities allow companies to work smarter and faster. You will have access to live data and can make adjustments without switching between programs. If the future of business is big data, your company’s future is in Epicor ERP and XL Connect.

Other Features

There are other benefits of using XL Connect, including:

• Ease of use.
• Use existing spreadsheets and produce reports with audit trails within Excel
• No more copy/paste or complex queries. Broken links are also a thing of the past
• You won’t have to rely on your power report builders.
• User security from your Epicor ERP solution carries over to XL Connect.

Traditional Excel files are known for their sheer data size. Sometimes, these reports’ size forces companies to run them after hours so that they don’t take up needed network resources. XL Connect fixes this problem. You’ll have your reports in minutes instead of hours. With XL Connect 7, there’s also a feature called PackNGo, which allows analysts to embed data from reports and then send that data in a smaller file than regular Excel files.

The receiver can access the data they need without downloading a massive file. Ease of access saves them time and makes sending and receiving information easier.

Will You Need Help Integrating XL Connect with Epicor Kinetic ERP? 

Tomerlin-ERP will be able to integrate and launch XL Connect for you very quickly. Since 1998, we’ve been dedicated to helping businesses like yours improve performance and lower costs associated with Epicor ERP. Contact us today if you need help integrating XL Connect with your Epicor Kinetic ERP! We can help you with all your ERP needs.