Pulse Dashboard Modules Reference

A guide to every module in the Pulse Dashboard suite. Adapted from the product literature on leahyconsulting.com.

Pulse Dashboard is organized into department-specific modules, each delivering pre-developed, ready-to-use reports for a particular audience. Every module shares the same foundations: one-click drill-down to underlying details, a one-click report writer for adding and removing columns, and export to Excel, PDF, printer or email.

Executive

Made for top management — a company-wide view on one screen.

• Customer bookings and shipments: this year vs. last year vs. budget
• Sales margin tracking
• Orders that can still ship by end of month, to maximize revenue
• Real-time aging of accounts receivable, accounts payable and purchase orders
• Monitoring of key balance-sheet and general-ledger expense accounts
• Custom tabs tracking critical customers, product categories, salespeople and territories
• Summary budget information at the G/L account level on reports and graphs

Financial Control

For accounting and department managers.

• Month-by-month actual vs. budget vs. last year graphs, with drill-down to details
• Department managers track controllable expenses in real time
• G/L-account-based reports: Current Balances, G/L Control, Actual vs. Budget Comparison, Financial Control Report and Cash Flow Forecast
• SMART Cash Flow with “what-if” analysis that offsets the normal calculations for accounts receivable and open customer orders

Sales & Marketing

For sales management and analysis.

• Sales and margin views by month, quarter and year vs. budget and last year
• Budgets by customer, salesperson, item and combinations (see Setting up budgets)
• Budgets prepared in Excel from a generated template, or entered manually
• Mid-year adjustments by dollar amount or percentage
• Tab filters create lookups across customers, items, salespeople, product categories and user-defined fields

Customer Service / Shipping

Keeps the focus on unshipped orders.

• Pinpoints shortages by item on open customer orders
• Customer orders graph with daily or monthly views
• Fill-rate tracking — the ratio of orders fully invoiced per day; every partial shipment shows up
• Cut-off date based on the order line request date, with options for promise date or header ship date

Inventory

Everything about what you have and where it is going.

• Month-by-month on-hand, receipts, usage and turns, with drill-down history
• Customer orders containing shortages and backorders
• Serial/Lot Trace View for one-screen traceability (see the guide)
• MRP time-phasing on the Item Detail View: projected on-hand by week from demand and replenishment
• Inventory Optimization add-on: forecast-driven stock levels, right-time replenishment and safety stock

Purchasing

For buyers and planners.

• Pinpoints past-due purchase orders and upcoming deliveries
• Purchase Order Generator among the advanced tools
• Pairs with Pulse PO Manager so vendor-confirmed dates flow back in real time

Production Control

Available for POP (Production Order Processing) or Shop Floor Control.

• Shop Floor View, with the option to display order details for all orders
• Shop Floor Scrap Report from actual shop-order transactions, with projected vs. actual cost
• Analysis reports: Shop Order In-Process Variance Analysis and Shop Order On-Time Performance Analysis
• Raw-material and component shortage visibility that protects on-time manufacturing

MRP / Material Requirements

Lightweight material planning with no tedious set-up required.

• MRP regeneration builds 25 weekly buckets of demand (customer and production orders) and 25 weekly buckets of replenishment (purchase orders)
• MRP Orders Report pre-configured and user-changeable; report by item, location, vendor, customer, product category, job and more
• Enhanced tools: Purchase Order Generator, reorder and order-up-to level recalculation, safety stock, vendor lead times, and a multi-level bill-of-material report that pinpoints component shortages by customer or production order
• Deep documentation lives in the MRP Engine documentation and the MRP Orders Drilldown site

Designer

The report-writer's module — three report types that can be added to any tab in any module, reporting on the Macola® database and other SQL databases.

• Advanced Report Designer — including Advanced Designer Reports that tie two related reports together on a common field, such as customer number
• Crystal Report box
• Query Analyzer Report
• Report Scheduler creates and emails reports on a schedule

Enhanced and companion modules