Does anyone use FML to write financial reports for Lawson? I'd like to know how to set up the chart of accounts to use the FML hierarchy.

Thanks,
Bethany

Server Environment:
Win2K3 Server
WebFOCUS 7.13
Apache Tomcat standalone application server

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kerry,

Hi Bethany,

I use WebFocus for reporting from Lawson, but I have not used FML much. I too would be interested in hearing from anyone who has done this. I've read that there is an adapter for Lawson Financials. Does anyone have any experience with this?

I would also like to know if there are many Lawson users out there that use WebFocus as their reporting tool. Our users mainly use the Lawson Query tool and some use Crystal Reports and then I use WebFocus.

Jim

We are in the process of converting all of our Lawson reports from Crystal to WebFocus. We have done many reports without FML, but now we are doing the reports that use the account hierarchy so I thought now would be a good opportunity to try FML.

Do you know where you read about the Lawson Financials adapter?

Bethany

I do not know the Lawson GL application, but in our company we use CODA, and we have set up great application on this GL system with WF (FML).

What you will need is a master with the necessary extra info on certain fields (caption and parent).

I wonder if the Lawson GL table has an hierarchy build in, if it has, you probably need to convert it to an proper master.
We did that and load the table once a week (only the static GL account codes).

Hi Bethany,

Here's a link to an article about the adapter:

http://www.iwaysoftware.com/products/adapters/Lawson.html

How did you decide to go from Crystal to WF?

Jim

There are 2 tables that have the chart of account information. One that has the account descriptions etc., and a 2nd that has the heirarchy. Would you recommend joining the 2 to make a single table with the same format as the sample CENTGL table that's provided by IBI?

Jim,

Fairly long story on how we decided to go to WF for the financial reports. Our university was already using WF for academic reporting from PeopleSoft, so when Crystal was not being fully supported, we decided to convert the lawson reports to WF as well. So far all of our users are much happier with the WF reports since it's user friendly and they run MUCH faster than the Crystal reports did.

Thanks for the adapter link.

Bethany, that is not necessary, but it is an extra option.
We created an master like the CENTGL example.

BTW we moved from Business Objects to WF. BO is sold together with the CODA GL application. Today they are looking for selling our solution with WF.

Hi All,

I would like to hear from any others that are using WebFocus to create financial reports. I don't know if there are many companies doing this, and if so, are you happy with the results.

Please let us know.

Thanks
Jim

Frank,

Another question about your master table. Does it have just the roll up account captions and you join to a separate table that has the account codes and their descriptions or does it include the roll ups as well as the specific account codes and their descriptions?

Bethany

Bethany,

Were you able to find out anything about the Lawson Adapter?

Do you know of others using WebFocus and Lawson?

Thanks
Jim

Jim,

I looked at the link for the adapter. I don't think it will be useful for us since we already have the lawson data available for us in WF. However, I'm not that a hardware/middleware person so I may not be understanding what the adapter can do. I'm going to take Frank's suggestion to rework the lawson tables to create a master file for the heirarchy with the same format at the GLCENT sample table and then go from there. I'll let you know how it works out.

Bethany

Bethany

You should be aware of some small problems you will meet.
The thing I found was that sometimes a hierarchy is not complete balanced, I will show some records to explain this.

Balanced Hierarchy

top       level1   level2   account
A1001      D1001   E1001    1234
                            1235
                   E1002    1224
                            1235
           D1002   E2001    2334
                            2335
B1001      D1003   E3001    3455
                            1243 
etc

Unbalanced

top       level1   level2   account
A1001      D1001   E1001    1234
                            1235
           D1002   1224
                   1235
           E2001   2334
                   2335
B1001      3455
           1243 
etc

So in the unbalanced version you find the lowest level (the accountcode) sometimes at level 2 some on level3 and some on level4.

Our GL system can handle this, but in WF it was not the result I liked (nor the end user)
We created some extra "branches" to get it as needed.

So how do you create these extra branches? We also have an unbalanced tree. Revenue accounts only have level 2 or 3 summary levels and Expenses may have up to 6 summary levels.


Can you use the heirarchy to create output like this where in operating expenses some accounts are summed at level 5 and others are summed at level 6?

LEVEL 3: OPERATING REVENUE
______________LEVEL 4: Tuition and Fees
_______________________Gifts
_______________________Other Income
_________OPERATING REVENUE SUBTOTAL

LEVEL 3: OPERATING EXPENSES
______________LEVEL 4: SALARY EXPENSE
______________________LEVEL 5: Staff Salaries
_______________________________Student Salaries
______________SALARY EXPENSE SUBTOTAL
______________________LEVEL 5: Fringe Benefits
______________LEVEL 4: NON-SALARY DIRECT EXPENSES
______________________LEVEL 6: Supplies
_______________________________Travel
_______________________________Entertainment
_______________________________Misc. Expense
______________NON-SALARY DIRECT EXPENSES SUBTOTAL
_________OPERATING EXPENSE SUBTOTAL
_________GRAND TOTAL

Thanks so much for your help!
Bethany

We use Lawson also and we are in the middle of developing the financial statements. We also have an unbalanced Chart and we also have a challange where we need to have different grouping for different operations. We use Lawson attributes and assigned each account an attribute (Cash, AR,...Retained Earnings, Sales, ... Income Tax Expense).

We are able to create summary statements based on the attributes. We have tried to create the heirarchy, but we only get the first grouping (in our case Accrued Expenses) with all of the accounts that belong to that group.

I would love to talk to anyone who uses Lawson so we can compare notes.

Dan