What is a Transaction Attribute?

You can track additional information about an activity transaction in user-defined fields called transaction attributes. Transaction attributes provide you with additional reporting capabilities and can make reconciliations easier at period-end. A traditional transaction in the Lawson application contains the following information:

For certain processes, you may want to capture additional information. For example, if the transaction is coming from Accounts Payable, you may want to capture the vendor and invoice number. Or, if the transaction is coming from Payroll, you may want to include the employee number and job code. This additional information can be held in transactions by assigning transaction attributes.

Note: A source code identifies the event that created a transaction. For example, AD represents a vendor invoice, BD is an activity burden, and PW is employee payroll wages.

In Billing and Revenue Management, you can use transaction attributes to determine labor rates for Time and Materials billing, or billing amounts for Cost Plus billing.

For example, SBC wants to bill customers for services based on the employee's job code. To do this, SBC sets up an attribute that assigns the job code to the employee's time record. That job code is passed to Billing and Revenue Management when the time record is released.

Transaction attributes are referred to as billing categories in Billing and Revenue Management. You can establish billing rates by associating billing categories with resources or with labor rate tables (for Time and Materials billing), or with activities (for Cost Plus billing). Setting up billing

Transaction Attributes and Elements

Because transaction attributes are mapped to originating system values for specific source codes, the transaction attributes must use the Lawson-defined element associated with the originating system value.

Note: You must create user-defined transaction attributes for each originating system value that you assign to a source code.

For example, Employee Job Code is an originating system value for the PW (Employee Payroll Wages) source code and is defined with an EMPLOYEE JOB CODE element. You must use the EMPLOYEE JOB CODE element when defining the transaction attribute to associate the Employee Job Code with Payroll Time Entry transactions.

An element determines the size and type of the attribute field. It defines the maximum number of characters and the data type (alphanumeric, numeric, or date) for the field.

Lawson-defined elements are loaded during Attribute, Element Load (MX100). For example, Vendor is a Lawson element defined as an alpha field, nine characters in length. You must use Lawson elements with attributes attached to transactions that come from other Lawson applications.

The attributes attached to a transaction are determined by the attributes associated with a source code on Source Code (GL05.1). Source codes valid for billable transactions are AD (Vendor Invoice Distribution), PW (Employee Payroll Wages), RS (Resource Entry), and ST (Subcontractor Time Entry).