Re: Credit note number changed to original invoice number - by some program

Did you realize that RMA credits store the data in a separate MEMBER of
several files?  You can see this with DSPFD F4 select *MBRLIST - most files
have only one member but several have some specialized members in addition
to those related to work station addresses.

We also had a problem in payables where some vendor sent us a corrected
invoice and BPCS can only accept one copy of same invoice #, so we entered
correction using a letter at the end of the invoice # to indicate second
copy.  We changed first invoice to say not due any more, but accountants
did not want to delete paper trail.  I suspect receivables may have similar
constraints.

I can answer your question about how to find what programs update what
files, and provide some ideas about places to go look for clues.

There is a set of Cross Reference programs within the SYS BPCS Security
Officer access.
I am not using them in 405 CD because the only way to get them to work
right is to make SSA an IBM Master Security Officer which projects more
authority to all members of the SSA group than I want.

Instead ... you know IBM/400 GO CMDREF gets you to an option to display all
the objects that are referenced by the program of your choice.  I did that
Display Program Objects for *ALL programs and *ALL objects in the BPCS
library list to an *OUTFILE then I created a Query/400 in which I can
search for what all programs update SIL thru SIL9999 to get all the logicals.

Now this is not 100% fool proof because some BPCS software is soft coded in
that it looks up some place to populate some structure with name of program
to call, so that won't show up in this thing, but my technique will get you
a big list of possibilities.

There are several fields in various files containing what BPCS calls
document #, but there are several kinds of document #s ... there is the
invoice # credit # ... there is the order # RMA # (Do you know that returns
can be in a different MEMBER of a file? ... check DSPFD F4 and get *MBRLIST
... a bunch of E* files and some others have a RETURNS member that contains
data related to RMA for Credit so if you looking in the regular main member
you won't see that data) ... there is the delivery ticket document #
involved in the shipments.  You need to look at the population of the files
to comprehend what is really in those document # fields.  Some place a
credit ought to have the original invoice # that it is referencing.  Notes
are another BPCS animal from the actual credit, and when Billing has done
its thing, many BPCS programs lose access to the notes associated with why
that RMA was needed, so we use a separate system parallelling the BPCS book
keeping so we have a future record for tracking what the problems were that
led to RMAs.

If you understand the application flow of shipments of customer orders and
billing, you can logically see what ought to be touching those files, but
there is the risk of modifications not well documented that might have
flaws in them.  For example we have a guy who just left the company and he
wrote some PC thing that sends advanced ship notices via Internet to major
customers.  He is supposed to have a Query/400 create a work file that is
downloaded to PC then manipulated there, but if we have not actually messed
with the software ourselves how do we know anything for sure.  There may be
other people have added stuff and IT not even know it.

incredible bug, we printed credit notes but at one moment some program has
changed document numbers in  SIH, SIL, RAR, RTX files

we found huge problem in data linked to invoicing - all files SIH, SIL,
RAR, RTX concerned. We use separate document sequence for invoices and
credit notes. I have many credit notes printed on paper with correct
number, but when I look in SIL, SIH etc the records do not exists, there
are duplications of records of original invoice. Also when I look to backup
the records had correct number but every time changed to original invoice
numbers - which programs update SIL, SIH, RAR files. How can this happen. I
am completely lost in searching the source of problem, this has never
happened before also any SQL was not used.

did someone met the same problem?

Have a nice day

Michal

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Al Macintyre (macwheel99@sigecom.net via Eudora)
Al's diary http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/
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