In the previous article on “Managing Vendor Returns”, I have mentioned various reasons for material return by the business. Almost all the reasons are applicable for customer return as well. The only difference is that the earlier business was returning material to vendor and now customer is returning material to the business.

Following diagram depicts overall workflow involved during customer return:

Scope

As part of this article, I have assumed that you are familiar with sales order and shipment part of the sales process. After receiving the material the customer may decide to return certain material. This article helps you to understand customer return process using Adempiere.

For this example – I have created following sales order

And generated shipment / invoice with following details using Generate Shipments & Invoices process:

Ensure that you have got appropriate shipment and invoice generated:

Verified Inventory level of the involved product:

How do we do this in Adempiere?

Adempiere allows you to configure various types of returns using the RMA Type window:

Using the suitable RMA Type and Shipment record for the return, create Customer Return RMA:

Select shipment line corresponding to returned items and create RMA Lines

Complete RMA document

Create Customer Return

In case the customer has not paid the original invoice then at the time of return creation, the system automatically checks the credit used by customer and prevents business from issuing the credit notes to the customer. The Customer tab on Business Partner window shows the credit used by the customer.

In such case, you may like to create AP Receipt for the customer to settle the due. Once the due is settled, you can go ahead and create customer return. The valid customer return record looks like below image:

Create related receipt line

Create and complete Receipt Confirmation record

Create invoice for the receipt by clicking on “Generate Invoice from Receipt” button and complete the invoice:

Review account posting information

Issue a receipt for negative amount, which indicates that the business has paid corresponding amount to the customer:

Review stock details and you will see that the item count has increased by equivalent amount

So, the sold material is back into the store! Well, now you know step-by-step process of creating customer return. This example again demonstrate the capability of Adempiere to meet your standard business process need.

Reference

• http://www.adempiere.com/Sales_Processes
• http://wtcindia.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/managing-vendor-return-in-adempiere/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Returning
• http://www.adempiere.com/RMA
• http://www.adempiere.com/ManPageW_RMA

Summary

As part of this blog I have documented one specific aspect of customer return, which is accepting returned material from a customer and issue a credit note.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog and it helps you in making better use of Adempiere ERP.  In case you need professional assistance to be able to achieve your business need, you can always reach us by visiting our Contact Us page. If you have any specific question then feel free to post the same on our forum or the blog related to your topic of concern.

Whenever the business is purchasing items from a supplier, there is a possibility that the business may like to return the material to the supplier. Some of the common reason for returning material are

-          (Rejected Supply) Defective piece being supplied by Supplier or the supplied items falling short of agreed quality

-          (Return for Disposal) Material being purchased for reselling purpose by a reseller crosses its use by date (e.g. medicines and other consumable items)

-          (Partial Cancellation of Order or Order Adjustment) The business changes its decision to purchase certain item or certain quantity of a given item

-          (Replacement Order) The business expect supplier to replace an item which is in warranty period

-          (Shipping Error) Wrong item being shipped by the supplier

-          (Upgrade Request) The business wants supplier to upgrade the product (possibly by adding more value) and return the upgraded product

Following diagram shows typical workflow involved during a vendor return

Scope of this Article

As part of this article we have covered the scenario where the business returns material to vendor and in turn the vendor issues a credit notes. Also, I have assumed that you have already completed Purchase Order process and received material into your warehouse. I have excluded inventory part in this article as all you need to do is review product info window at various stage of the process.

How do we do this in Adempiere?

Create RMA (Return Material Authorization)

The Vendor RMA window allows you to create Return Material Authorization, which the vendor shall accept before you can expect a credit memo. You need to make sure that you have appropriate RMA Type (managed through RMA Type window) available for selection.

You shall be able to enter one or more products (part of the receipt selected at RMA level) on the RMA line.

Once you are done with the entry of all the products, complete the Vendor Return Material document. In case you receive written authorization, you can attach the scanned copy using the standard attachment interface.

Also, if you have a need to reorder the returned items then all you need to do is

• Click on “Create Order From RMA”
• Review the generated order and
• Complete the order

Return to Vendor

Now that you have received authorization from the vendor, the next step is to create MM Vendor Return document by selecting the authorized (completed) Vendor RMA record.

Once you have created this document, you can create shipment confirmation record. Note that you will not be able to complete the return document if you have an open shipment confirmation document.

Create Shipment Confirmation

Create shipment confirmation and complete shipment document.

Complete shipment document:

Optionally create Package for shipment

Complete Vendor Return Document and verify account posting:

Now that you have returned material, the vendor would have sent you credit notes. Enter the Create Credit Notes (AP Credit Memo) in your system using “Generate Invoice from Receipt” process:

Review and Complete AP Credit Memo

Check Account Postings related to credit memo

Review the invoices associated with the business partner. Note that Adempiere shows “AP Credit Memo” as negative entry.

References

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Returning
• http://www.adempiere.com/RMA
• http://wtcindia.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/managing-material-receipt-in-adempiere/
• http://www.adempiere.com/ManPageW_RMA
• http://wtcindia.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/managing-your-inventory-using-adempiere/

Summary

As part of this blog I have documented one specific aspect of vendor return, which is returning material to a vendor and receiving credit notes.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog and it helps you in making better use of Adempiere ERP.  In case you need professional assistance to be able to achieve your business need, you can always reach us by visiting our Contact Us page. If you have any specific question then feel free to post the same on our forum or the blog related to your topic of concern.

In a business environment, we often see following situations where some sort of workflow is involved

1. (Manager’s Approval) The document is prepared by sub-ordinates or specialists and the final authorization is given by higher management (as per the business process).
   1. In nutshell, there is a need that a document move from one table (or person) to another table (or person) until it reaches the last table (or person) in the workflow, where it finally gets completed and overall work is considered completed. During this process there may be possibility of content of that document being modified, while it is being actioned.
2. (Across Department) One part of the work is done by one department (e.g. Packing of material by Packaging department) and  the other part of the work is done by the other department (e.g. verification of package by delivery department)
3. (Document Status Transition) The document is kept in the draft status for a period and once all the entries are made and verified, the user completes the document
   1. Occasionally they would like to void or reverse the completed document or
   2. Delete the document in draft status
4. (Approval Based on Amount) The expense (or any transaction) crossing a limit amount may need approval from specific person / designation
5. (Forwarding and Sharing Responsibility) The business may like to avoid delay in action due to someone being overloaded or being on vacation. In such cases, they may like to
   1. either provide a capability to forward the action request or
   2. send the action request to group of people so that action by any of them will complete that particular activity and generate next action request (if there is one) in the work flow.
6. (General Guideline) The business may want to help staff with standard data flow, which provides overall picture of the related processes and eliminates training need of the business

As part of this article, I intend to cover how you can make use of Adempiere to manage various Workflow need mentioned above.

Prerequisites

1. Ensure that the Adempiere table has following columns (not required for general workflow)
   1. DocAction – Select “Reference” as “Button” and default this value to Complete by setting “Default Logic” a value of ‘CO’. Specify the process associated with the workflow (not required for general workflow).
   2. DocStatus – The Document Status indicates the status of a document at this time.  If you want to change the document status, use the Document Action field. Select “Reference” as “List” (and select “_Document Status” as Reference Key or use your own “Document Status List”) and default this value to Drafted by setting “Default Logic” a value of ‘DR’.
   3. IsApproved – Select “Reference” as “Yes-No”.
2. Ensure that you have Workflow menu available

How it works in Adempiere?

