SAFE/X: Our Favouritest New Feature!
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 fifth installment in our feature list. Last time, we discussed changes 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. This time, we'll discuss just one feature that may seem like a 'ho hum' but which has quickly become one of those little things that we can't imagine having lived without all these years.

PDFSaver
With PDFSaver, any time you print a report in SAFE, a PDF can be automatically saved into your Translog database for immediate recall whenever you like. This happens automatically; you do nothing. In fact, the only way you'll know it's happening is a little 'progress window' that will briefly appear when you preview your report. Since these reports are saved in Acrobat PDF format they are easily portable; you can copy them to other machines or re-print whenever you like.

That's all there is to it. But that's a lot. Why? Just look around the office at the stacks of 'hard copy' reports. PDFSaver makes these unnecessary.

Central Access
You can recall any PDF from a central browse using the standard SAFE Locator. This makes it easy to see reports generated by specific users, for a particular function and on specific dates. This also aids management by showing who ran which report when (and what data that report contained).

...Or Context Sensitive Recall
You can also recall reports from the area of SAFE where they were printed. So, for example, if you were in the Bills Browse and wanted to the Pre-Check Run Report for 12/15/07, you would go to that Report Menu choice and right click on that choice in order to bring up a list of prior runs.

Secure
You can encode the PDFs with a password to prevent others from opening them. You can also limit users to only recalling those reports they themselves generated. You can force SAFE to automatically save each PDF, but you can prevent individual users from recalling them afterward.

And since the PDFs are stored in the database itself (see important caveat below), they cannot be accidentally deleted or overwritten as can individual files.

Additionally, PDFSaver is far more secure than hard copies which can be read or removed by anyone with physical access to your offices.

One other type of security PDFSaver provides is a bit more subtle, but maybe even more important. PDFSaver provides a 'snapshot' of what your employees actually did and saw at a given moment. When the PDF is saved and stored, you're storing a picture of what they actually did, with a timestamp that cannot be changed. When were those checks really printed? What was really on the report at 3:10PM on December 12th? Now you'll know.

The Catches
There's always a catch. In this case, there are a few...

REQUIREMENTS: ONE SMALL CATCH
Yes, it's free, Free, FREE!. ou can use this new feature with any version of SQL Server, however you will need both PDFXtensions and TranslogXtensions.

SOME VERSIONS OF SQL SERVER ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
You can use this new feature with any version of SQL Server, however unless you are using SQL Server 2005 or later you cannot store PDFs inside the database. So the added security of having all those reports snug and safe and automagically backed up every night isn't quite there. Still, so long as your PDFs are properly backed up, there is no practical difference in day to day use.

HORSEPOWER: THE OTHER SMALL CATCH
There is a small amount of overhead when saving PDFs. Not enough that your users will usually notice. There is also an issue of disk space. Your average PDF is around 100k in size. Figure out how many invoices, reports, checks, etc. you print every day and do the math. OK, we're not being totally honest. What we're trying to say here is.... UPGRADE YOUR FRICKIN' SERVERS, PEOPLE! Based on recent surveys, many of you haven't even been aware of the new processors that have come out in the past few years. Your kid's laptop at college probably has a faster processor than your in-house servers. The performance benefit for your users will be dramatic and the 'bang for the buck' ratio has never been higher. In other words, if you haven't upgraded your server in a while because you were told it doesn't matter, well... It does!!!!!

SALE!
Since you will need PDFXtensions and Translog in order to use PDFSaver, we're offering a great deal on both SAFExtensions. For the month of March 2008, get either PDFXtensions and Translog for only $995. If you already have either SAFExtension, get the other for only $495.00!

There's not much more to say. It's a simple feature that has already profoundly changed our company's workflow. The feedback from users has pointed out only one major weakness: although it's stopped the endless pile of papers around the office, there's no way to import PDFs into the system to clear up the existing mountain. Ed. Note: Perhaps SAFE/XI...

Til Next Time!

