News From The Suntower!

'The Electronic Newsletter For Users
of Simple Accounting for Forms Experts!'

Volume X #4
02/19/08

IN THIS
ISSUE:
  • SAFE/X Is Coming: Inventory!
  • Ollie Tips: Cost Centers 101!
  • iClose-Up Has Left The Building!
  • Ciarān's Corner: A Work In Progress!
    •

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Copyright Š 2008 Suntower Systems

SAFE/X: More New Stuff (Inventory)!
On March 17, 2008 Suntower Systems will ship the tenth major release of SAFE: Simple Accounting for Forms Experts Version 10. SAFE/X for short. This release will include many new features and full support for Windows Vista and SQL Server 2008.

This is the fourth installment in our feature list. Last time, we discussed changes to Accounts Payable and G/L. This time, we delve into some long-requested improvements to inventory control, including RFQs and POs. Again, much of this is a repeat from Vol. X #1, but we've fleshed out the descriptions quite a bit. The number of new features is small, but we hope you'll agree that what they lack in quantity, they more than make up for in depth and usefulness.

Inventory

*Batch RFQ Printing!

 Vendor Requests For Quote (RFQs) now have a new numbering system. A unique RFQ number is generated when the RFQ is printed. This is independent of the RFQ's Transaction ID and the numbering scheme may be user specified. The system is similar to how customer invoice numbers are generated. So what?

This now allows you to 'gang' Vendor Requests For Quote (RFQs) in a number of ways.

  • By vendor. You can tag multiple RFQs for printing and have a single RFQ Number for all products to the same vendor.
     
  • By customer. You can tag multiple RFQs and have a single RFQ Number for all products to the same customer.
     
  • By product. You can tag multiple RFQs and have a single RFQ Number for all RFQs using the same original product id, regardless of vendor or customer.
     
  • Some combination of all three (Product, Vendor, Customer.) This makes it possible to, for example, generate a unique  RFQ Number for all RFQs of a single product for one particular customer.

Although the above looks like a lot to digest, it's actually easy and addresses a much-requested need: the need to be able to 'gang' RFQs together--typically by Vendor.

When you combine multiple RFQ Transactions into a a single RFQ Number (note the distinction!), SAFE will automagically print all items of the RFQ Number together, regardless of their Transaction ID. This makes it easy to 'combo' three similar pieces for three different customers to the same vendor. So from your vendor's point of view, the RFQ they receive will appear as a single request, rather than three individual transactions. This makes it clear that you're expecting a combined quote based on all three items.

Batch RFQ/Sales Order Converter!

 Using the new Numbering System, Vendor Requests For Quote (RFQs) may now be converted to 'ganged' sales orders in a number of new ways.
  • The traditional way -- one RFQ/Product converted to a single sales order.
     
  • Ganged by RFQ number and customer. All tagged RFQs sharing the same RFQ number and customer id, will be combined into a single sales order with separate line items for each product.
     
  • Ganged by customer. All tagged RFQs sharing the same customer id, will be combined into a single sales order with  separate line items for each product.

There has been a long-standing desire to merge quotes for several products onto a single sales order. Not only is this now possible, but what's really neat is that it's also a two-way street! That is, you can click on various line items on a Sales Order and automatically generate all the needed RFQs for all products.

Still not wowed? If your sales order was generated from a previous RFQ, you get the option to automatically generate new RFQ(s) for not only the current vendor, but also for all vendors used on the previous RFQ!

New
Multi-Phase Job System!

 We've dramatically improved the process of multi-phase jobs, such as occurs with complex printed pieces where one company may provide the base stock which is then sent onto a second shop for printing, then to a third house for embossing and final shipment to the customer.

Ed. Note: Perhaps the most poorly written, run-on sentence in all my years editing this newsletter.

This has been accomplished through the same Sales Order screen you know and love using a new Job Phase Window. This window contains a list of all phases of the line item.

It's Just A Phase, Really
A phase is basically a standard SAFE PO. But the trick is that now, a single sales order line item may be linked to multiple, sequential purchase orders. The Job Phase Window lists each of these POs so you can tracks the job's progress. for the line item (that is the product) that you're having produced. Each phase has a Start Date, Completion Date and Phase Code to help you manage the job.

(A 'phase code' is simply a user-definable list of codes from which you assign the current status of each phase. For example, 'Acknowledged', 'Received', 'Hold', 'Awaiting Proof', 'Shipped', 'Completed', etc.)