Following diagram summarize the overall setup required for using a workflow in Adempiere:

Adempiere comes up with following list of interfaces related to Workflow:

• Workflow Type
  • The type of workflow determines how the workflow is executed.
  • The reference list AD_Workflow Type_L contains definition for all the workflow types
    • General workflow provides list of linked nodes which provides step-by-step instruction. It allows you to perform one action after another by clicking on the nodes.
    • Document Process workflow allows business to define processes where set of people need to work on a given document.
    • Document Value workflow allows business to define workflow which gets invoked when certain predefined business criteria is met. You can specify predefined criteria in “Document Value Logic” field on Workflow window.
    • Manufacturing workflow allows business to specify method for manufacturing a particular item. The business can specify different steps,  approvals and other manufacturing parameters (e.g. wait time, cost, etc) involved during a different stages of manufacturing.
• Workflow Responsible
  • Workflow Responsible is the person who is responsible for executing certain activity of the workflow
  • The system allows you to define ways to find the actual user responsible for the workflow
  • The off-the-shelf system provides following responsible type (defined using Reference Key “WF_Participant Type”), which allows system to determine “the responsible user(s) for the workflow execution”
    • Human (H) – The system allows you to specify the specific user/contact who will be responsible for executing the activity of the workflow. If the specific user / contact has not been defined for this responsible type then the invoker of the workflow becomes responsible for executing the activities of the workflow.
    • Organization (O) – The supervisor of the organization will be responsible for executing the workflow activity.
    • Role (R) – A group of people will be responsible for executing the workflow activity.
    • Depending on your need, you can add more responsible type. However, we have often seen that above three responsible type is sufficient for most of the business.

    Workflow

    • This window allows you to define actual workflow
      • As part of the workflow definition you often do following
        • Define various Nodes (also known as activity)

1. 
2. Some of the important points that you would like to note are
   1. Start Mode - allows you to specify if the activity will be triggered automatically or manually
   2. Finish Mode – allows you to specify if the activity will be completed automatically or manually
   3. Join Element – allows you to specify how the incoming transitions shall be handled. If you have used AND then it joins all the concurrent thread and if you have selected XOR (default) then it requires one thread.
   4. Split Element – allows you to specify how the outgoing transitions shall be handled. AND represents multiple concurrent threads and XOR (default) represents the first transition with a true Transition condition.
   5. Action– allows you to specify the action that you want to take on this node. For example
      1. For general workflow (step-by-step instruction) you need to select “User Window” and specify Window Name.
      2. For Sleeping for a certain period, you need to specify “Wait (Sleep)” and specify Wait Time.
      3. For sending Emails – you need to select “EMail” and specify email template & Recipient.
      4. For executing yet another workflow, you need to select “Sub Workflow” and specify the workflow name
      5. For executing a report you need to select “Apps Report” and specify the Report Name
      6. For executing a process you need to select “Apps Process” and specify Process Name
      7. To act on a document, select “Document Action” and specify document action
      8. To change value of any specific field of the record, select “Set Variable” and specify value for the selected field
      9. For Approval like scenario you need to select “User Choice” and specify the column name

• Specify transitions among the workflow nodes

• define conditions (using AND / OR logic) on which these transitions will happen

• Workflow Editor
  • The workflow editor allows you to edit an existing workflow. Using right click anywhere, you can create a new node.
  • By selecting an existing node and using right click, you can manage transitions.
• Workflow Activities
  • This interface allows you to view currently active activities on which the logged-in user is expected to act.
  • 
• Workflow Process
  • This window allows you to find your workflow processes and the latest status of the workflow (including its events and activities)
  • 
  • Manage process allows you to do following

1. Assign this workflow responsibility to someone else (new contact or new workflow responsible)
2. Abort the currently active workflow execution

• Workflow to Client
  • This interface allows you to move the workflow customization to specific client
  • 

Now let’s review the initial problem statements one-by-one:

• (General Guideline)The business may want to help staff with standard flow, which provides overall picture of the related processes and eliminates training need of the business. Following link explains step-by-step process for creating general workflow
  • http://wtcindia.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/developing-a-general-workflow-in-adempiere/
  • Manager’s Approval and Across Department Approval- There is a need that a document shall be worked by different set of people before it can be finally completed. The step-by-step documentation on below link will enable you to achieve
    • http://www.adempiere.com/How_to_Configure_Dynamic_Approval_Workflow
    • Completing a Document– Often business has a need to keep a document in draft status for a period and once all the entries are created and verified then the user completes the document. Following link explains the document completion workflow:
      • http://www.adempiere.com/images/6/6d/Creation_or_workflow.pdf  - initial part of this document talks about how to create basic workflow to create and complete a document.
      • (Approval Based on Amount)– Below link explains how to set-up amount based approval
        • http://www.compieresource.com/2008/04/add-approval-to-document-workflow.html#more
        • Forwarding and Sharing Responsibility
          • The responsibility can be shared by specifying a Role as a workflow responsible.
          • Also, once the activity has been fired, using Workflow Activities window, you can forward an action request to another user (as shown in below image)

Reference

1. http://www.adempiere.com/How_to_Configure_Dynamic_Approval_Workflow
2. http://www.compieresource.com/2008/04/add-approval-to-document-workflow.html#more
3. http://www.adempiere.com/images/0/08/WFapproval.pdf
4. http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Adempiere_Technical_Training
5. Adempiere 3.4 ERP Solutions Book
6. http://wiki.compiere.com/display/docs/Workflow
7. http://wtcindia.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/expense-claim-and-reimbursement-in-adempiere/
8. http://www.adempiere.com/How_to_Activate_Document_Approval_Workflow
9. http://www.adempiere.com/Workflow

Summary

As part of this article I have attempted to provide overall Workflow management in Adempiere. The workflow engine in Adempiere is one of the most powerful and important functionality that almost every business need. Interestingly, it doesn’t expect you to be technical expert to be able to define workflow for your business. At times, all you need to know is basic SQLs to be able to retrieve appropriate user ID who will be responsible for executing an active activity.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog and it helps you in making better use of Adempiere ERP.  In case you need professional assistance to be able to achieve your business need, you can always reach us by visiting our Contact Us page. If you have any specific question then feel free to post the same on our forum or the blog related to your topic of concern.

We often see that people provide list of windows and you are expected to remember the sequence of tasks and corresponding window to be able to do your work. Some of the popular small business software comes up with clickable landing page, which briefs about where to start and what will be the next thing to do. For a powerful ERP like Adempiere, which often comes up with several business processes, the clickable landing page approach will not be sufficient. That is where Adempiere provides you a capability to define process related General Workflow, which reduces overall training need of the business.

