Ghaibat.com

If you company is small or mid-size special products or materials exchange broker, you probably have custom in-house made exchange application. Nowadays exchange is done over the internet, so you might have advanced web-based exchange application. Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains could play the role of the backend: accounting, sales and purchasing ordering, backordering, allocation, collection. In this case we expect tight integration between your exchange application and Great Plains. In this small article we consider industry / market niche specifics and the ways to realize these requirements:

• Exchange Transaction. Exchange transaction usually has two parts: Sales and Purchasing. This transaction should be translated into Great Plains as Sales Order in Sales Order Processing (SOP) and Purchase Order in Purchase Order Processing (POP). Assuming that you have web developers and C#, VB.Net programmers, you can deploy eConnect Distribution - this is Software Development Kit with sample codes, you can create or modify Great Plains objects, such as Sales Order, Customer record, Purchase Order, Vendor record. One warning about eConnect - it is designed based on general ERP application principles: you can create work transaction only - you can not post transaction, this is left for the Great Plains user

• Bill of Lading. In materials selling, when you order something you probably know number of packs or bundles, but you do not know exact weight or length. You get this information when you receive Bill of Lading. You need Bill of Lading automatic integration and qty update in Sales Order or Purchase Order. At this moment you do Sales Order allocation. eConnect, mentioned above should do the job

• Agent Commission. You could use Salesperson, associate him/her with items sold in Sales Order and then calculate and pay commission, using your own formulas.

• Reporting. In the case of integrated web application with Great Plains, we would expect heterogeneous sql queries and reporting, based on these queries and stored procedures. To produce nice and flexible reports - you usually deploy Crystal Reports and publish them in your web application.

• Transaction Posting. As mentioned above - this should be preferably done by Great Plains user with approval logic. However if you have thousands transactions per day or hour and it is physically not possible, you should go beyond eConnect functionality and post transactions automatically. You need custom stored procedures, posting and transferring Sales Orders. You can create these procedures yourself or purchase the ones, available on the market.

• Customization Tools: Great Plains Dexterity, Modifier with VBA, Transact SQL scripting to name the most popular.

Good luck and you can always seek our help in customization, implementation, integration and support. Call us: 1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies - USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Australia, UK, Canada, Continental Europe, Russia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer

Call accounting and telecom billing software provides many business benefits that can both save money, as well as help businesses generate revenue

Call accounting and telecom billing software provides many business benefits that can both save money, as well as help businesses generate revenue. A feature-rich call accounting software can provide many business benefits, such as:

Long Distance Bill Verification: Was the bill from your chosen long distance phone company accurate? Mostly, it isn’t. Using a call accounting system to check your long distance gives you some peace of mind - and documentation to back up your request for a refund of overpayments you may have made.

Motivate sales people: The more phone calls they make, the more they sell. Keep track of their call volume and manage them accordingly.

Bill Clients and Projects back for telephone charges incurred on their behalf: Every lawyer, government contractor, etc. does it. It makes sense.

Allocate telephone calling costs among departments and divisions: Telephones - voice, data, video and imaging - are some of your biggest expenses. They’re a cost that should be allocated to the products you are making, or the departments and divisions in your company. Telephone costs can determine which product is profitable. Which isn’t. A software company recently dropped one of its three “big” software packages because phone calls for support got too expensive.

Control Telephone Misuse: The rates for calling can vary widely depending on your carrier rate, the route the call takes, who makes the dialing decision… a call accounting system is a good check to see if you are spending money needlessly.

If your business isn’t using a call accounting or telecom expense management software, you could be losing money.

Author, Karen Ritz, VP Business Development for TelSoft Solutions, writes on the business benefits of call accounting and call detail record technology. More information can be found at http://www.telsoft-solutions.com

Typically one of the most important parts of setting up new accounting software would be to be able to invoice your customers in a professional manner and to control who owes you what and how long it has been outstanding for.

So this will be your second step, if you set up your ledger first, otherwise it is where you will start.

Before you start the actual process of invoicing from your new accounting software package you will need to set up your customers, some products and then almost certainly enter into the system the balances that customers owe you at this stage.

There will probably be provision in your accounting software for entering customer opening balances.

The age trial balance that you print out of your accounting software must equal the manual list that you started with. If it doesn’t because you have made a mistake somewhere, left an entry out, or even entered the same amount twice, and you start using the package for invoicing without rectifying the problem then you will just make it harder for yourself because you don’t have anything to balance back to. Do not start invoicing in the accounting software before your customer balances balance exactly.