You can enter all phases at once, or at any point in the sales order's life cycle until it is either invoiced or the line item is marked as Shipped.

OTHER FEATURES
Also, each phase can be assigned an Employee ID, an Elapsed Time and a Phase Type. If you do in-house printing, this can be useful to tabulate the amount of time spent on each phase and the type of internal cost and who is responsible for this phase. (Note that neither of these is linked to your G/L; they are strictly for management oversight.

Last time we included the following example:

Example:
1. Enter a sales order for a complex piece--say 500 restaurant menus. You enter the Sales Order Line Item (Menu) as a finished good for your customer.

2. On the line item, enter the initial vendor (the base stock) as the ship from. Enter the next vendor (the printer) as the ship to. Click the new 'Add Phase' button. A new Job Purchase Orders window appears asking if you would like to create a new PO or assign this to an existing one. Select 'New'.

3. Fill out the PO screen. The Ship From information (the printer) and quantity is included for you. Fill out the Ship To (the company providing the embossed covers). Note the new Scheduled Start and End Date fields. Fill these out as well and save. You're now returned to the Job Purchase Orders window. Again, click on the 'Add Phase'.

4. Again, fill out the PO screen. This time, the Ship From is the embossed covers shop. Select the customer address and change the quantity to ship to 250.

5. Now click the 'Insert' button on the PO. The remaining 250 appear in the Ship Quantity field. Change the Ship To Address to your 3rd party warehouse and save the PO.

6. You're now back at the Job Purchase Orders window. Close this window. You're now back at the Sales Order Line Item window. Your Sites/Quantities are filled in with icons showing the links between each phase and their POs.

7. Print out the POs from the Sales Order.

Important Notes
Costs: As job phases are completed, the costs are automatically totaled back to the sales order. And these phases may be managed at any point in the sales cycle--even after customer invoicing. (IOW: you can bill your customer before all job phases are complete---costs added into each PO automatically flow back to the Sales Order.

Tracking: You can also track each phase in the Purchase Orders Browse. You can view or print items which are scheduled to start, but haven't yet, or those which are started but past their scheduled complete date and not moved to the next phase.

Inventory: In the above example, the menus are split ship with half going to the customer and the remainder put into the warehouse for later release. You could easily extend this to as many Ship Tos as you like. Inventory is managed in exactly the same manner as previous versions of SAFE.

There is also a new standard report which will enable you to track which line items are in process, by phase.

What we want to emphasise is that phases can be managed at any point in the sales cycle--even after customer invoicing. (IOW: you can bill your customer before all job phases are complete.) Costs added into each PO automatically flow back to the Sales Order.

Backward Compatibility
For many of you, the good news about the new Job Phase Window is that you never have to see it unless you want to. In other words, the workflow is completely unchanged unless you wish to use this functionality. Nothing new to learn or re-learn.

Ed. Note: See Ciarān's Corner for a rant on this very issue.
 

Summary
This new system provides easy to manage support for even the most complex multi-phase jobs and also complete provides job tracking for each of these phases. Each production line item on a SAFE Sales Order may now be considered a 'Job'. And each Job may be linked to as many purchase orders (phases) as you like. Each phase is shipped from the previous phase and ships to the next phase until all quantities end up at their final destinations. Tracking each job phase is easily done with your choice of status codes (to track progress) and start/end dates (to track timeliness).

SAFE uses the same system of POs as before, so most of the work is automatically done for you, plus there is nothing new to learn if you do not need these features.
*The items marked with an asterisk will require a form re-design if you are using a custom version of the affected form. Each form re-design charge is typically 1 hour of billed labour and is charged at 50% the standard rate. Again, if you are using the standard forms, you will receive the new version at no charge.

Til Next Time!
 

Once Again: iClose-Up Has Left The Building
As we've been saying for quite some time, Norton-Lambert, makers of iClose-Up have apparently ceased doing business. So, what does that mean for you (and us.)

If you are using iClose-Up and have a fixed ip address, there is no need to do anything. iClose-Up will continue to work as per usual, forever.

If you have switched to using an FTP server or other means for file transfer, there is also no need for concern. You can uninstall iClose-Up if it still exists on your server.