For demonstration purpose, I have considered following steps, which is a subset of overall Expense Claim and Reimbursement business process (Refer to http://wtcindia.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/expenseclaim1.png for complete business process flow):

1. Creation of Expense Type
2. Recording and Completing Expenses
3. View Expenses (to be invoiced), which will be used for Creating and Completing the Sales Order for Customer
4. View Expenses (to be reimbursed), which will be used for Creating an Account Payable Invoice for reimbursement to employee

How Do We Do this in Adempiere?

Adempiere comes up with following set of windows / functionalities to enable you to manage workflow:

Assuming that you have rest of the system working for you, click on the “Workflow” node and create a workflow called “Expense Claim and Reimbursement” and specify “Workflow Type” as General.

Create Nodes

A general workflow will have one or more node, which will eventually allow you to perform certain operations.

In order to be able to launch a window, you need to mention the specific window name. For this you need to do following:

1. Select “User Window” as Action
2. Specify window name

Similarly, you shall be able to create other nodes. For example – I have created following nodes:

Now that you have created all the nodes that you need in your workflow, you need to define possible transitions among the nodes.

For example – I have defined following transitions

1. From Expense Type to Expense Report
2. From Expense Report to Expense (to be invoiced)
3. From Expense Report to Expense (to be reimbursed)

Create a Menu

Create a menu for the Workflow and put this along with the other expense related menu:

Position the newly created menu at desired place in the hierarchy:

Client Movement

Use The “Workflow to Client” process to make the workflow customization available to your client. By default the workflow customization at the System level, doesn’t become available to the client. The “Workflow to Client” process moves the customized workflow to the desired client.

Role Assignment

Once the workflow becomes available to the desired client, you can make it available for one or more role as shown in below image:

Once you give permission for a given role, the workflow becomes available for that role as shown in below image:

Accessing the workflow

A completed workflow will look like below image:

References

• http://www.adempiere.com/How_to_Configure_Dynamic_Approval_Workflow
• http://www.adempiere.com/How_to_Activate_Document_Approval_Workflow
• http://www.compieresource.com/2008/04/add-approval-to-document-workflow.html#more
• http://wtcindia.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/expense-claim-and-reimbursement-in-adempiere/

Summary

When the end user see the wholistic view of the business process and they are able to do things as they see, the training cost becomes negligible. The simplicity of Adempiere allows you to design different business data flow in the easiest possible ways and that reduces the overall training effort. After reading this article you know how to create general workflow and empower your end users to make effective use of the system.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog. In case you need professional assistance to be able to achieve your business need, you can always reach us by visiting our Contact Us page. If you have any specific question then feel free to post the same on our forum or the blog related to your topic of concern.

With increasing demand for accessing information on the mobile phone, one of our customer wanted to use SMS Global’s service for receiving SMS. SMS Global comes up with a feature called “EMAIL‐2‐SMS”, which allows you to send email using the mobile number of the receipients and then their SMS Gateway takes care of sending the actual SMS.

How did we implement this in Adempiere?

Implementing integration with SMS global was one of the easiest thing to achieve. However, if you haven’t done it before then it does look like as if you will have to “INTEGRATE” two separate applications. There few basic things that you need to keep in mind

1. You need to register the email address with SMS Global using which you intend to send email (e.g. admin@yourdomain.com)
   1. In case “Email‐2‐SMS service” is turned off then you need to turn this feature on
   2. In case you want everyone using your domain to be able to send SMS then you may like to use wild card
   3. Setup one valid email id and password on the client window of Adempiere and use that email ID for sending emails
   4. Sending SMS
      1. Ensure that email address contains complete mobile number (including country code) and use domain as “email.smsglobal.com”. For example an email address will look like “61447100250@email.smsglobal.com”.

i.    In your application, if you don’t ask for ISD Code, then you need to append correct ISD code

ii.    The email address must be specified in the TO field as SMS Global ignores email addresses in CC and BCC fields

iii.    In case multiple recepients need to receive same SMS then you can include them in TO list by separating the email IDs using comma (,).

1. In case you wish to send SMS to a group then you need to use GROUPKEY@groups.smsglobal.com, where GROUPKEY is the keyword given for your group.
2. In case you retrieve the mobile number at run time using the context information, then use appropriate keyword processor.
   1. We defined SMSClient (“#SMSClient#@email.smsglobal.com”) keyword to get the mobile number of client/customer at run time
   2. Message body
      1. It expect body of the SMS to be a plain text message
      2. A single SMS has the limitation of being 160 characters in length. In case your email body contains more than 160 characters then it will get truncated unless you have explicitly indicated about splitting the message large message into multiple message parts if it exceeds this limit. You can make use of MAXSPLIT parameter to define the maximum number of parts.

Following screen shows a sample email being sent using the SMS Global integration

Reference

• http://smsglobal.com/docs/Email-2-SMS.pdf
• http://www.smsglobal.com/en-au/support/csv.php

Summary

As part of this article, I have given a quick overview on how to send SMS from Adempiere using SMS Global’s Email-2-SMS service. This is one of the easiest thing to achieve and this definitely enables you to keep all the stakeholders informed. Walking Tree is a leading provider of Adempiere based solution and in case you are looking for ERP implementation then please do contact us by visiting our Contact Us page.

An expense or expenditure is an outflow of money (or asset) to another person or group or company to pay for an item or service. This either eats up the asset or increase liability of the business. There are different types of expenses that business has to account for (Operating Expense, Financial Expense and Capital Expense ). Some of the expenses are prepaid (short term asset – e.g. insurance) and some of the expense are committed expenses (liability – for example bonus announcement, payables), while others are counted as immediate expense. While business often get bills for most of the expenses and by creating vendor invoice they settle the due payments, there will be certain expenses which will be incurred by the employee for which either they can produce the bill or they may not be able to produce any bill. The business often need a way to manage such expnese claim recording and corresponding reimbursement & claim.

Following diagram represents the typical process involved in expense claim management

Expense Claim

How Do we do this in Adempiere?

Adempiere allows you to manage expense in general and expense claim in particular by allowing you

• to define Expense Type and associate corresponding accounting information for posting reasons
• record expenses against products as well as expense type
• to general account payable invoices for reimbursement to employee and
• to generate account receivable invoice to other business partners

Define Expense Type

The first thing you need to do is to list out the expense types that you have in your company and create corresponding entry in your ERP System.

The “Invoiced” tickbox allows you to specify if this expense will be invoiced to a customer.

Important Note

-          You will see that creation of expense type has also created a product entry with Product Type as “Expense Type”. The system allows you to keep only one product per expense type and this product will be used at the time of reporting expense against this product type. This often confuse business when they start seeing expense type product getting mixed with their main products. If required, You shall change your product window to ensure that your customer doesn’t get confused.

-          Rest of the properties (e.g. Product Category, Tax Category, UOM, Revenue Recognition Principle, etc.) of this product remains similar to the standard products. Also, like other products

• the price tab allows you to associate this product with one or more price lists.
• The accounting tab allows you to define / override financial account information against which you wish to post the transaction.

Record Expenses

Since you have already configured Expense Type, now you are all set to use them while recording your expense. Adempiere has “Expense Report” window, which allows you to capture expense detail.