If you can you should separate the balances into current. 30 - 60 days old and 60 and over days old. Your system should have provision to enter them as such. By doing so you will be able to print a customer aged trial balance report from day one and customer statements from month end one. These are two of the more important reports in any accounting software package because it shows what money is owed in what time brackets and gives you the opportunity to chase the older and overdue accounts. REMEMBER - the longer a customer has owed you the money the harder it often is to collect it.

Once your customer opening balances balance in the accounting software you should be in a position to start invoicing.

If your accounting software runs in real time mode (you don’t have to do any updating to the general ledger) you should be able to go to the general ledger and see the entries after you have done your first invoice. If you run in batch mode (like having to do an end of day update or similar) then do the update to get the entries into the ledger for you.

Now go to the ledger and find the entries. Print a Ledger financial report and see what has happened, where the entries have gone. Typically look for the Profit and Loss report as well as the trial balance.

A simple invoice to an account customer should have a few simple entries based on the following.

The invoice was for $100.00 plus a 10% GST therefore a total of $110.00. The goods you sold may have a cost of $50.00 (excluding GST). The sale was on the customers account. The entries should be similar to the following.

Sales (Profit & Loss) 100.00 Credit

Cost of Sales (Profit & Loss) 50.00 Debit

Trade Debtors (Balance Sheet) 110.00 Debit

Stock on Hand (Balance Sheet) 50.00 Credit

GST Liability(Balance Sheet) 10.00 Credit

All adds up to zero (total debits equal total credits) and each entry has a corresponding opposite entry somewhere else)

Some accounting software may not show a simple entry for cost of sales but rather have a combination of three accounts - Opening Stock, Purchases, Less Closing Stock. If so there is a separate section on this towards the end called Opening and Closing Stock Entries.

Assuming your system has a simple cost of sales account then your entries should explain themselves but, put simply, it will have made two or three entries in the Profit and Loss section -

Sales

Cost of Sales
(and GST Collected if your system runs that way)

And three in the Balance Sheet section (Assets and Liabilities)

All of the entries add up to zero. But we can also see something else very important in our overall understanding of the ledger.

All revenue or income accounts are CREDITS

All expense accounts are DEBITS

All asset accounts are DEBITS

All liability accounts are CREDITS

There are some extra entries that could have occurred -

You may have also charged your customer a delivery or freight charge, you may also have applied a rounding adjustment to round off to the nearest 5 cents etc. Freight would have been a credit, as in income and the rounding could go either way.

Your accounting software could also allow for a discount to be given at the bottom of the invoice so this would show as a debit in cost of sales

I have been involved in all aspects of the accounting software industry for over 20 years. I run several websites that specialize in various subjects including http://www.diyaccounts.com.au that gives advice on all aspects of accounting software from choosing, setting up and using it. Amongst other sites that I run are http://www.sense-now.com that helps newbies understand what internet business will probably work for them and what won’t. http://www.oumas.com.au is all about arts, crafts, hobbies, wine and beer making, dog obedience training and much more.

Good Computerized Maintenance Management Software (CMMS)
that schedules preventive maintenance work orders on your
equipment is an integral component of any efficient
maintenance department. Preventive and scheduled
maintenance, efficiently scheduled, will not only reduce
your maintenance costs, but will minimize emergency repairs
and downtime, resulting in an increase in overall
profitability.

A few years ago, choosing the right CMMS
Software was a much simpler venture. With only a few
programs to choose from, you could do minimal research and
be on your way to implementing a simple and effective
system. But, with the explosion of the maintenance software
industry in recent years, selecting your software has become
a far more complex task. One that involves extensive
investigation and evaluation. Some of the most important
issues to consider when deciding which CMMS is right for you
are cost, stability of the vendor, program features, fast
implementation, support availability, and last but not least
availability of a demonstration program.

Cost is possibly the most important consideration in the
hunt for a CMMS. Quite simply, the most useful preventive
maintenance software in the world is of no use to you if
your company cannot afford the purchase price. For the
maintenance manager on a budget the key to finding the best
software is value. A great strategy for a company selecting
their first CMMS is to look for maintenance management
software that offers low initial cost, as well as
expandability, resulting in the delivery of the greatest
value for your dollar.

Another important factor that is frequently overlooked by
CMMS buyers is the stability of the vendor developing and
distributing the preventive maintenance software. It is
vital to ask how long the vendor has been in business and if
this is the only product that they sell. Choose a system
only from a company that has been in business for a number
of years and that sells only one line of products. This will
minimize the possibility of the company going out of
business or abandoning the product line for one of their
other ventures. After all, a new program or one from a start
up company may seem like a great deal, but if your support
system disappears your maintenance software investment will
quickly become worthless.