However, if you are using iClose-Up with a dynamic IP address, you will need to switch to another form of file transfer. Our recommendation is to install the built-in Windows FTP services, which is free and will work just fine for the vast majority of you. We will happily assist you with configuring your server.

That Secure Feeling
We don't want to belabor this too much, but some of you stress too much about the security implications of any remote file transfer. Not to sound snarky, but one thing that drove off N/L was the constant resistance to any program that provides remote file transfer. We jokingly refer to this as the 'abstinence only' school of security. Yes, 'just say no' works great--so long as you don't need any interaction with any outside system (like us.) Interestingly, it bypasses the question of whether or not there are safe ways to send and receive files. And the answer to that question is unequivocally: Yes! We do it every day with hundreds and hundreds of customers.

More on that next time!

 

Ollie Tip: Cost Centers And Approvals 101
Ed. Note: Yes, we're doing this again, but we still get many, many questions about this topic, so we're doing it again!

The chinese sage: Those who know cannot tell. Those who tell cannot know.

For some reason, cost centers seem to be like this. If you use them in your reporting to your customers, you already get it. If you don't, it can be a bit tough. If you use cost centers, it's likely that you have larger customers because the whole concept makes sense for larger businesses.

Some Background
A cost center, is simply a way for your customer to subdivide their business into various units. That way, they can track their costs in smaller units. Cost centers usually come in two basic flavours: geographic and functional.

Scenario #1: Geography-based cost centers are easy. If your customer is a chain of stores and has ten branches, they will most certainly want reports based on each branch. In that case, each of those ten stores would be considered cost centers.

Scenario #2: Functional cost centers are also easy. If your customer is, say a bank, they may want reports broken down by various departments (home mortgage, general branch, commercial lending, etc.) People performing each of these functions may all work at the same branch.

OK, those are the easy versions. Let's go back to the bank. The bank may want to be able to track costs by branch and  function. So they create a system of cost centers that let them prepare spreadsheets comparing costs either by function or geography or combinations of the two.

Cost Center Setup: Site Unseen
Scenario #1a: When an Ollie user logs in, they are required to select a Cost Center. If they are a small business, they may have only the one default that you have set up for them and they may not even be aware of these. Fine. You can skip the rest of this article.

Scenario #1b: Or they may have a few branches and still not have to deal with it because they run their business like scenario #1; basically you assume that wherever the product is shipped to is the cost center. In that case, you need to set up a cost center for each customer site in SAFE.

In both the above cases, you want to check the SiteIsCostCenter flag in the OnlineOptions Browse for the customer (remember, this is customer-specific!)

Cost Center Setup: They'll Know What To Do
Finally, there is the case where your customer has functional cost centers or some hybrid. In this case, the user selects a cost center when logging onto Ollie and it is up to them to re-select a new cost center as needed. Many new Ollie distributors who are unfamiliar with this, may find it onerous or confusing. Trust us: if your customers use cost centers, they will know what to do! They are very used to ordering everything from toilet paper to heavy equipment in this manner, so this is a non-issue. What is an important issue is getting their cost centers input properly into SAFE so that Ollie users can hit the ground running.

I Approve
So far so good. But here is where it gets trickier. Actually, as before, it's only trickier to understand if you're unfamiliar with the whole cost center concept. But let's begin by saying that you have a choice for each Ollie user: Do they have a fixed approver or are they approved by cost center.

The Fixed Approver is easy. When you set up the User/Contact in SAFE, uncheck the 'Approve By Cost Center' box. (If you're not approving by cost center, you're using a Fixed Approver.) Then, just select a Contact using the lookup window. That Contact will always be the Approver for that user's orders, regardless of where the items are being shipped to or even if the user selects a different cost center in Ollie.

On the other hand, let's say that your customer is using cost centers and your user is ordering for several. Well, the person who approves orders for the Commercial Lending Dept. may be very different from the person in charge of the budget for Home Loans. In that case, you want Ollie/SAFE to be able to direct orders to the proper approver based on the selected cost center. Got it? So in this case, when you set up the user/contact in SAFE, do check the 'Approve By Cost Center' box.

OK, but what about scenario #1b above: where each shipping address (Site) is considered a cost center? The answer is easy if you answer one simple question: Is the approver the same person regardless of branch, or are there separate approvers for each branch? If the answer is 'same', then uncheck the 'Approve By Cost Center' box. If the answer is 'separate approvers', then do check the 'Approve By Cost Center' box and let Ollie direct approval reminders to the appropriate person at each Site (which is a cost center, remember?)