Important Note

If you are familiar with Sales Order or Purchase Order then you will notice two important comman things

-          Selection of Business Partner (this guy must be an employee with an Address and Contact detail defined in the system)

-          Selection of Price list based on which the cost of products (or expense) will be automatically pulled-in

-          The warehouse which will be impacted after the completion of this transaction

-          The approved flag indicates if the recorded expense has been approved or not. By default, once you complete the transaction it gets marked as approved. However, if you have a situation where expense will be entered by someone and approved by someone else then you need to setup workflow accordingly.

Enter your actual expenses on the “Report Line” tab. This tab allows you to enter all your expenses and then complete the same.

Important Note

-          You can link expense detail with business partner, project and campaign to be able to track expenses for specific aspect of the business.

-          By ticking “Time Report” tick box you can indicate if the line contains only time information (and there is no expense amount mentioned as such).

-          By ticking “Invoiced” check box you can indicate if this expense line will be invoiced to concerned business partner

• If you have selected this invoice then you must supply business partner information. When you raise Sales Order from Expense (using Create Sales Order from Expense process), the system will use this information to create Sales Order with document type “On Credit Order”
• The expenses to be invoiced can be seen on “Expenses (to be invoiced)” window
• Optionally you can also specify the invoiced amount (if it is different from the expense amount)

-          Product assignment allows you to select any product available in the system.

• (wish list) If you intend to use this window primarily for general expense capturing then you shall apply required filter and provide filtered list of expense types (products) to the business.
• (wish list)Many times we have customer asking us to link these expense types with budget to allow them have more control on expenses.

Once you are done with creation of all the lines, you are ready to complete the expense document. Go ahead and click on “Complete” button.

In addition to recording the expenses, Adempiere allows you to do following from the expenses

-          Create AP Invoice for Expense reimbursement

-          Create Sales Order for Customers (On Credit Order)

-          Create AR Invoice for business partners

Create Sales Order from Expense

After successful execution of the process, you get to see output similar to following

Now that you have sales order already created, you can review and complete the order. Notice that by default the order line contains the amount that you have put in the field “Expense Amount” on expense line. If you have a need that the orderline shall contain different price than the expense amount then that shall be mentioned in the field the “Invoice Price” field of the expense line. Once you are done with review of Sales Order document, click on Prepare to get the action list and select Complete option to complete the document. Following image shows the completed order:

After completing the sales order the system generates shipment and invoice, which you can see in the status bar (as shown below):

Important Note

• Notice that the order type is “On Credit Order”. After completion of this order the system automatically creates and completes following document
  • Shipment Document
  • Invoice Document
  • The Expense (to be invoiced) window shows all the expense line which has been marked as “Invoiced” and related expense report is in processed status, but sales order has not been created for them.
  • The Expense (to be reimbursed)lists expense items for the business partner on the expense header where the expense lines were not invoiced yet (i.e. AP Invoice has not been generated for reimbursement to the employee).
    • You can generate AP Invoice for an employee by using “Create AP Expenses Invoice” process

AP Expense Invoice Process

The AP Expense Invoice process allows you to generate account payable invoices for the employee (reimbursement calculation).

Important Note

Typically when business thinks of reimbursement, they do need a way to approve the amount being claimed by the employee. Sometimes the business may approve lesser amount than the claimed amount.

Accounting Facts

Open the generated invoice and click on Post button to view the account posting.

Reference

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expense
• http://www.adempiere.com/ManPageW_ExpenseReport
• http://www.adempiere.com/Sales_Processes
• http://www.walkingtree.in/forums/showthread.php?552-Expenses-%28not-reimbursed%29-window-shows-confusing-result&p=1147#post1147

Summary

This article has enabled you to understand how expense recording, expense reimbursement and expense claim from your customer/vendor can be managed using Adempiere. Of course there are few things which you need to setup as part of the implementation to be able to use it more effectively. For example – by default you don’t have expense review and approval mechanism in place. Also, some times people want to have approval control at expense line level.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog. In case you need professional assistance to be able to achieve your business need. You can always reach us by visiting our Contact Us page. If you have any specific question then feel free to post the same on our forum or the blog related to your topic of concern.

While it is pretty much standard to order items through purchase order and receive material through material receipt process, the off-the-shelf Adempiere solution looks a bit tricky for the beginners from the perspective of receiving the material and putting the checked / verified material into the inventory. As part of this article we intend to document the overall business expectation, how Adempiere meets those expectations.

Overall Workflow

Following diagram depicts the overall flow involved while receiving an inbound material (including customer return and transfer) in a warehouse.  

Typically this is what happens during this process

1. Business places an order (purchase or transfer) for procuring items into a warehouse
2. The supplier delivers the items (There will be many intermediate processes involved here, before the item gets delivered at the Warehouse. We will talk about that in separate article)
3. The business enters all the material entry into Material Receipt. If the business has already received invoice (or they have a policy that the different person / department will inspect the items than the one who receives material) then they enter everything before deciding on the quality of the items. Depending on quality they quantify certain items as scrap and accept remaining items as valid item.
4. The designated person reviews the received items and categorize items as accepted and scrap and confirms the receipt
5. The items become available in the inventory
6. The business creates Invoice (Vendor) in the system
7. Settles the Account Payable with the vendor

How Does it work in Adempiere?

Create a Purchase Order

Create a purchase order by adding the required order line and complete the order document.

Create Material Receipt

1. Select the supplier used during the purchase order
2. Create receipt line by clicking on Create Lines From button

1. Select the order for which you have received material
2. Select one or more items from this order and modify quantity as per the received quantity (you can modify this later as well)

Material Receipt Lines From

Note that you can receive material of same Purchase Order multiple times (partial delivery) and you can also receive material from multiple purchase order in the same material receipt.

Alternately, you can also create receipt line from “Receipt Line” tab by clicking on the new button on toolbar enter the quantity detail at the material receipt line:

Once you are done with creation of receipt line, go to Material Receipt window and click on “Create Confirmation” button to create confirmation lines.

Following default confirmation type are supplied off-the-shelf

-       Customer Confirmation (SO) – Shall be created when you receive confirmation from the customer regarding acceptance of the quantity being shipped.

-       Drop Ship Confirm (Useful for Drop Ship Orders – PO / SO) – As of 3.60, this functionality is not (fully) implemented in Adempiere.

-       Pick/QA Confirm (often PO) – This is required before shipment when the document type has “Pick/QA Confirmation” is ticked on the Document Type window of the associated document type. For example if this “Pick/QA Confirmation” is selected for Purchase Order document type then you must create this before you create a Receipt Confirmation record.

-       Ship / Receipt Confirm (SO / PO) – This is required for processing a shipment if the document type indicates “Ship/Receipt Confirmation” is ticked for the associated document type (e.g. MM Customer Return)

-       Vendor Confirmation (PO) – Shall be created when you receive confirmation from the vendor regarding acceptance of the quantity being shipped to the business.

For the standard material receipt, I have following document types setting:

This means that I really don’t need to go through Pick/QA Confirm or Ship / Receipt Confirm. I can directly go ahead and complete material receipt. However, when you select these flags and try to complete the receipt without completing corresponding confirmation then you will get below warning:

At the time of completion of material receipt the system automatically generated “Pick/QA Confirm” Confirmation Type.

