Report selection functions are now much easier

Selection options for reports are now on the main screen, rather than a separate tab, so all information is visible on one screen.

You can now enter value fields in report selection without having to select the operand.
Example: To select a customer for a report, enter 01-ABF as customer, the operand will automatically default to Equal-to in the operand column. This makes selection much quicker.

Also note that for AR, AP,GL & SO reports, if there are User Defined Fields setup for the primary report file, the User Define Fields appear on the report selection screen. You will have to scroll down the selection screen to see them, as they appear after the primary fields, but they can be used with the various selection options to choose records for the report. The User Defined Fields do not print on the report however, unless you add them using Crystal reports.

There’s a great new option to automatically return to the report selection screen after printing or previewing so you can change the selection options and print/preview again without having to start over. See the bottom line to the right of the printer selection where it says: Keep Window Open.

Previously announced on June 25th, 2008 the Sage Software Customer Support Knowledgebase was publicly available without requiring a user logon and password. 13 days later, on July 7th, Sage retracted this access based on feedback from their reseller community. They decided to re-evaluate this decision and continue requiring a valid user logon and password for accessing their support site. This site contains troubleshooting and support tips for many Sage products including Mas90 & Mas200, Sage Businessworks, F9 and FRx.

Do you ever have business situations that catch you by surprise (of course, we all do). If key people are out of the office, can they or anyone keep track of important developments that require immediate decisions? Business Alerts can trigger automatic e-mail alerts to one or more people based on the data in your accounting system. The actual alert triggers can be set based on the formulas that are important to your business.
Examples:
The purchasing manager can be alerted when:
An item is below its minimum stock level at a warehouse. Never run out of a best selling item.
The cost of an item received exceeds the standard cost for that item or the cost varies by a high percentage from the usual cost of that item.

Salespeople can be alerted when an inventory item’s price changes.

Account managers can be notified when one of their customers has an invoice that is past due by 30 (60,90,etc.) days or more.

Notify the sales manager when an order does not ship by the shipping date.

Contact us at Friendly Systems if you want to learn more about using Business Alerts to work for your company.

Just announced on June 25th, 2008 the Sage Software Customer Support Knowledgebase is now publicly available, and no longer requires a user logon and password. This site contains troubleshooting and support tips for many Sage products including Mas90 & Mas200, Sage Businessworks, F9 and FRx. You can see frequently accessed questions, or select a module and do a text-search for questions you may have. This can be a helpful addition to the help-text already provided in your Sage software products.

To access the Sage On-line Knowledgebase, go to:

http://www.sagesoftware.com/support/knowledgebase.cfm

Paperless Office features example - archiving Journals and Registers

Functions: Ability to e-mail, fax and store PDF’s of forms, registers and reports with no additional software required.

Advantages: fast transmission of information to customers, employees and vendors. Archiving and easy retrieval of forms, registers and reports. Eliminate filing time and paper storage and expense.

Example - Sales Order Sales Journals: You set up your company ABC for Sales Order Sales Journals to create pdf documents and store them in your pre-designated folder for Sales Order Registers. When you select the Sales Journal, a PDF file of the report will be created with the name in the pre-designated folder in the format:
ABC_SO_DailySalesReports_SO-000010_000.PDF
where ABC is the company code and SO-000010 is the Sales Journal number.

Accessing the Journals & Registers
OK you need to see or print a certain Sales Journal from 2 weeks ago, how do you find it? Go to the Paperless Office module selector option for Journal & Register Viewer. A grid will be displayed with all the Sales Journals for your company including the journal name: (Daily Sales Reports/Updates), date-printed, User-code, and whether the journal was updated or not. There is a search feature so you can retrieve journals by journal number or user. Simply click on the report you need and it will be loaded into the viewer for you to review, print or e-mail. No more looking through files in the file cabinet. In the setup, you may specify a password for these documents so that information is kept confidential.

Paperless Office features - great for saving time and money in printing, filing, transmitting and retrieving forms, registers and reports.

Ability to fax and e-mail orders and invoices to customers and vendors

Ability to archive and easily retrieve registers, journals and reports and view, print or e-mail them.

Documents can be passworded to maintain confidentiality

New Business Insights Features

New views are included for G/L, A/P, Inventory and Purchase Orders.

Quicker drill down to information and data entry without lengthy menus.

New Chart tab allows you to view and chart data from several areas and customize the titles - then you can copy the chart into other applications such as Microsoft Word documents. Great for presentations.

Improved Business Insights Dashboard

Place detail or summary views on the main Dashboard.
Generate Dashboard pages independent of internet connectivity.
Charts are now printable.
Greater security features for setting up dashboards for different users.

Report selection functions are now much easier

Selection options for reports are now on the main screen, rather than a separate tab.

Enter value fields in report selection without having to select the operand.
Example: To select a customer for a report, enter 01-ABF as customer, the operand will automatically default to Equal-to in the operand column. Much quicker.