Ollie Tip: Cost Centers And Approvals 201
Ed. Note: Part 2 of our review of this central part of Ollie.

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.

Last time we defined our terms: Cost Centers, Sites and Approvers. This time we'll discussing the 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.

Everyone Has To Know Their Limitations
...except Clint Eastwood of course. But for Ollie Users, there are several types of limits on what they can and cannot order or release.

Order or Release Every user has a list of Products they are linked to in SAFE. This controls which Products they can select for release in SAFE. You access these in the Products Browse by right clicking on the 'Links' submenu. But then you also have control over which of these Products the user is allowed to order. Remember that an 'order' is to produce an item. Typically there is only one person who will order new stock, although several people in the organization will be allowed to release.

Dollar Limit On the same Links Browse, you can set the dollar limit for each product. This sets the limit for either releasing product or ordering new stock.

Quantity Limit Also on the Linked Products Browse, you can specify a maximum and a minimum quantity for ordering or releasing product.

In Stock Limit You can specify what to do if the product is out of stock. Do you wish to prevent users from ordering, or allow to proceed?

Hard Or Soft Limits? The question becomes, what to do when the order has exceeded a limit. You have two options:

• Hard Limit prevents the user from submitting the order if a limit is reached.

• Soft Limit allows the order to be submitted but passes it on to the Approver before it is considered 'live' in SAFE.

My Approver Is Bigger Than Your Approver...
So an order has exceeded one or more of the above limits, now what? If you remember from last issue's exciting description of the approval process, it is passed onto the User's Approver. And this Approver is either the Approver for the Cost Center or a fixed Approver who remains constant for all that User's orders. Let's keep it simple and say that User "Fred" is attempting to order $2,000 worth of Product. Sadly, Fred's Dollar Limit is only $500. So when Fred submits his order SAFE marks it as 'Waiting' and an e-mail is sent to the Approver, "Jeannette".

Jeanette opens her browser and reviews the order and tries to approve it. Will she succeed? Will there be fulfillment? Well it depends.

First of all, has Jeanette been disabled in SAFE? Just checking. If you want to instantly shut off all ordering for a range of users, simply disable their approver. This can come in very handy in case of emergency!

OK, let's assume that there are no emergencies, the next question is, what is Jeanette's Dollar Limit? If it's $2,000 or over, then the order will 'go live' the moment she approves it. But what if her limit is only $1,000? In that case one of two things will happen when she attempts to approve the order.
1. If she has an Approver, then the order is sent on again to her Approver. In other words, when she approves the order, Ollie/SAFE send an e-mail to her Approver asking them to have the final say-so. Their approval procedure is identical to Jeanette's.

2. If she does not have an Approver, then the order cannot be approved. Someone in your office must 'manually' change the status of the order in SAFE for it to continue it's journey.

Avoiding The Black Hole
One concern about on-line ordering is the potential for orders to be lost track of during the approval process. In the example above, Fred submits his order five minutes before leaving for that long weekend in the mountains. He doesn't realize that his order needs approval and that Jeanette is also 'getting away from it all' in the Bahamas. So the order sits in the 'Waiting to Be Approved' bin, Capitalism grinds to a halt and worst of all, Fred's order isn't waiting for him when he gets back. So who does he blame? The distributor of course.

Ollie can help keep this scenario from happening in the following ways

1. You can automatically re-assign an Approver and Users in one step. Just go to the Contacts/Users Browse, right click on the approver in question and click 'Re-Assign Approvers/Users'.

2. The Approver can also do this themselves in Ollie. Think of this as being like one of those 'hold mail' forms one fills out at the Post Office. It has an End Date which tells SAFE when to move the approver back to it's original value. Leave the End Date blank if the change is permanent (who knew Jeanette's dream was to open a bar on the beach?)

3. Whenever an order goes into Waiting Status in SAFE, it is time stamped. You can easily create a Query to track which orders are waiting and which have been waiting beyond a certain number of hours/days. It's a great idea to save such a report and automatically run it every morning.
Ed Note: It's an even better idea to use the Saved Reports option in Business Reminders to make sure you run it every day.

