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Getting started with anomaly detection

Harness AI to automatically check your GIs for errors.

MYOB Acumatica's AI-powered anomaly detection feature checks your GIs for numbers that don't seem right and alerts you, to help you find errors before they cause any problems.

Before you get started, make sure you turn on MYOB Acumatica's AI features.

For our early access program, anomaly detection is already set up for three generic enquiries:

  • Sales Order Margin Analysis (SO3010ML): This generic inquiry form shows the actual margin amount and percentage for sold items per sales order (that is, items for which invoices have already been released).
  • Costs in Purchase Orders (PO3010ML): On this generic inquiry form, purchasing managers and supply chain managers can view the cost information of items included in purchase orders.
  • Costs in AP Documents (AP3010ML): This generic inquiry form shows the cost information of inventory items included in accounts payable documents.

Using the Costs in Purchase Orders GI to automatically detect anomalies in sales margins.

Anomaly detection has a wide range of uses, and can be used on any GI.

To get started, follow these instructions to set up and run anomaly detection on item costs in the Costs in Purchase Orders (PO3010ML) GI.

1. Enable anomaly detection in the GI

  1. Open the Costs in Purchase Orders (PO3010ML) GI.
  2. Select the Detect Anomalies checkbox.

    The Anomaly Detection tab appears.
  3. Go to the Anomaly Detection tab, click the Field for Analysis dropdown menu and select Unit Cost.
    Leave the other fields as the defaults.

    By choosing Unit Cost, we're detecting anomalies in the pricing of individual items in purchase orders (e.g. a pricing error by the supplier). If we were more concerned about errors in quantities ordered, we could choose Order Qty. instead.
  4. Save your changes.
    Anomaly detection is now enabled for this report.

2. Manually run anomaly detection

Anomaly detection is run in three stages:

  • Uploading the GI data
  • Running anomaly detection calculations on the uploaded data
  • Downloading the results 

To run the detection manually:

  1. Click Detect Anomalies in the toolbar.


    The Detect Anomalies in Generic Inquiries form (ML502000) opens. This screen is where you run anomaly detection for all the reports it is set up for.
  2. To upload the GI data, select the PO-ML-Costs in Purchase Orders inquiry and click Process.
    A pop-up shows the progress. When it's complete, the inquiry status changes to Data Uploaded. 
  3. To run the anomaly detection calculations, select the inquiry and click Process again.
    The same pop-up appears, and this time the Status changes to Calculation in Progress.
  4. Wait for the Status to change to Ready to Download.
    This can take some time, depending on the amount of data being analysed, so consider working on something else and checking back later.
  5. When the Status shows Ready to Download, select the inquiry and click Process once more.
    The pop-up shows a third time, and the Status changes to Completed.

Anomaly detection has been processed, and your results are available to view.

3. View your anomaly detection results

  1. Open the Costs in Purchase Orders (PO3010ML) GI.
  2. Click View Inquiry to view the inquiry.
    Rows with anomalies are highlighted red.
  3. Review the Anomaly Severity column to see the size of the anomaly.
    • A Medium severity anomaly may be a false positive.
    • A Significant anomaly is largler, and more likely to be an error.
  4. As you check the anomalies, select Reviewed to show they've been dealt with, and add notes to the Comment field.

That's it! You've succesfully used AI to find anomalies in your purchase order unit costs.

You can now repeat these steps with the Sales Order Margin Analysis (SO3010ML) and Costs in AP Documents (AP3010ML) GIs to find suspicious numbers in other areas.