MAS 90/200 User Group Review

Thanks to all of the users that attended the MAS 90/200 User Group meeting on February 19. We covered a tremendous amount of information.

During the meeting, Esther talked about Sage Online. This website includes all of the knowledgebase information your consultants use for researching service issues. With a current subscription agreement, you can create a profile here and log on to your account here. If you are not an authorized contact for your Sage account, you will need to complete the form here. Esther also talked about the Product Enhancement Request Form that you can find here. Sage uses these suggestions to develop future upgrade releases.

Esther also demonstrated five Extended Solutions. Here are links to information about those enhancements. A complete list of the 700+ Extended Solutions can be found here and the list of Esther’s Extended Solutions Honorable Mentions can be found here.

BR-1004 Positive Pay Export
BR-1005 Bank Reconciliation Import
GL-1064 Bank Reconciliation Integration with General Journal
LM-1028 Background Color by Company Code
PR-1064 Tax And Deduction Liability Check Generation

Annette showed some options for printing labels and customizing them to your exact needs. You can download these basic forms using these links. We’ve also included a link to the instructions included in your handouts here.

Vendor Mailing Labels Avery Form 5160.rpt
Vendor File Labels Avery Form 5266.rpt
Active Employee File Lables Avery Form 5266.rpt

If you have any questions about these links or any of the topics we covered during the meeting, just send a note. If you have suggestions for future meetings, we want to hear from you. And if there are any other items you would like to discuss, just let us know. If you aren’t yet on the mailing list and want to receive notices for upcoming meetings, send us a note.

Thanks again to all of the users for making the meetings such a terrific success.

Use Your Reporting Tools

Spreadsheets are great for calculating interest but they are not an effective way to generate reports. Use your software. Today every business management software package has some kind of custom report writer available, yet many businesses are creating their business critical reports using Excel. Learning your system’s custom reporting tool and creating your reports using these tools will provide companies with huge return. Once custom reports are created, and all transactions are completed for that accounting period, then reports are generated at the touch of a button and the report contains actual data. Spreadsheet reports require too much time for data entry, possibility for data entry error and probability of formula corruption. Spreadsheet reports lack timeliness, integrity and the ability to reproduce historical reports.

Make your business better…read the Nevada Business Journal

In the latest issue of the Nevada Business Journal, the Managing Partner at Acuity Solutions, Shari Farkas writes about some very useful ideas that businesses of all sizes can apply.

By taking a common-sense and tactful approach, technology can be applied effectively by small businesses. Let us hear about your approach to technology for your business in the comments.

Sound Advice From the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce

The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce recently published a paper outlining some very sensible strategies businesses can employ in seven different arenas “when the economy sours.” While we might argue that, at this point, if the economy has soured, following the advice provided may either pull your business out of a slump or keep it from falling into a slump in the first place.

Two of the sales strategies mentioned in the document recommend prioritizing both your sales prospects and your existing customers. We can all agree that we should exert our effort where we will realize the biggest return; after all, how many references to the Pareto Principle can you recall from prior sales training?

ACT! by Sage ships with some pretty terrific reports for prioritizing your efforts that might work for you right out of the box. By following the Reports Menu to Edit Template, you can even modify the existing reports to meet your needs or click New Template to start from scratch. By using these tools to analyze where you need to focus your sales and marketing energy, you will also be working within another of the included strategies: optimizing operations.

Report Selection Simplified

Sage Software shipped all customers on a current subscription the 4.3 release last week. There has been a lot of talk for a long time about this release such as:

• The inclusion of the most popular Paperless Office enhancements

• Integrating the Fixed Assets module with Accounts Payable and Purchase Order

• The expansion of Business Insights Explorer to include General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Inventory Management and Purchase Order views

However, there is another less talked about (but maybe more anticipated) enhancement included: the simplification of report selection criteria.