Quick Setup
As with so many things in SAFE, we've included several ways to automate the creation of Users. After all, all this flexibility isn't much good if it takes ages just to set up a new User!

The Template On-Line Customer Every time you set up the On-Line Options for a Customer, you are given the option to make those options the default for all subsequent customers you set up on Ollie. This makes setting up a new customer literally a one-button affair. (Of course, you can then go and edit individual options such as logos.)

Cloning Contacts/Users Remember that when you clone a Contact in SAFE you have the option to clone their On-Line Options. So if you're entering a new Customer into Ollie, the easiest thing to do is to create your first Contact/User then clone subsequent Contacts/Users from that 'template'.

The Template User However it will often be the case that your Contacts/Users are already in SAFE; but without On-Line Options or Linked Products or Linked Cost Centers. That's why SAFE allows you to designate one Contact/User for each Customer as the Template User for that Customer. Whenever you access a Contact/User's On-Line Options, you have the option (so many options!) to import (that is 'overwrite') their options with those of the Template User. This makes it easy to standardize all Users.

But Wait, There's More! You can also synchronize a user's Linked Products as they are added in SAFE. For example, let's say you add another ten Products to a Customer's catalog. You don't have to manually link each of these. You can simply right click on the Product and automatically link it to all Contacts/Users with one keystroke!

And In Conclusion
There are a lot of options when setting up users to make sure they can order and release (and have approved) just what they need, in the easiest way possible. In this article, we've talked about the basic limits you can apply to each Contact/User and their Products and diagrammed the approval process. We also discussed how to automate the setup of new Customers and Users and what to do when personnel changes are made.

Til Next Time!
 

Ciaran's Corner: Don't Go Changin...'
...to try and please me. This is the central conundrum of SAFE development. Last time I used some cockamamie 'moving truck' analogy to explain how we're trying to make development as smooth as possible for users. But this begged the question as to 'why?' Actually it begs several 'whys?'

Why Do You Feel The Need To Make Change As Transparent As Possible?
Fear of death. The Polis has spoken and, as I said last time, you've made it clear that most users would prefer things to remain the same for a good long time. Preferably forever. We look with envy on other vendors who could care less about backward compatibility.

Except When You Don't
But you do want change. You do see web sites that have cool new features or desktop applications with innovative ideas. And I know you'd benefit from these so we have to keep pushing.

Father Knows Best
In other words, there is our responsibility to make changes. Technology moves onward. We've spoken many times about how various. We get at least one e-mail a week from a customer who has looked at a competitors offerings and wondered why we don't offer the same thing. It's kind of uncomfortable to report that we first offered that gizmo five years ago! But now, the customer is ready for it and back in 2003 they weren't. Fine. But we have to keep pushing a bit.

New Years Resolution
We're almost at March. If you're like me, that means you're just about past another hare-brained 'resolution' to lose ten pounds or whatever. And your year end is in the rear view mirror. And maybe you're almost done supplying tax forms for the season. So perhaps you have the time now to engage in a SAFE New Years Resolution? I'd ask that you make the time to install the 60 day trial of SQL Server 2005 or 2008. We'll happily link SAFE to it for a trial spin. Once you see the increased speed, the ability to review data at different points in time, the incredible advances in Queries, we know you'll be hooked.

Our job is to keep investing in improving SAFE for you. It's surprising how much effort it takes to make improvements without looking like we're doing anything! But the price of this policy is that it takes some effort on your part to find out all the treasures hidden beneath the surface.

It's our belief that it's your job to keep your eye on what we're doing and evaluate our efforts for new ways that they can benefit you. When you next reach a lull in the day to day grind, we strongly suggest that you invest the time necessary to see what's new in SAFE and SQL Server and how both can take your business to the next level of success.

Thanks!

Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
cm@suntowersystems.com

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End of E-News From The Suntower, Volume X #5