Great option to return to the report selection screen after printing or previewing so you can change the selection options and print/preview again without having to start over.

New E-filing options for Payroll State & Federal info, and for AP 1099 data.

Improved Financial Reporting Features

Sage Mas90/Mas200 version 4.30 CD’s have been shipped to customers who are currently on a maintenance plan. Friendly Systems recommends you contact our support line at 678-273-4010 ext 2 so we can review the requirements and effects of upgrading your system. As we noted in our June newsletter, installations with custom modifications, extended solutions or 3rd party products should not contemplate upgrading to 4.30 until each of those changes has been certified for version 4.30. In the coming weeks, we’ll be adding blog entries describing the new features in version 4.30.

Most businesses realizing that their systems and/or processes need improvement look around and total up the costs of making the changes. What will new software cost? What will it cost to train 5 new employees? What will a bigger warehouse cost me each month? It’s easy to quantify those answers, because you can get on the phone or on the Internet and get quotes that put it in green and white.

What’s harder to quantify is the cost of not changing. Just keep doing what you’ve always done is safe, right? Studebaker probably thought so…

Each of the “what does it cost to?” questions should immediately bring up an equal and opposite “what is it costing NOT to?” question. What is the old system costing in lost productivity? What is it costing in employee morale and stress-induced errors to not make sure that employees have the tools and training they need for the company to be the best at what it does?

These numbers affect the bottom line just as much as the numbers on the checks, and good decisions take into account all the facts.

Beginning with Sage Mas 90 and 200 version 4.00, grids are being added to more and more data entry programs in the system. Version 4.00 added grids to GL Journal Entries, 4.10 to AR Invoice Entry and SO Sales Order and Invoice Entry, and 4.20 to AP Invoice Entry. Two nice features of these grids are Grid-customization, and Grid searches.

Grid customization
Users can customize data entry grids in by clicking on a column, and either moving that column’s location on the primary grid, or moving that column to the secondary grid. Columns from the secondary grid can also be re-arranged, or be moved to the primary grid, and placed in any location. This allows you to put your important fields on the primary grid in the best sequence for your needs. Columns that are not important to you can be moved to the secondary grid. An important additional feature in 4.10 SO Order and Invoice Entry is the Change-View option activated by the icon beneath the Credit button on the upper right. Change View (you can un-change it) changes the entire Lines screen to a wide view, with the secondary grid on the right instead of the bottom. This is helpful when you enter data into a lot of columns, since it displays more fields on the secondary grid without having to scroll down to access them. The system saves your customizations so your customized screen appears the next time you access it.
Grid Searches
Grid Searches are done by clicking the magnifying-glass icon to the right of the Quick Row field (different locations on different screens). Click the icon and a Search Grid window will appear. This allows you to search by any field on the grid in a variety of ways. First select the field you want to search with. Then specify a search with beginning, ending, greater-than, less-than, containing, or not-equal-to searches. Then enter the search-value. Handy search examples include: cost=zero, description contains “wire”, extension greater-than $1000.00, etc. The Search-Grid dialogue remains displayed with a Find-Next button that highlights each line on the order for you to step through. You can change an applicable line, then click Find-Next and control goes to your search field on the next line meeting the criteria. The search can move up or down the lines, so you can re-check your entries. Nice Features!!

Sunday at Best Buy, it took two Best Buy employees and three AT&T employees to come to the conclusion that nothing could be done to add a cell phone for my daughter to our existing Family Talk Plan, because I had Combined Billing (land and wireless lines on the same bill), and the Combined Billing department was not open on Sunday.

Alison and I arrived back at Best Buy at 3:45 pm Monday, and started over. Really started over, because neither Best Buy employee we had dealt with on Sunday was there, and the person who was didn’t seem to pay attention to anything I said and so repeated all the same issues we had Sunday, instead of starting with the Combined Billing department. It appeared that I was more familiar with the web interface to AT&T than she was. After about 20 minutes on hold, she finally got through to a person at Combined Billing. They spent the next five minutes arguing over whose system made more things impossible, until I finally mentioned the concept from the day before of “unbundling” the billing so the line could be added. In the midst of this, we once again changed Best Buy employees, this time for the better.

With the Combined Billing rep on hold, she then contacted another AT&T rep as the multitude of false starts on this seemed to have scrambled their credit approval process. We were finally thinking that my daughter might have her phone AND be on time for work, when the contract appeared on the screen. Instead of being an additional line on the existing plan for $9.99, it was a whole new plan at $39.99. At this point I took Alison to work, and when I got back to the store 30 minutes later, the Best Buy rep was just hanging up with the AT&T rep and printing out the THIRD version of the contract. She also showed me the credits that had been applied to my account to correct the mistaken charges from the first two contracts.

So, over two days, we had four Best Buy Employees, seven AT&T employees, and the two of us. Thirteen!

Oh, and I still have to call Combined Billing back tomorrow and get the billing bundled again…