Let’s review the confirmation line and complete the confirmation document.

Note that the system allows you to capture Scrapped Quantity, which is used to Create Difference Document.

Following image shows a completed confirmation document.

Let’s try to complete the material receipt again. It gives following warning:

Remember that we initially talked about ticking the “Pick/QA Confirmation” and “Ship/Receipt Confirmation” check boxes, which were deselected by default. Hence the warning was expected.

Now complete the Confirmation with Confirmation Type “Ship/Receipt Confirm”.

Now you are ready to complete your material receipt and after completion it looks like as follows:

Verify your inventory to ensure that item has really reached your inventory

Also, you can create your vendor invoice from material receipt (by clicking on the Generate Invoice from Receipt button) and after reviewing the invoice, you can complete the same.

After completing the invoice document, you can view following posting details (I have automatic account posting on):

References

-       http://www.adempiere.com/ManPageW_ShipReceiptConfirm

-       http://www.adempiere.com/ManPageW_MaterialReceipt

-       http://help.sap.com/printdocu/core/print46c/en/data/pdf/LEWE/LEWE.pdf

-       http://www.adempiere.com/ManPageW_DocumentType

Summary

In this article you have seen how Adempiere manages your Material Receipts process. In addition, I have also covered basics of placing a purchase order and invoicing to ensure that you get the complete picture. There are few other processes, which lead to material receipt in a warehouse. Some of such processes are material return from the customer and the transfer from one warehouse into other warehouse. I have kept them out of this article.

I hope this write-up helps you in making better use of Adempiere. In case you have further queries regarding Adempiere training, consulting, development then do visit our contact us page.

While Adempiere comes up with powerful way of managing various financial reports, understanding and modifying these reports become tricky at times. Since business may need to add chart of accounts at run time, it becomes imperative for them to be able to include such accounts in financial reports. The purpose of this article is to enable business to be able to manage their financial reports more effectively.

Quick Overview on Financial Statements

Financial reports are formal records of a business’ financial activities. Often business need following financial reports

• Balance Sheets
• Profit and Loss Statements
• Cash Flow Statement

These reports have two dimension and they are heavily dependent on the Chart of Accounts, which often differs for different company (unless companies always run with default account settings!).

Balance Sheet

When it comes to balance sheet, a standard company balance sheet has three parts and often business expect to see their subtotals

• Assets
  • Current Assets
  • Fixed Assets
  • Liabilities
  • Ownership equity.

Also, the balance sheet is expected to respect the rule “Total Asset = Owner’s Equity + Total Liability”.

Two formats of balance sheet are very popular

1. The columnar report showing balance of previous year as well as current year
2. Side-by-side report where assets are shown on the left side and liability & owner’s equity are shown on the right side. The totals of assets and total of liability and equity are shown in the bottom.

By default Adempiere supports the first one.

Profit & Loss Statement

This is a company’s financial statement that indicates how the revenue is transformed into the net income. It displays the revenues recognized for a specific period, and the cost and expenses charged against these revenues, including write-offs and taxes. There are two types of P&L statements

1. Single Step P & L – totaling revenues and subtracting expenses to find the bottom line
2. Multiple step P & L – totaling and subtotaling at various level and finally deriving the bottom line

Adempiere allows you to be able to configure both these format.

Cash Flow Statement

The cash flow statement is concerned with the flow of cash in (receipt) and cash out (payment) of the business. You often record the offset accounts against which the payments / receipt has happened.

Financial Reporting Using Adempiere

Adempiere provides you following interfaces to create financial reports

1. Report Line Set – determines which lines are printed in a Financial Report
2. Report Column Set – identifies the columns used in a Financial Report
3. Reporting Hierarchy – Reporting Hierarchy allows you to select different Hierarchies/Trees for the report. Accounting Segments like Organization, Account, Product may have several hierarchies to accommodate different views on the business
4. Report Cube – allows you to define user customizable “materialized view” of the accounting fact table. Too much data into accounting fact table slows down the reporting process significantly. The pre-calculated & summarized (at period level) values in this cube facilitates fast processing for reports. This interface allows you to define multiple cubes depending on the desired dimensions and calendar.
5. Recalculate Cube – This interface is used to delete the old summary and create updated summary in the cube.
6. Financial Report – The interface to build the actual financial report using concepts like Report Line, Report Column, Report Cube and Jasper Reports

Deep Dive

Financial Report

You use this window to create and run financial reports (the reports based on chart of accounts). Using this window you can link a report with the “Report Line Set” and “Report Column Set”. Depending on the role settings the user can update the values of Report Line Set & Report Column Set to see different view of the same report.

While I will discuss report line set and column set later, it is important to know about following fields

• The Report Cube is an optional parameter which allows you to configure the Report Cube to be used. If selected, pre-summarized data is obtained from the cube. If empty, the report will be generated running directly based on accounting fact table.
• List Sources check box allows you to indicate if the sources of the summary data shall be listed or not
• List Transactions checkbox allows you to indicate if the transactions associated with the source line shall be listed or not

Report Line Set

The report line set allows you to define the lines that will be displayed in the report. The Copy Lines button allows you to select an existing report line and copy their lines in the current report line. This is specifically useful when you may need to add / delete few fields.

On the report line you will be able to specify the line item that will appear on the report.

Important information on this tab:

1. Line Type – allows you to define if the line item is a Segment Value or Calculation.

• Segment Value
  • Posting Type – indicates the type of amount involved in the transaction (for example if the transaction is a commitment for payment or receipt or was it an actual payment or receipt). Often following posting types are involved:
    • Actual (e.g. Payment Received / Made, Down Payment) – In case the transaction is document controlled then you can only use the Actual posting type to post the transaction.
    • Commitment (e.g. Purchase Order, Down Payment Request, Invoice Receipt/Issue)
    • Budget – If you want to define budget for certain department or activity so that you can track and compare with actual at later stage then you use posting type as “Budget”
    • Reservation – Often applicable when you want to reserve certain inventory items for sales or production purpose
    • Statistical – Often used during asset transfer.
    • Amount Type – This value is often left blank. Following amount types are supported:
      • Quantity (accounted sign) – The “accounted sign” always returns DR-CR
      •  Quantity (expected sign) – “expected sign” adjusts the sign of the result based on the Account Type and Expected Sign of each Account Element
      • Credit Only
      • Debit Only
      • Balance (expected sign) -  “expected sign” adjusts the sign of the result based on the Account Type and Expected Sign of each Account Element
      • Balance (accounted sign) – The “accounted sign” always returns DR-CR.
      • Period Type – This value is often left blank. Following period types are supported
        • Period
        • Year
        • Total
        • Natural – In case you select Natural then Year for P & L accounts and Total for Balance Sheet accounts will be considered.
        • Calculation
          • Operations
            • By default system comes up with following operations

1. Add (Op1 + Op2)
2. Add Range (Op1 to Op2)
3. Percentage (Op1 of Op2)
4. Subtract (Op1 – Op2)

• In case you have a need to make use of more than two operands then you can combine the lines created using above operands to fulfill your need. For example if there is a need for Op1 + Op2 + Op3 then you can define one line as trl1 = Op1 + Op2 and the final line as frl = trl1 + Op3. One thing you may need to remember is that – in case you don’t wish to see the temporary report line on the actual financial report then the “Printed” checkbox must be unticked.
• Operands – the operands are the report lines already added for the Report Line Set.

