Epicor® Kinetic XL Connect

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 certain 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 own reports, tweak them as needed, and distribute them to the key members of your team easily. As long as your team knows how to use Excel, they’ll have no problem mastering to 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, and parts and equipment manufacturing team member already knows and uses Excel on a daily basis.

Benefits of XL Connect 

The most important benefit you’ll realize is the minimizing of human error. Many companies choose to 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 major inaccuracies and could require hours to fix. Even when no mistakes are made when entering the information into Excel, you have the possibility of 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, in which you catch a mistake, you’ll waste hours fixing the problem.

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. The drill down and drag and drop abilities of XL Connect allow companies to work smarter and faster. You will have access to live data and can make adjustments without having to switch between programs. If the future of business is big data, the future of your company 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, the size of these reports force 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 file that’s smaller than regular Excel files.

The receiver can access the data they need without having to download a massive file. Ease of access saves them time and makes it easier to send and receive information.

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. If you need help integrating XL Connect with your Epicor Kinetic ERP, contact us today! We can help you with all your ERP needs.