The "WIP History" utility works much the same way as do the OE/AR History and PO/AP History utilities. It captures work orders that are purged by the Month End Processing function, allowing work order information to be accessed indefinitely, and permitting detailed work order historical and trend analysis by manufacturing managers.

Currently, the only way to retain closed work order information is to not purge the closed work orders in WIP at the end of the month. However, this causes the WIP files to become very large, and significantly degrades processing time for various functions and reports.

When the "WIP History" utility is installed the Job Status and Job Tracking reports, as well as the WIP File Inquiry function, can be run only for jobs in the open WIP files, or for all jobs, open and history.

When the "WIP History" files become too large, you can use the Purge function to purge the history orders by date range, giving you the ability to control how much history you retain. This is not possible with WIP alone.