For every report line of line type “Segment” you can optionally associate one or more source information where you specify the actual chart of account.

By default Adempiere comes up with following source types

• Account (most commonly used)
• Activity
• Business Partner
• Campaign
• Combination
• Location From
• Location To
• Organization
• Org Trx
• Product
• Project
• Sales Region
• Sub Account

(Note: I have tested for Accounts only. But depending on how you intend to do the reporting, others will be definitely useful.)

Report Column Set

The Report Column Set defines what data is printed in the columns of a report. The Report Column tab allows you to define a column in a Financial Report.

The fields like Posting Type, Period Type and Amount Type has similar meaning as we have seen in Report Line Set configuration. However, it does have following important fields which are worth talking about:

• Column Type
  • Calculations
  • Segment Value
  • Relative Period
    • While Calculation and Segment Value has same meaning as it was in case of Report line set, the relative period in column set allows you to specify the period relative to currently active period.
      • A value of -1 means one period prior to the active period. This is very useful when you want to compare current year balance with previous year balance.
      • A value of 0 means the currently active period – often used to see the transactions for the current period.
      • A value of 1 means one period after the active period
      • Factor – Thousand or Million
      • Format Pattern – A string complying with either Java SimpleDateFormat or DecimalFormat pattern syntax used to override the default presentation format of a date or number type field.

Reference

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_sheet
2. http://www.adempiere.com/Report_Lines
3. http://help.sap.com/saphelp_45b/helpdata/en/4c/22756546e611d189470000e829fbbd/content.htm
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_statement
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_flow

Summary

We have seen that financial reports are based on the accounting facts. You can make use of report line, report columns and report cube to be able to generate these reports. In case you add new chart of accounts of course it expect you to add such accounts in associated report line set as well (and that is it). I hope this article has increased your overall comfort in using Adempiere’s financial reports. In case you need any professional help, look at our contact us page for contact details.

Summary: In this article we will see how to localize our Sencha Touch based application. There are two aspects to this. One, we will see how to localize the Sencha Touch framework related messages, formats, etc. Second, we will see how to localize our application specific messages and formats.

Problem Statement: Sencha Touch, as compared to ExtJS framework, does not come with out-of-the-box support for different locales. However, in an application, localization is considered as one of the important requirements. In this article, we would talk about the things that we will have to do to localize our application in different languages.

For simplicity, we will exclude the localization of the data as it is usually the offering of the data source and has nothing to do with Sencha Touch.

Prerequisites: Working knowledge of JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and Sencha Touch.

System Requirements: Sencha Touch framework. You may download the framework from here.

How to do it:

1. Create project folder: Extract the Sencha Touch framework to a folder of your choice, say, c:\touchworkspace (will refer this as ${TOUCH_WORKSPACE}). We will refer the extracted location as ${TOUCH_FRAMEWORK}. Create a project folder, say – localization, inside ${TOUCH_WORKSPACE}
2. Create locale folder inside the project folder where we will be creating our locale specific files to localize Sencha Touch framework.
3. Create touch-in_HI.js inside the locale folder to start localizing the framework for Hindi language, which is the first language in India
4. Sencha Touch offers components(list, form, index bar, etc.) and various classes (Validations, Model, etc.), which have got properties that must be localized to build a truly international application. In our approach, we will use the property overriding to localize the Sencha Touch framework. And for this purpose, we will use Ext.apply method given by the framework. To localize the complete framework, we will have to go through the complete source code to get the list of properties that need to be overridden. However, for demonstration purpose, we will see how to localize the default label of the OK button, which is offered by Ext.MessageBox class. First, let us find the property that we need to override. After looking at the code, we found that it is the text property on the Ext.MessageBox OK button that we will have to override to translate it into Hindi. So, we will add the following code to touch-in_HI.js file:

   Ext.apply(Ext.MessageBox.OK,   {text : 'ठीक है'});

   This will ensure that the label is now translated into Hindi, if touch-in_HI.js file is used in the application.

5. The previous step will take care of localizing the framework. However, in an application, we will also have application specific labels, messages, formats, etc. And it is this aspect, as well, that we need to take care of. E.g. the following image shows how our application looks in the default language, which is english:

   

   In the above form, we have various field labels, button text and messages. As a guideline for building an enterprise application, I assume that we have already externalized all these literals to a separate file, say app-en_US.js, as shown below:

   Messages = {
   WELCOME: 'Hello World',
   PERSONAL_INFO: 'Personal Information',
   NAME: 'Name',
   PASSWORD: 'Password',
   RE_PASSWORD: 'Re-enter Password',
   EMAIL: 'E-mail',
   PERSONAL_INST: 'Please enter the information above',
   RESET: 'Reset',
   SAVE: 'Save',
   SAVE_MSG: 'In real implementation, this will be saved!',
   INFO: 'Info'
   };
   

   And, we have used these constant literals in our application, as shown below:

   Ext.setup({
       onReady: function() {
   
           var form;
   
           var formBase = {
               scroll: 'vertical',
               items: [{
                       xtype: 'fieldset',
                       title: Messages.PERSONAL_INFO,
                       instructions: Messages.PERSONAL_INST,
                       defaults: {
                           required: true,
                           labelAlign: 'left',
                           labelWidth: '40%'
                       },
                       items: [
                       {
                           xtype: 'textfield',
                           name : 'name',
                           label: Messages.NAME,
                           useClearIcon: true,
                           autoCapitalize : false
                       }, {
                           xtype: 'passwordfield',
                           name : 'password',
                           label: Messages.PASSWORD,
                           useClearIcon: false
                       }, {
                           xtype: 'passwordfield',
                           name : 'reenter',
                           label: Messages.RE_PASSWORD,
                           useClearIcon: true
                       }, {
                           xtype: 'emailfield',
                           name : 'email',
                           label: Messages.EMAIL,
                           placeHolder: 'you@sencha.com',
                           useClearIcon: true
                       }]
                   }
               ],
               listeners : {
                   submit : function(form, result){
                       console.log('success', Ext.toArray(arguments));
                   },
                   exception : function(form, result){
                       console.log('failure', Ext.toArray(arguments));
                   }
               },
   
               dockedItems: [
                   {
                       xtype: 'toolbar',
                       dock: 'bottom',
                       items: [
                           {
                               text: Messages.RESET,
                               handler: function() {
                                   form.reset();
                               }
                           },
                           {
                               text: Messages.SAVE,
                               ui: 'confirm',
                               handler: function() {
                               	Ext.Msg.alert(Messages.INFO, Messages.SAVE_MSG);
                               }
                           }
                       ]
                   }
               ]
           };
   
           if (Ext.is.Phone) {
               formBase.fullscreen = true;
           } else {
               Ext.apply(formBase, {
                   autoRender: true,
                   floating: true,
                   modal: true,
                   centered: true,
                   hideOnMaskTap: false,
                   height: 385,
                   width: 480
               });
           }
   
           form = new Ext.form.FormPanel(formBase);
           form.show();
       }
   });
   

   You may save the above code in a file by name app.js.

   You may have your own custom components or classes defined where the default texts/formats/etc. are defined as part of the class. In that case, you may use the Ext.apply mechanism to override the desired properties.

   Now, to localize the application in Hindi, we will create a app-in_HI.js and add the translated text to it as shown below:

   Messages = {
   WELCOME: 'हेलो विश्व!! यह स्थानीयकरण का एक नमूना उदाहरण है!',
   PERSONAL_INFO: 'व्यक्तिगत जानकारी',
   NAME: 'नाम',
   PASSWORD: 'पासवर्ड',
   RE_PASSWORD: 'पुनः दर्ज करें पासवर्ड',
   EMAIL: 'ईमेल',
   PERSONAL_INST: 'कृपया उपरोक्त जानकारी दर्ज करें',
   RESET: 'रीसेट करें',
   SAVE: 'संचय',
   SAVE_MSG: 'वास्तविक कार्यान्वयन में यह बच जाएगा!',
   INFO: 'जानकारी'
   };
   

6. Now that we have created the various JS files with the localized information, it is the time to see them in action. Say, now we want our form to be displayed in Hindi. To accomplish this, we will create an index.html file and the following code to it:

   <html>
       <head>
           <title>Sencha Touch Localization</title>
   		<link rel="stylesheet" href="../sencha-touch/resources/css/sencha-touch.css" type="text/css">
   		<script type="text/javascript" src="../sencha-touch/sencha-touch-debug.js"></script>
                   <script type="text/javascript" src="touch-in_HI.js"></script>
   		<script type="text/javascript" src="app-in_HI.js"></script>
   		<script type="text/javascript" src="app.js"></script>
       </head>
       <body>
       </body>
   </html>
   

7. Now access the index.html in the browser, which supports HTML5 – say, Chrome. You shall see the labels and messages translated into Hindi, as shown below:

   

Similarly, you may translate the framework and you application to any language or your choice as I have done it for Bangla (language spoken in India and Bangladesh), as shown below:

Now, based on your deployment strategy, you will have to handle the inclusion of the locale specific files. Following are three different deployment strategies:

1. English only: In this case, the application is deployed with support for English language, only. If this is the case, we don’t have to do anything for framework localization. We only have to ensure that application specific locale file is included, which is in English. Note that the default english language supported by the framework is US english.
2. Non-english but single locale: In this strategy, the application is deployed with a single non-english locale support, e.g. Spanish. In this case, we will have to include the framework and application files, which contain the Spanish localization, in our index.html as we have shown in this article for Hindi.
3. Multiple locales: In this strategy, the application is deployed with support for multiple locales and it shall switch to the appropriate locale based on certain property in the application, e.g. language code selected in user preference. In this case, our application shall derive which locale files need to be loaded based on the application property and load those files, dynamically. This is done by creating a script tag and append it to the head element on the document.

This shall pretty mush set us with the localization.

Summary: This article walks us through the steps to add the header action capability to the ExtJS GridPanel

Problem Statement: Many a times we need the capability on the ExtJS GridPanel where a user can see an action icon on the column header and on click of it the user can kick-off certain behavior in the system, as shown below. E.g. let us say, we have a grid where we are showing a list of parts and their prices. Now, some parts may be available but some may not. You want the user provide a filter icon on the Availability column so that when the user clicks on it, it will hide the parts which are not available, and clicking it again will show all the parts, again. Alternatively, you may want to provide a action on one of the columns to allow the user to add/remove all the items to their cart. There could be many practical needs where we may need a column header action functionality on the grid panel.

Grid with header action

Prerequisites: Working knowledge of JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and ExtJS 3.x. Also, knowledge of how the Template/XTemplate work in ExtJS is required.

System Requirements: ExtJS 3.x, ExtJS 3.x compatible browser

Detail:

This is an overidden GridView plug-in to show the action icons in the column header and all the cells of a column. For the header action, this works on two column properties – enableHeaderAction and headerActionCls – to show the decide whether an action icon needs to be displayed or not and if it needs to be displayed, it uses the headerActionCls to show the icon.

When the user clicks on the action icon in the header, the plug-in fires – headeraction – event and passes the headeActionCls name to the handler so that that handler code can identify the icon which was clicked

Added the functionality to toggle the header action icons. This is driven by three additional properties
– toggleHeaderAction
– alternateHeaderActionCls
– alternateHeaderActionToolTip

This plug-in is compatible with the grid’s RowAction plug-in.

The implementation is based on overriding the GridView as shown below:

Ext.override(Ext.grid.GridView, {
init : function(grid){
        this.grid = grid;

        this.initTemplates();
        this.initData(grid.store, grid.colModel);
        this.initUI(grid);

        //intercept the click and mousedown event on the grid
        grid.processEvent = grid.processEvent.createInterceptor(function(name, e) {
                            if('click' === name) {
                                var t = e.getTarget('.ux-header-action-item');
                                if (!Ext.isEmpty(t)) {
                                    var cls = t.className;
                                    cls = cls.split(" ");
                                    cls = cls[cls.length - 1];

                                    //change the icon, if needed
                                    var headerIdx = this.findHeaderIndex(t);
                                    var column = this.cm.getColumnById(headerIdx);
                                   if (column.toggleHeaderAction || column.alternateHeaderActionCls || column.alternateHeaderActionToolTip) {
                                        var tmpNode = this.fly(t).removeClass(cls);

                                        var newCls = column.headerActionCls;
                                        var newQtip = column.headerActionToolTip;

                                        if (cls === column.headerActionCls) {
                                            newCls = column.alternateHeaderActionCls;
                                            newQtip = column.alternateHeaderActionToolTip;
                                        }

                                        tmpNode.addClass(newCls);
                                        tmpNode.set({qtip: newQtip});
                                    }

                                    grid.fireEvent('headeraction', grid, cls, headerIdx, column);

                                    //return false so that the sorting does not start
                                    return false;
                                } else {
                                    return true;
                                }
                            }
        }, this);
},
initTemplates : function(){
        var ts = this.templates || {};
        if(!ts.master){
            ts.master = new Ext.Template(
                '<div class="x-grid3" hidefocus="true">',
                    '<div class="x-grid3-viewport">',
                        '<div class="x-grid3-header"><div class="x-grid3-header-inner"><div class="x-grid3-header-offset" style="{ostyle}">{header}</div></div><div class="x-clear"></div></div>',
                        '<div class="x-grid3-scroller"><div class="x-grid3-body" style="{bstyle}">{body}</div><a href="#" class="x-grid3-focus" tabIndex="-1"></a></div>',
                    '</div>',
                    '<div class="x-grid3-resize-marker"> </div>',
                    '<div class="x-grid3-resize-proxy"> </div>',
                '</div>'
            );
        }

        if(!ts.header){
            ts.header = new Ext.Template(
                '<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="{tstyle}">',
                '<thead><tr class="x-grid3-hd-row">{cells}</tr></thead>',
                '</table>'
            );
        }

