Question

Sale prices & costs to more than 2 dp for very small values

  • 31 October 2019
  • 6 replies
  • 533 views
seanwil
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We have an increasing number of products that have a very small value (< £0.01)  A good example might be a transaction against a mapping interface.  Whilst these might be bought in quantities of thousands, we still need to represent the unit costs as they are generally billed on a consumption basis for odd quantities (e.g. 12,345).  We would need to be able to specify both cost and sale prices in this way.

I have been looking at whether this is feasible in Apps 9. 

I have done a bit of testing and have something that looks as though it should work following a bit of configuration - it appears that you must set the clients currency format in the regional setting of the profile.  Other than that I’m not sure what if anything needs to be done. 

I’m a little concerned that the Currency Codes screen specifies the number of decimals in the amount but only allows 0 or 2.  These values appear to be used in some calculations but I’m not sure where.  

Does anyone have any experience of this?  Are there any other considerations?

Thanks!

6 replies

durette
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You'll want to set the field "No of Decimals in Amount" under the screen "Currency Codes". Please note this has far-reaching consequences in the system.

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seanwil
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Thanks @durette the “Currency Codes” form only seems to allow us to set either 0 or 2 as the “No of Decimals in Amount”.  As we need to have 3 or 4 I did try setting it to 3 on our test system using SQL and didn’t notice any particular issues in my limited testing but I am concerned about overriding what appears to be enforced by the system...

N
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Hi Sean,

 

You are right, you only have the option to set either 0 or 2 on each currency code - where you can have more than 2 decimals is in the rate being used to calculate the currency conversion. 

 

Although you can use the regional settings for currency format, and have that applied to the users base profile for those that need to see monetary values at more than 2 decimals, unfortunately this is applied to EVERY monetary value in the application, so choose carefully which users receive this profile update.

 

The other option, although again needs careful consideration, is to use some config to recalcualte existing monetary value fields and present them in the additional decimal places as required in new custom fields, but limit these to the specific screens (or reports) you want these presented in - however, further consideration is needed if using business analytics that are using standard information sources for reporting. If in fact you want to show the 3 or more decimals places in all fields, then the regional setting is your best bet without heavily configuring the application, or even potentially modifying it. 

 

In terms of what the regional setting may or may or may not do elsewhere in the application, you needn’t be concerned as this is simply the presentation of the values, not the calculation. In the actual data tables, the calculations will go to as many decimal places as is the most accurate final number based upon what currency conversion rate you enter per currency code - so if you entered a conversion rate of 1.8736663 - IFS will calcualte 3 x 1.8736663 = 5.6209989 - but based upon the presentation of the currency code decimals and the regional format setting, if left at 2, you would see 5.62; if set to 3, 5.621; if set to 4, 5.6210, etc etc

 

in the 5 yrs at IFS, where this has been an issue for some of my clients, the regional setting has always been the best approach.

 

Feel free to reach out further if you would like any more opinion on this.

Regards, Nick
seanwil
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@Nick A - thanks for your commentary, you make an interesting point about the nature of the internal calculations which I will re-visit in testing.  The issue is not so much about currency conversions however, it is about a utility billing model where the unit values are very small.  I will do some further testing...

N
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Are you needing to externalise more so than internalise the small values in presentation, or just have this ability throughout the system? I ask as if its externalised, then you may only really need to configure the customer invoices, and potentially some key analysis screens in IFS for revenue analysis etc within the application.

 

Re: Business Analytics, as the data being used is the tables where the decimal places will already be the number you require, it should just be just a case of updating the report design to return the number of decimal places you need.

 

We have a number of customers in the UK that have a utility billing model, so let me see if i can find out what their preferred approaches were and give you further possibilities (if there are any) that I havent thought of. 

Regards, Nick
seanwil
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@Nick A - thanks for the follow-up.  For the most part, it’s less about the presentation to users and more about the ability to invoice our customers.  As this is mostly automated, the storage of data and calculations are the key bits.  Having it display to 3dp in the UI is nice for checking but not essential if things are working behind the scenes…


Thanks!

 

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