Foundation

•	Foundation

•	Company & Division Maintenance

•	Cost Centers

•	User Defined Fields

•	Replacement Literals

•	User Security

The Foundation files are the basic files of the SMMS system, where you define your basic business reporting entities (Companies and Divisions), enter your budget information (Cost Centers) and establish security (Users & User Security.) The Foundation files are the first ones to address and set-up when you are initializing the SMMS system.

The programs to maintain the Foundation databases are accessed through the menu bar in SMMS. Shown here - view screenshot - are the menu options for the Foundation menu. In addition to the files described above, you also access the Calendar file, User-Defined fields, and Nomenclature program from this menu.

Although these files are the “building blocks” of the system, they require very little attention from you after the initial set-up.

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Company & Division Maintenance

The Company is the basic business reporting entity in SMMS. You can have up to 99 companies defined for your corporate entity. Each Company can be reported separately, or all companies can be consolidated for reporting purposes.

Within each Company, you may also define optional Divisions. The number of Divisions you can create for each Company is virtually unlimited. If you choose to implement Divisions, each Division can also be reported separately, or you can consolidate all Divisions to the Company level.

Shown here - view screenshot - is the basic Company definition screen. You also use this screen to define printing options and the output queues used by the server for various types of printing.

The Division maintenance screen is very similar to this screen - view screenshot - and the same type of information is required to establish a Division.

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Cost Centers

Cost Centers provide the fundamental budgeting entity for the SMMS system. Cost Centers are established in the system and an annual budget amount is defined for each Cost Center.
view screenshot

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User Defined Fields

No software system can completely anticipate your information needs and supply all of the possible data elements you might require.

Therefore, SMMS allows you to define up to 99 unique fields for your use. These “User Defined Fields” may be defined for the Employee file, the Inventory Parts master file, the Equipment file and the Vendor file.

This screen - view screenshot - illustrates the screen where you set-up the User Defined fields. The screen shown above establishes a field to be used for tracking employee vacation days allowance in the Employee file.

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Replacement Literals

This feature of SMMS allows you to define how the SMMS system presents fundamental data, by allowing you to change the nomenclature used for screen and report headings.

In this screen - view screenshot - we have decided to use the word “Department” instead of “Cost Center” because our Company uses the term “Department” to refer to the budget entities.

You can also change the nomenclature for:

• Company
• Division
• Procedure
• Project
• Equipment
• Employee
• Vendor
• Parts

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User Security

SMMS Security must be defined for each user by company and division. This allows you to selectively allow users to access data in other companies and divisions, granting full access, partial access, or no access at all.

You can also separately specify a user’s ability to add, change, delete and display data, as well as perform data extracts and access rates and costs.

The user security screen - view screenshot - also defines the default data sort and filters used by the SMMS main program to display data.

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