End Of Year Suggestions!
As we approach the year end, we want to take a moment to review a few potential 'gotchas'. These are probably old-hat for long-time users, but forewarned is forearmed (or something like that!) Here we go...

CHECK YOUR G/L SAVE HISTORY
Remember that SAFE will automatically purge G/L transactions that are older than this number (in years). Although the Period Totals are not touched, of course, it can be disconcerting to one day not see every transaction in the system as older records are removed. Actually, this is a bit of a hold over from the bad old days--when disk space was expensive and more transactions meant slower performance. In truth, smaller companies can (and probably should) increase this value to something like 20, effectively making the Save History 'forever'. Companies with larger transaction volumes might want to leave these a bit lower depending on their server performance as performance can start to degrade in older versions of SQL Server (SQL Server 2000) as the record count moves above 500,000.

SQL BACKUPS
We cannot stress this enough! You need to have a complete backup of your database right before you run your End Of Year update. The good news is that you can do this just about any ol' time you want using the Backup Database function in the Utilities menu. Of course, there are far more sophisticated ways to backup your database--including creating a Database Maintenance Plan in SQL Server to automatically make one for you at regular intervals (contact us to help you set that up!), but regardless of whether it's automatic or 'manual' there is no reason to not have a database backup! We want to stress yet again that this is not the same thing as the 'backup' that you normally do for your entire server. This is a special backup of just the database... the thing that holds your Simple Accounting information! In the event of a problem, we can easily recover your SAFE installation from just that file.

USE YOUR SAVED PDFs!
If you have our SAFE PDFXtensions, you can and should 'print' all your financial reports to PDFs and save those PDFs to disc. Do it every Period! That way you always have a 'hard copy' available for each period. Wherever you keep your SQL Backups? Keeps these PDFs there as well.

LOCK 'EM UP!
Lock/unlock only what needs unlocking! At least once a year we get at least one report of disaster where the customer inadvertently unlocked every period in the system (which is not bad in and of itself.) But then they ran the G/L Rebalance function (also not bad.) But on top of all that they forgot that some of the oldest G/L Transactions had been purged because of Save History. Oh my.
Ed Note: For you newer users: The reason the above is a perfect storm is that, Rebalance can only 'rebalance' if it has all the original transactions. Once the original transactions are purged from history, if you run Rebalance, you are telling SAFE to retotal your account balances without all the original transactions!)

The general rule of thumb is always: unlock only the absolute minimum number of periods and only when absolutely necessary! For most users that means leaving all periods except the current period locked at all times and then only ever unlocking last month to make prior period entries.

WORK IN YOUR OWN SPACE!
When you need to make your adjusting entries, always make sure you are logged into your own Personal Period under User Options. A lot of bookkeepers seem fond of changing the Global G/L Period when they need to make adjusting entries directly to the G/L (or entering other types of transactions after the fact.) The problems there are:
a) What if someone else happens to start using SAFE in the next office over? (Who knew that Rhonda was coming in to catch up on her orders tonight?
b) What happens if someone (not you of course!) were to change the Global G/L Period, make some entries and then leave without properly resetting it?
Don't let this happen to you! When you need to work in another period, go to User Options and set your Personal Period, which remains active just for that session.

Til Next Time!
 

Ollie/WebSAFE Discussion: Hosting Off-Line (Part II)
We're often asked about hosting Ollie and WebSAFE at various off-site hosting facilities. That's understandable, especially if, as with most people, your main experience with 'the web' has been in terms of using a hosting company 'somewhere out there'. Of course, we primarily recommend running Ollie and WebSAFE on your own server systems. It is usually faster, more reliable (since web orders are going right to your database, with no intermediate step) and easier to set up. Still, in these budget-conscious times, a compelling case can be made for off-site hosting, especially if you have no budget for a 'real' server.

Last time we talked about the general benefits and pitfalls. This time, we'll talk about selecting a host, once the decision has been made. Next time we'll conclude by discussing the mechanics of linking 'them' to 'you'.

THE PERFORMANCE CHALLENGE
As we mentioned above, the primary challenges involve reliability and performance. You need to check these out thoroughly before committing to deploying with any vendor. But how do you check these? The recommended way is to purchase a 2nd company for SAFE and Ollie and test there for at least sixty days. Have your employees place test orders. Look for response time in the web screens and latency in 'seeing' these orders updated in SAFE. We offer a free suite of SQL Server scripts which will allow you to monitor these speeds objectively and then put that data into a spreadsheet for comparison.

YOU NEED VOLUME
Obviously you need a significant number of orders to objectively test how well the new host performs. But what if you're too busy to do the kind of in-depth testing you know you'll need? After all, you have real orders to process, right? Have your customers help! We had great luck by enlisting one or two key customers to test the deployments. Tell them you have a new site that's just for them (which is the truth) and offer them small incentives for their help. You'll be surprised at how readily most customers will be to help, so long as you already have a good track record of helpfulness. You may find it's not that hard to you sell them on the idea as a way to improve their service level.

MAKE REQUESTS!
Also, you should place several requests for tech support from your new host. Make sure you do these at different times of the day and on weekends. See how long they take to reply, and also how 'helpful' are their replies. Without sounding too 'unpc', it's a fact that many hosting companies are based in or staffed by people from India and China. Unfortunately, the smartest tech in the world can't help you much if their writing or speaking skills are weak. Make sure that you and they can communicate well, in every sense of the word.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!
Several physical aspects of the host servers may be important. For example, the physical location of the host servers may matter a lot. Even though the Internet is global, quality of service is highly dependent on physical cabling. Remember that Tsunami in 2006? A lot of businesses all around the world were crippled for over a week as key undersea phone cables were broken. Think that was a once in a lifetime experience? Another cable broke just last year because of an undersea volcano eruption near Japan. Same massive outages! So ask the provider where their servers are and what systems they have in place in the event of a disaster.

Til Next Time!
 

Ciaran's Corner: How's That Recession Working For Ya?
With apologies to Dr. Phil. Some of you are actually profiting from the downturn. One customer of ours tells us he recently got the Christmas present of a lifetime when the major university they had been trying to sell into for years downsized due to budget cuts. Until now, he could never even get to first base with his pitch on saving them money, even though he had literally dozens of anecdotes from school employees complaining of poor quality and long turn-around times for printing. Now, he's finally getting a chance to prove his case and the dividends are already coming in.

A certain amount of success is being in the right place at the right time (I'm thinking of the remark from another customer that it was good to be printing for the Obama campaign simply because they had a larger budget than McCain!) But in the above example, the distributor had already planted the seeds in very fertile ground, in spite of the fact that the university already had an internal buyer. He worked a market that others saw as closed, but he saw as simply waiting for an opportunity to open up.

What about you? It seems as though everyone is downsizing now. Are there markets in your area that you know will benefit from your skills, but you just couldn't get 'in' with your message? The chances are, now you will be able to. Of course, your task will be that much easier if you've already done the work as our example customer, but even if you are going into new markets 'cold' you probably will get a more receptive ear than in the past.

How can we help? No matter how much money you can save your client, it doesn't matter if they can't get the services they need. These days, that increasingly means web connectivity to existing systems. Maybe they have deals with office suppliers or other 3rd Parties that have to be integrated into any buying system you offer. Find out and talk to us about the possibilities before you make your presentation! We can give you the specific information you need regarding what/when/how (and how much) to get it done ahead of time.

Til Next Time!

Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
cm@suntowersystems.com

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End of E-News From The Suntower, Volume X #23