Program features are another important component of choosing
a CMMS. Determine what your maintenance goals are and look
for a program that will meet them. For the simplest of
operations you will need to list your equipment, enter
preventive maintenance tasks on that equipment and then be
able to generate and print work orders. For more complex
operations there may be a need bar coding for inventory and
customizable reporting. Some distributors offer a base
program with the option of adding modules, which are
available immediately or as needed in the future. This is a
great option to have as your maintenance operation becomes
more efficient and additional features and customizations
are desired.

Implementation must be quick and efficient. After all, a
CMMS that will be cumbersome to get up and running will only
tie up more time and resources. Features like wizards or
other automated entry will make implementation exponentially
faster and will have you on your way to maintenance
efficiency in very little time.

Technical support for implementation must be available and
personnel should be on hand on an ongoing basis for any
future challenges that may arise. Part of this support
should be periodic update releases to keep your technology
current in this fast paced digital age. Remember, CMMS is an
investment in the productivity of your maintenance
department. A maintenance software distributor should be
reputable and have been in business for a number of years to
insure that your software will serve its purpose for many
years to come.

A fully working demonstration of the program is probably the
most useful tool that you will have in your evaluation of
any CMMS. Install the program that you are considering and
begin implementing it. This will give you a solid idea of
all of the issues we have discussed in this article. You
will be able to find out what kind of time frame to expect
for implementation and may evaluate the usefulness and
availability of the features that you need. While evaluating
demonstration software you may call the distributor with
questions and see for yourself what kind of support is
available and if it will readily meet your requirements.

As you know, good Computerized Maintenance Management
Software can be the backbone of your maintenance department.
Be sure that you choose the right CMMS to fit your
department’s needs and start optimizing today!

Erin Ouellette
COGZ Systems
203-263-7882
http://www.cogz.com/

Running a business from home has its advantages, including no commute, a more accommodating work schedule, fresh coffee and home-cooked meals at any time you want.

But running a business from home using a home wireless local area network (WLAN) with your computer may lead to thievery of confidential information and hacker or virus penetration unless proper actions are taken. As WLANs send information back and forth over radio waves, someone with the right type of receiver in your immediate area could be picking up the transmission, thus acquiring access to your computer.

Here is a list of things that you should consider as a result of implementing a home wireless network setup used your business:

Viruses could be loaded onto your laptop which could be transferred to the company’s network when you go back to work.

Up to 75 per cent of home wireless network WLAN users do not have standard security features installed, and 20 per cent are left completely open as default configurations and are not secured, but are made for the users to have their network up and running ASAP.

It is recommended that home wireless network router/access point system setups be always done though a wired client.

Always change the default administrative password on your home wireless network router/access points to a secured password.

Enable at least 128-bit WEP encryption on both card and access point. Change your WEP keys periodically. If equipment does not support at least 128-bit WEP encryption, consider replacing it. Although there are security issues with WEP, it represents minimum level of security, and it should be enabled.

Change the default SSID on your router/access point to a hard to guess name. Setup your computer device to connect to this SSID by default.

Setup router/access points so as to not broadcast the SSID. The same SSID needs to be setup on the client side manually. This feature may not be available on all equipment.

Setup your home wireless network router to block anonymous internet requests or pings.

On each computer having a wireless network card, network connection properties should be configured to allow connection to Access Point Networks Only. Computer to computer (peer to peer) connections should not be allowed.

Enable MAC filtering. Deny connection to wireless network for unspecified MAC addresses. MAC or physical addresses are accessible through your computer device wireless network connection setup and they are physically written on network cards. When adding new wireless cards / computer to the network, their MAC addresses should be registered with the router /access point.

Your home wireless network router should have firewall features enabled and demilitarized zone (DMZ) feature disabled. Periodically test your hardware and personal firewalls using Shields Up test available at http://www.grc.com. All computers should have a properly configured personal firewall in addition to a hardware firewall.

Update router/access point firmware when new versions become available.

Locate router/access points away from strangers so they cannot reset the router/access point to default settings. Also, locate router/access points in the middle of the building rather than near windows to limit signal coverage outside the building.

You should know that nothing is 100%. While none of the actions suggested above will provide full 100% protection, countermeasures do exist that will help. The good collection of suggested preventative actions contained herein can help you deter an intruder trying to access your home wireless network. This deterrant then makes other insecure networks easier targets for the intruder to persue.

Greg Lietz is an internet business man, freelance writer and computer enthusiast. His websites provide information on wireless networking and personal computer hardware that may be of interest to you.

