15 December, 2021

As 2021 comes to a close, it’s time to ensure your company is ready to start 2022 fresh.

Clicking on the links below will take you to best practices for specific topics:

IT Department

Fourth Shift ERP

Visual ERP 

Year-End Best Practices:
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IT Department
IT Department Year-End Best Practices note: for each area a full system backup should be completed and verified prior to starting any process. Follow proper change management processes to ensure all departments agree with any changes or resets.

Review all contracts for IT services including ISP, Telecom, SAAS subscriptions (Office 365, business apps) for rates and renewal dates.
Review all software products for End-of-Life dates and Upgrades. This includes business applications and their foundational components. Examples: SQL Server, Server operating systems and environments, etc.
Review all infrastructure hardware warranty and renewal dates.
Prepare a budget for the following year to reflect any planned upgrades or hardware changes.
Do a security review and ensure all stale accounts are disabled, passwords for service accounts are sufficiently complex, and review all group policies.
Ensure that any Antivirus/Malware solution is up to date. And that it meets all current requirements of the business. ICG offers Data Guard 365 as our SOC partner.
Review all points of ingress and egress into the network and ensure they are secured. Schedule a Security Review including a Penetration test (PenTest).
Review any governmental compliance changes in regulations related to the business.
Perform annual security awareness training for new hires during the year.
Review any IT internal procedures like onboarding and offboarding. Ensure they are valid and up to date.
Review all internal IT infrastructure documentation. Ensure it is up to date.
Hire ICG to perform Health Checks around key areas of your Infrastructure and ERP. If you are looking at major upgrades to your infrastructure and systems, ICG offers a full Technical Systems Review (TSR). This ensures your system architecture is current and compliant now and well into the future.
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Year-End Best Practices:
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Fourth Shift ERP
Fourth Shift ERP Year-End Best Practices note: for each area a full system backup should be completed and verified prior to starting any process. Follow proper change management processes to ensure all departments agree with any changes or resets.

Lot Trace:
Review Retest and Expiration dates for lot numbers and move them to corresponding location
Purge Lot Trace history as needed, keeping in mind compliance and retention requirements: LHIP (Fourth Shift Backup to be performed prior to any purge)
Purchasing:
Review and update Vendor contracts, quotes (prices) and Out Effectivity dates
Review Vendor activity and update status to Phased out or Inactive if needed
Close out and re-issue blanket purchase orders as required
Review and close out old purchase orders
Delete empty order headers
Reset vendor performance score-carding statistics
Manufacturing:
Update shop calendar for 2022
Prepare and load next year’s Master Production Schedule; update planning parameters according to it
Perform an ABC analysis to update item class codes for cycle counting
Prepare/apply Cycle counting
Review all OVAR’s for exceptions and resolve
Review OVAR parameters and determine if they are adequate for the current CO, MO, and PO processes. Note: OVAR does not purge data from Fourth Shift completely. The order data is retained in the history tables.
Review and close out old manufacturing orders
Delete empty order headers
Clear and reconcile the Backflush report
Purge item old history as needed, keeping in mind compliance and retention requirements: AUDP (Fourth Shift Backup to be performed prior to any purge)
Shipping:
Purge old history: SREV (Fourth Shift Backup to be performed prior to any purge)
Review and close out old completed shipments still in Release status
Costs:
If using Standard Cost, review and update the fixed and variable overhead rates being applied for labor and materials
Review, simulate, and update costs, schedule year end cost roll as per your processes (Fourth Shift Backup to be performed prior to exchanging to standard cost)
Financial:
Enter next year’s calendar, including GL Periods and Starting & Ending Dates
Review/update/add Recurring Journal Entries
Review and clear the following reports: APUV, APTB (small balances), and ARTB (small balances)
Purge old history: APPG, ARPG, CSPG, GLHP (Fourth Shift Backup to be performed prior to any purge)
System Admin Tasks for ERP Systems:
Review Windows, IIS, and SQL Security along with all directories supporting Fourth Shift.  Clean up as needed and adjust documentation.
Purge Statistics: VPFR, POYE, and COYE executions to clear Vendors and Customers statistics (Fourth Shift Backup to be performed prior to any purge)
Update Number Sequence:
OACF for purchase orders, customer orders, and manufacturing orders
Review sequence numbers for AP checks and update if needed
Typically, AR invoices/AR credit memos/journal entries/cash sets/manual shipments sequence numbers don’t need to be updated, but a review can be suggested
Review recurring invoices and update if needed
SQL Backups: Archive Year End Backups (after closing) of all databases for retention and audit purposes
Archive Year End reports
Review Older Archives in place (ARCHMOD) and purge old year’s files (review retention)
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Year-End Best Practices:
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Visual ERP
Visual ERP Year-End Best Practices note: for each area a full system backup should be completed and verified prior to starting any process. Follow proper change management processes to ensure all departments agree with any changes or resets.

Lot Trace:
Review Retest and Expiration dates for lot numbers and move them to corresponding location
Purchasing:
Review and update Vendor contracts, quotes (prices) and Out Effectivity dates
Review Vendor activity and update status to Phased out or Inactive if needed
Close out and re-issue blanket purchase orders as required
Review and close out old purchase orders
Delete empty order headers
Reset vendor performance score-carding statistics
Manufacturing:
Update shop calendar for 2022
Prepare and load next year’s Master Production Schedule; update planning parameters according to it
Perform an ABC analysis to update item class codes for cycle counting
Prepare/apply Cycle counting
Review and close out old manufacturing orders
Delete empty order headers
Clear and reconcile the Backflush report
Shipping:
Review and close out old completed shipments still in Release status
Costs:
If using Standard Cost, review and update the fixed and variable overhead rates being applied for labor and materials
Review, simulate, and update costs, schedule year end cost roll as per your processes Visual Backup to be performed prior to exchanging to standard cost)
Financial:
Specify the financial calendar for the next year
Run costing utilities and prepare manufacturing journals for year-end processing
Printing of the Vendor 1099s
Year-end payroll processing for Visual Payroll
Create new database for Visual Payroll database for the next year
Applying tax tables for the new year in Visual Payroll
Make backups after closing of all Visual databases for reporting and auditing purposes
System Admin Tasks for ERP Systems:
Review Windows, IIS, and SQL Security along with all directories supporting Visual. Clean up as needed and adjust documentation.
Update Number Sequence:
Review sequence numbers for AP checks and update if needed
Typically, AR invoices/AR credit memos/journal entries/cash sets/manual shipments sequence numbers don’t need to be updated, but a review can be suggested
Review recurring invoices and update if needed
SQL Backups: Archive Year End Backups (after closing) of all databases for retention and audit purposes
Archive Year End reports