        if(!ts.hcell){
            ts.hcell = new Ext.XTemplate(
                '<td class="x-grid3-hd x-grid3-cell x-grid3-td-{id} {css}" style="{style}"><div {tooltip} {attr} class="x-grid3-hd-inner x-grid3-hd-{id}" unselectable="on" style="{istyle}">', this.grid.enableHdMenu ? '<a class="x-grid3-hd-btn" href="#"></a>' : '',
                '{value}<img class="x-grid3-sort-icon" src="', Ext.BLANK_IMAGE_URL, '" /><tpl if="enableHeaderAction">{headerActionText}<img class="ux-header-action-item {headerActionCls}" src="', Ext.BLANK_IMAGE_URL, '" qtip="{headerActionToolTip}"/></tpl>',
                '</div></td>'
            );
        }

        if(!ts.body){
            ts.body = new Ext.Template('{rows}');
        }

        if(!ts.row){
            ts.row = new Ext.Template(
                '<div class="x-grid3-row {alt}" style="{tstyle}"><table class="x-grid3-row-table" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="{tstyle}">',
                '<tbody><tr>{cells}</tr>',
                (this.enableRowBody ? '<tr class="x-grid3-row-body-tr" style="{bodyStyle}"><td colspan="{cols}" class="x-grid3-body-cell" tabIndex="0" hidefocus="on"><div class="x-grid3-row-body">{body}</div></td></tr>' : ''),
                '</tbody></table></div>'
            );
        }

        if(!ts.cell){
            ts.cell = new Ext.XTemplate(
                    '<td class="x-grid3-col x-grid3-cell x-grid3-td-{id} {css}" style="{style}" tabIndex="0" {cellAttr}>',
                    '<div class="x-grid3-cell-inner x-grid3-col-{id}" unselectable="on" {attr}>{value}',
                    '</div></td>'
                    );
        }

        for(var k in ts){
            var t = ts[k];
            if(t && Ext.isFunction(t.compile) && !t.compiled){
                t.disableFormats = true;
                t.compile();
            }
        }

        this.templates = ts;
        this.colRe = new RegExp('x-grid3-td-([^\\s]+)', '');
    }
    ,renderHeaders : function() {
        var cm   = this.cm,
            ts   = this.templates,
            ct   = ts.hcell,
            cb   = [],
            p    = {},
            len  = cm.getColumnCount(),
            last = len - 1;

        for (var i = 0; i < len; i++) {
            p.id = cm.getColumnId(i);
            p.value = cm.getColumnHeader(i) || '';
            p.style = this.getColumnStyle(i, true);
            p.tooltip = this.getColumnTooltip(i);
            var col = cm.getColumnById(p.id);
            p.headerActionCls = col.headerActionCls;
            p.headerActionText = col.headerActionText;
            p.enableHeaderAction = col.enableHeaderAction;
            p.headerActionToolTip = col.headerActionToolTip;
            p.toggleHeaderAction = col.toggleHeaderAction;
            p.alternateHeaderActionCls = col.alternateHeaderActionCls;
            p.alternateHeaderActionToolTip = col.alternateHeaderActionToolTip;
            p.css = i === 0 ? 'x-grid3-cell-first ' : (i == last ? 'x-grid3-cell-last ' : '');

            if (cm.config[i].align == 'right') {
                p.istyle = 'padding-right:16px';
            } else {
                delete p.istyle;
            }
            cb[cb.length] = ct.apply(p);
        }
        return ts.header.apply({cells: cb.join(''), tstyle:'width:'+this.getTotalWidth()+';'});
    }
});

How it works:

Ext.grid.GridView is added to the GridPanel as a plugin, by default. It takes the complete responsibility of formatting the grid view and putting all the styles (e.g. apply different background for the alternate rows). In this solution, we have overridden the following methods of the base Ext.grid.GridView class:

1. init
2. initTemplates
3. renderHeaders

init is the main plug-in method which is called by the ExtJS framework to initialize a plug-in. We have modified this method to add the extra code to intercept the event to figure out whether the event has occurred on a header action. And, if so, it fires the headeraction event. While firing the event, we are passing the following to the event handler:
1. grid panel instance reference
2. CSS class name of the header action, which is clicked
3. column index
4. column object representing the column where the header action was clicked

In initTemplates, we have modified the hcell template where we have added the additional tags related to the header action, as shown below:

<tpl if="enableHeaderAction">{headerActionText}<img class="ux-header-action-item {headerActionCls}" src="', Ext.BLANK_IMAGE_URL, '" qtip="{headerActionToolTip}"/></tpl>',

Here, we are adding an <img> tag if on the incoming column information, enableHeaderAction flag is true. headerActionText property on the column is set as the alternate text for the image whereas headerActionCls contains the style name, which has the image path in it. Additionally, headerActionToolTip property is used to show the tooltip for the corresponding header action icon.

Now that we have added the element to the tag, which can be rendered based on the properties value on a column, and also we have written the code in the init method to handle the click events on the header action, it is time to make the changes, which are required to pass the header action related properties to the grid view so that it can apply them on the modified hcell template to render the header action icon on a grid panel. To accomplish this, we modified renderHeaders method, where we are setting the properties on p, as shown below:

p.headerActionCls = col.headerActionCls;
p.headerActionText = col.headerActionText;
p.enableHeaderAction = col.enableHeaderAction;
p.headerActionToolTip = col.headerActionToolTip;
p.toggleHeaderAction = col.toggleHeaderAction;
p.alternateHeaderActionCls = col.alternateHeaderActionCls;
p.alternateHeaderActionToolTip = col.alternateHeaderActionToolTip;

After the above code is executed, the additional header action related properties are set on the internal column object and will now be available to the hcell template and will show the icon that we would have specified as part of the headerActionCls.

After adding this override, now here is a sample usage of the properties showing how these properties can be specified to get the icons appearing on the header:

columns: [
            {
                header   : Messages.ITEM_DESC
                width    : 350,
                renderer : itmeDescRenderer,
                dataIndex: 'Description',
                enableHeaderAction : true,
            headerActionCls: 'allitem-icon',
            headerActionToolTip: 'Add all item',
            toggleHeaderAction: true,
            stripeRows: true,
            alternateHeaderActionCls: 'remove-allitem-icon',
            alternateHeaderActionToolTip: 'Remove all items',
....
}, {
	...
}]

And, following code shows, how we can register our handler on the GridPanel for the headeraction event:

headeraction : function(grid, actionCls, headerIdx, column) {
     if(actionCls === 'allitem-icon') {
          var records = grid.getStore().getRange();
             ....
     }

     if(actionCls === 'remove-allitem-icon') {
      	   .....
     }
}

And, if we look at the CSS, following shall be the CSS defined, which we have used to set the values for headerActionCls property:

.allitem-icon {
	background: url(../images/add.png) no-repeat 0 0 !important;
}

.remove-allitem-icon {
	background: url(../images/delete.png) no-repeat 0 0 !important;
}

Following is a sample screen showing how the header actions will appear on the screen:

Grid with header action

If you are reading this, I hope this article was useful to you and look forward to your feedback!