Looks like Microsoft Great Plains becomes more and more popular, partly because of Microsoft muscles behind it. Now it is targeted to the whole spectrum of horizontal and vertical market clientele. Small companies use Small Business Manager (which is based on the same technology - Great Plains Dexterity dictionary and runtime), Great Plains Standard on MSDE is for small to midsize clients, and then Great Plains serves the rest of the market up to big corporations. There are several reporting tools available and you definitely need to know which one to use for different types of reports.

If you are database administrator who is asked to import some data to Great Plains or repair or copy data from one company to another - read this and you will have the clues on where to look further.

1. Microsoft Great Plains Tables Structure - Launch Great Plains and go to Tools->Resource Description->Tables. Find the table in the proper series. If you are looking for the customers - it should be RM00101 - customer master file.

2. DEX_ROW_ID. This is identity column and each Great Plains table has it - this is due to the Great Plains Dexterity technology. This column is never used as a key field - so don’t try to link your tables on DEX_ROW_ID. In case if you need to transfer the table from one company to another you should use these queries:

select * into GL00100_BAK from TWO.dbo.GL00100
go
alter table GL00100_BAK drop column DEX_ROW_ID
go
insert into GL00100 select * from GL00100_BAK
go
drop table GL00100_BAK

The set of queries above will transfer GL00100 (Account Master table) from TWO company into your current company. Then you need to run Checklinks - refer to GP Manual - in order to recreate the rest of the account master related tables.

3. Do not modify the table - sometimes it seems to be nice if you just append couple of extra columns to the table - like in IV00101 - inventory master file why wouldn’t you just add couple of additional descriptions. If you do this - Great Plains Dexterity engine will fail reading all your items - due to the fact that DYNAMICS.DIC (main Great Plains Dictionary file) has exact description of all the tables and Dexterity uses it for reading and writing into the specific table

4. Feel free to create SQL views or stored procs. If you are helping your internal developers to create Crystal Reports - good SQL views are real help to them. Let me give you example, the view below will show work and historical SOP Invoices - then Crystal can just use it

create view SOP_WORK_HIST
as
select SOPNUMBE, CUSTNMBR, CUSTNAME, DOCAMNT from SOP30200 where SOPTYPE=3 and VOIDSTTS=0
union
select SOPNUMBE, CUSTNMBR, CUSTNAME, DOCAMNT from SOP10100 where SOPTYPE=3 and VOIDSTTS=0

The above view will show all the work and historical non-voided invoices (SOP Type = 3 stays for invoice)

5. Some repair / unlocking tips:

If you run query above against DYNAMICS database - it will unlock the user, who accidentally shut down the computer without logging off Great Plains:

delete ACTIVITY where USERID=’JOHN’

Next one will unlock hanging batch:

update SY00500 set BCHSTTUS=0 where BACHNUMB = ‘JULYINVOICES04′

Happy querying! if you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies - USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains implementation and customization company, based in Chicago, Boston, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Miami and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Dexterity, SQL, VB/C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

The fact that a software tester is a most infamous person in a software project team has some grounds underneath it. This is because a software tester usually speaks of the bugs in the developer’s code. For a developer to take this pin-pointing personally hurting is humane. The tussle between the testers and developers may lead to failure or delay of the software project. This article presents some of the aspects which both the developer and the tester should know about each other and work harmoniously in a team.

The developer should understand that testing is an important activity in a software project and the role of the tester is to find as many bugs as possible at the earliest and ensure that they get fixed. If the developed software satisfies customer’s requirements and has little number of known bugs then only the customer will accept the software. So, pin-pointing by tester should be taken by the developer in a positive sense. It is the duty of the tester to find bugs and by doing this he is, infact, suggesting you to remove bugs and thereby, dress your code in a proper way.

At the same time, the tester should not directly blame the developer for the buggy code. Psychologically, this will unrest the developer and may lower his efficiency. Instead, a tester should report a bug in a gentle way. The tester should not only report bugs but at times, he should praise the developer for the good code written by him.

As the software are becoming complex, testing is becoming an integral and a methodological process. Lots of theories and practices of testing are becoming standards.
And companies are even spending lot of time and money on deciding terminologies of testing like some companies prefer saying a bug as ‘anomaly’ or ‘incident’ rather than ‘fault’, ‘bug’ or ‘error’.

A good tester will have the knowledge of coding language used in the project. In this way, he can sometimes read the buggy code and identify the exact bug along-with and may even propose a solution.

Before reporting a bug, it is important for a tester to know if his test procedure was correct. It happens many times that the bug reported was the result of wrong testing .