No longer are users required to move to a second tab to define the criteria, but better yet is that users now have the option to keep the selection criteria window open after printing or previewing a report. That means you no longer have to navigate through the menus to run multiple iterations of a single report. It has been a long time coming.

Considering that and the fact that we’ve had some time to do our best to break the new release so it doesn’t break at the customer’s site, we’re getting excited about moving ahead with the upgrades. It’s also important to note that Sage has not yet had to release a service update for version 4.3.

Let’s hear what is exciting you about the upgrade to version 4.3 in the comments.

Improve Productivity By Using The Keyboard

In the latest issue of The Peachtree Insider, the tip of the month addresses keyboard shortcuts: a way to keep your hands on the keyboard rather than slowing down to move to the mouse for a couple of clicks just to go back to the keyboard. If you are unfamiliar with reasons why you might want to leave your mouse alone, read this.

While the short list included is a fine start, it hardly scratches the surface on ways you can keep your productivity up by keeping your fingers on the keyboard. Going beyond mere keyboard shortcuts, other tools are available to help with text substitution. Text substitution is a system in which a user creates a hotstring (specific characters) that when typed are automatically replaced with a longer string of text. For example, rather than typing the entire name of our company, I can simply type A-S-L to get Acuity Solutions, LLC.

I recommend Texter from the folks at Lifehacker.com which works across all Windows applications so you can use it in Peachtree, Word, Excel, Outlook…you get the idea. Texter allow users to include date and time variables in text replacement and punctuation can be used in hotstrings. By the way, it’s free.

If you’re using text substitution, let us know how it works for you. We also want to hear any others ways you avoid the mouse.

Look before you leap, really.

There are obvious distractions we choose to participate it: Minesweeper, YouTube, and so forth. While you may lose a few minutes of each day to these trappings, for the most part, it is done in the conscience part of your mind: you now what your are doing. I am not going to argue we shouldn’t let these distractions into our lives; we all need a respite now and then.

However, there are other distractions. Yes, these distractions are more dangerous in part because you may lose more than a few minutes (likely more than a few hours or days). Rather, though, they are most dangerous because they are camouflaged; we don’t know they are distractions because we are convinced we are effectively solving a problem.

There are several, distinctly personal reasons we might pursue these distractions (maybe it is more fun, maybe it is the path of least resistance) but that is something best discussed with our personal Dr. Melfis. When embarking on a new project, what we can do is make absolute consideration for what we are about to do and why we are about to do it. In its simplest form, this is look-before-you-leap planning. Truly, it is look-before-you-leap-because-you-may-invest-a-lot-of -time-and-money-and-end-up-right-where-you-started-or-worse.

If you have customer service issues, consider multiple angles: improve employee morale, adjust policies to empower employees to respond directly to their customers, modify delivery procedures, adjust return policies. Take a deeper look. You may have a customer that cannot be satisfied. If that is the case, should you undertake an entire project or make one phone call to the customer to say thank you and good-bye?

There is a Day One for everything

I know I give too many details when I talk. I assume the same is true when I write.

I am trying to get over it but it isn’t going to happen right away.

I first read about life hacking in Time Magazine. The goal makes sense to me: I like the idea, so I follow some of the blogs it mentions and after a some time, I settled on 43 Folders which directed me to Rands In Repose: Ninety Days in which Rands assigns some interesting tasks for the first ninety days of your new job, not because it is a new job, but because you are working with a new team.

We’re not all about to start a new job. However, by beginning new projects, most of us are working with a new team: customer, vendor, strategic business partner, members of another department or division. While your next project may take ninety days, the team isn’t going to have ninety days to assimilate, but by keeping the ideas Rands has outlined in mind: get to know whom you are working with, you are giving the entire team a leg up.

While you’re making the effort for the sake of the team and your project, get real and don’t try to fudge your way through any of this. To borrow a final piece of advice from Rands about this process, “the less you trust your instincts, the more you’ll learn.”