Head Spinning Yet?
Next time, we'll carry on by discussing other factors in the approval process, including dollar limits, quantity limits and what to do if you have an approver that requires another layer of approval. All that and tips for making user setup fast, Fast, FAST!

Til then!
 

Ciaran's Corner: A Work In Progress
Another year, another version release. This year will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of our participation in the forms/printing/document management/<insert your description here> business. One of our favourite little jokes in the company is a reference from that movie 'Caddyshack' (Yes, you've watched it. Repeatedly. You know you love it.) Chevy Chase explains his 'zen' approach to golf by saying, 'there's a subtle perfection to everything I do.' As he trips over his clubs. That's something like how I feel watching the development of SAFE as years go by.

Any time one changes anything, it has a ripple effect. Most of it can be predicted. A small amount can't. But for a program that's twenty years old? Multiply that challenge by 100. There are wheels within wheels within wheels. It's brutal in two ways.

1. Any change to the program effects at least some of you. I mean every field on every screen or report tells a story. Change anything and someone's going to be affected.

2. Then there's the 'logic' factor. When you commit to making a change, you start down a path to make it consistent throughout the program(s) and all documentation.

I've spoken about #1 a number of times. Basically my rants follow the 'we're all in this together' theme; we have to change--not for change's sake--but because the industry constantly changes. But this time I want to focus on #2... the whole 'logic' thing.

When we implement a new feature, we intentionally don't go all the way with the logic; at least, not initially. I want to put all the conspiracy theories to rest once and for all. This is intentional and it has been going on for years.

Look at a bottle of Coca Cola. Looks the same as it did when you were a kid, right? Except that it doesn't. They keep changing it ever so slightly about once a year. I'm sure they have a whole team of psychologists that tell them how to tweak it for best effect. And these subtle changes keep it 'fresh'. But they never make a dramatic change. That would be jarring. OK, now imagine that SAFE is a bottle of soda and... Wait, I better start over.

Imagine that SAFE is a moving truck. (Yeah, this will work better.) You're using it every day. You can't trade it in on a new model every year because you have to deliveries to make and you can't take time off. OK, so we come to you and magically 'update' it while you drive. Like Coke, we don't want to make changes that are jarring either. In fact, it's best if we can make these changes as un-noticeable as possible so you can keep your eyes on the road. Nevertheless, they're going on all the time.

The price we pay for this sort of stealth is a lack of immediate consistency. We don't make a change spin out to all it's logical ends in one go. Because that would be really noticeable. Here is one example: In SAFE/8 we introduced a 'disabled' field in most of the master tables (customer, vendors, g/l accounts). We had this vague idea that you should be able to prevent operators from using a customer or product or whatever. Sounds simple. But it's not and here's where the Chevy Chase moment comes in. Let's say you've disabled a Customer. Does that mean you should be able to still edit the Customer Master?  Or does it mean that you want to prevent operators from entering new orders with that Customer? What about editing existing orders? What about cloning these orders? What about tracking the 'genius' who accidentally disabled your largest Customer ID? So there are dozens of 'what ifs?' to be considered. That's WORK! And that's just one little checkbox.

Then there's the 'X' factor: you. All we have to do is place a check box that says 'Disabled' somewhere and we will get inquiries telling us how you expect it to work. Fantastic! We love writing e-mails like, 'Boy that's a great idea. Unfortunately, it doesn't currently work anything like that, mate.' And then we add your e-mail to the hopper and if it makes sense, it gets put on the list for future updates. So over time, that little Disabled box gets fleshed out, along with about a hundred other things.

Of course, there's also the dreaded 'backward compatibility' issue. We've been told over and over that what you do not want is to have to change anything. So a lot of times, we use the stealth approach to spread the pain over several years.

And don't get me started on those features that you can't know are super cool (translation: will make you more profitable) because you're still using SQL Server/7 or SQL Server/2000.

So we spend a lot of time, figuring out not only what to put into SAFE, but also how to do so in the least disruptive way possible.

If It Ain't Broke...
One thing I haven't addressed is the -need- for change. Is there really a need for change in SAFE? If it ain't broke, why fix it? Sorry, that'll have to wait for another rant.

Til then...

Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
cm@suntowersystems.com

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End of E-News From The Suntower, Volume X #4