So, if you are a software tester then understand the psychology of a developer, appreciate him at times and if you know coding then help him to debug and improve the code. This way you will have good fame in your project team rather than as a dreaded person.

Syed Feroz Zainvi has obtained M.Tech. (Comp Sc & Engg) degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (INDIA). His areas of interests are distributed computing, computer graphics and Internet Technologies. Currently, he is involved in Software Project Planning, Development and Management. His other interests include writing for magazines and contributing utility softwares on Magazine’s CDs. He also have flair for teaching computer science with new teaching methodologies.

His web-page URL is http://zainvi.tophonors.com

As you are aware, there are a tremendous amount of software programs on the market today. There are a lot more software companies out today then ever before. So then how do you choose the rite software for you?

There are really only two major factors that people consider when buying software. That is coast, and coast again. No really most people looking for software only consider the one thing. How much dose it coast.

When buying software you should consider coast, I do. You need to consider also what dose the software do, or how much the software will do considering what you want it for. Let’s say you want to buy a Spyware program, or an Antivirus software program. How do you know which one to buy, because there are a lot of them on the market today?

There are a couple things you should consider, and do before you spend any hard earned money on a software program. That may in the end not be the software you need, or thought it would do for you. Just to go out and spend more money for the other software program. Now instead of saving money you spent more. Any one can do this it’s free and you will in most cases end up with the rite software program you are looking for.

First. Look around and find out what software program has the best rating and why. There rating doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the best software program for you. Because most of the time, the rating only means they sold more of the software programs.

Second. try the free trail version of the software. By trying out the free trail version of the software, you will have the chance to find out how user friendly the software is, and also find out how your computer interacts with the software. Just a little point you should consider, and that would be If the software company doesn’t offer a free trial version of there software. That might be an indication that the company itself might not be very user friendly, as far as tech support is concerned. That doesn’t mean the software program is not a good one.

Third. Take a look at what you are getting for your money. Free software upgrades are a pulse. If the software offers you more in the area programming then you need, that’s also a plus. Weigh the coast of the software. As well as how much you like the software programming, or how user friendly the software is. Then consider what you are getting for your money. Make your decision, and choose the rite software for your needs.

Robert Emler. I’ve spent more money on software programs then on my computer. Lesson learned.
http://softwarelimits.com

Each Industry and market niche has business specific and unique requirements to ERP/Accounting System. Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is ERP platform, ready for third party modules additions and customizations, plus being SQL Server-based system it opens you wide spectrum of integration options and tools. In this small article we’ll give you Microsoft Great Plains implementation and setup highlights, typical for Jewelry retail network.

• Fixed Assets. Jewelry retailer owns the network of jewelry retail outlets and each one has relatively expensive set of fixed assets: counters, holders, computers, etc. Company has to track each individual Fixed Asset item and depreciate it accordingly: for IRS, State and probably several internal company management accounting depreciation scenarios and methods: straight line, DDB, etc. Due to the fact of reselling precision metals: gold, silver, gem stones and diamonds - you should expect regular audit from IRS and State authorities. Depreciation plays substantial portion of company’s non-cash expenses and so should be 100% accurate. Additional challenges - bonus depreciation, introduced several years ago. Plus you must have comprehensive reporting on FA locations by store and region.

• EDI purchasing. In Great Plains you should be able to order your inventory via Electronic Document Interchange (EDI) mechanism. You have multiple options to realize EDI - the simplest would be Purchase Order creation in Great Plains Purchase Order Processing/Receiving module and then exporting them into text EDI-fixed-length compliant format. This text file should be forwarded to your supplier and in Great Plains POP you set flags for POs being sent to your vendor

• Retail Management System integration. In the case when you use Microsoft RMS Store Operations and Headquarters - you should consider seamless integration of your daily transactions into Microsoft Great Plains Sales Order Processing (SOP) or Receivables Management (RM) modules. The integration is realized as a set of MS SQL Server stored procedures. The other way would be implement both Purchasing and Inventory count on RMS Store Operations/Headquarters level and integrate General Ledger transactions only. If you have only one Great Plains Company - you can deploy RMS->GP integration utility, coming to you with RMS purchase and support CDs.

• Reporting. In both cases - Great Plains and RMS compliance reporting should be realized in Crystal Reports and the best way and design style is creating SQL views and stored procedures and basing report on these views and procs.

We encourage you to analyze your alternatives. You can always appeal to our help, give us a call: 1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), serving Microsoft Great Plains, CRM, Navision to mid-size and large clients in California, Illinois, New York, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Washington, Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan