Infor LN company

An LN company is both a database and a user’s working environment.

Company as a working environment

A company is an LN user’s working environment, which consists of a set of LN packages that you can use to process and manage business transactions, such as purchase orders, sales orders, and production orders, as well as the corresponding financial transactions. To work with LN, users log on to a specific company.

Users can perform these activities:

  • Use the packages implemented for the company. For example, if Service is not implemented for the company, the user cannot enter or manage service orders.
  • Use the data stored in the company’s database, and to which the users have access, to perform transactions.

Users that log on to different companies of the same multicompany structure can work with a different set of sales orders, production facilities, item cost prices, and so on.

Company as a database

LN stores data by company number. In this way, a company corresponds to a logical database in which all the data regarding logistic transactions or financial transactions is stored. The database can partially exist uniquely for the company and partially contain database tables that the company shares with other companies.

For example, the company data includes data such as:

  • Item data.
  • Sales orders.
  • Production plans.
  • Business partners (the customers and suppliers) with the credit limits, prices, and discount agreements that apply to them.
  • Employees and production tools, with their costs and availability schemas.
  • The currencies used to calculate cost prices and inventory valuation, and in transactions with business partners.
Company data

The company data consists of the following types of data:

  • Common master data

    Common master data is used in more than one of the LN packages. You define the common master data in the Common package. For example, common master data includes:

    • Item data
    • Currencies and currency rates
    • Business partners
    • Enterprise Modeling Management data, such as enterprise units and departments
    • Calendars
  • Package master data

    Package master data is specific for the package. You define the package master data in the individual LN packages, for example:

    • Ledger accounts in Financials
    • Item production schedule in Manufacturing
    • Price books in Order Management
    • Organization breakdown structure for projects, in Project
  • Dynamic data

    Dynamic data is present in all LN. You create and change dynamic data when you carry out transactions such as:

    • Enter a sales order.
    • Calculate a budget.
    • Release materials from a warehouse for production.
    • Compute an interest invoice.
    • Register the receipt of goods in a warehouse.

If you set up multiple companies in one LN system, the companies can share parts of the database. For example, two companies can share the item data but have their own tables of business partners and production plans.

Therefore, a company corresponds to a logical database, while part of the physical database can be shared. Sharing (static) master data places different requirements on the database than sharing dynamic data.

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