If you’ve ever had to spend time on any of the following:

• Guessing at a customer’s sales tax rate based on zip code
• Having a customer reject an invoice because you guessed wrong
• Had a tax audit find you charged the wrong tax (even if you based it on what jurisdiction the customer said they were in).

there is a website that can save you time and grief.

http://www.avataxrates.com by Avalara provides a searchable overlay to Google maps that tells you the tax rate and jurisdiction for the specific address, not just the zip code.

Why is the zip code not good enough? Especially here in Georgia, with its multiple small counties, zip code borders and county lines rarely match up exactly. 30052, where I live, has pieces of four counties, and I can always tell when I order something from a company that uses a zip based tax map (yes, Office Depot and MicroCenter, I am talking about you), because I get charged 7% instead of the 6% Gwinnett County rate).

Avalara offers the online map for free, and if you’d like to completely automate the sales tax process and even have returns filed for you, they offer a paid service which integrates with Sage 100 ERP (MAS 90/200) and Sage 300 ERP (Accpac).

Facebook has made a fortune out of a seriously warped version of the word “free”. You give them all your thoughts, feelings and behaviors for free, and they’ll happily sell that info to advertisers. “Sharing” as in “what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine”.

The latest revelation is that, by default, anything you share with your friends is also shared with any Facebook app that any of your friends install, even if you have never authorized that app.

For instructions on how to fix this, see When you share personal data with Facebook friends, you’re sharing your personal data with every app your friends use.

If any of you still think Facebook is “free”, please post all of your bank and credit card login/password info as a comment here.

Sage Software will be re-branding many of their products in the future, especially as new releases are rolled out.  You may begin to see some of these name changes in the coming year, but despite the branding changes, the products are the same software packages many people are running today.  Here is a list of Sage’s proposed changes:

• Sage 50 – the “install yourself” products such as Sage Peachtree and Simply Accounting
• Sage 100 will be MAS 90, MAS 200, Timberline, Fund Accounting
• Sage 100 Contractor – formerly Timberline
• Sage 100 Standard ERP – formerly MAS 90
• Sage 100 Advanced ERP – formerly MAS 200
• Sage 100 Premium ERP – formerly MAS 200 SQL
• Sage 100 Fund Accounting  – formerly Sage Fund Accounting
• Sage 300 will be the current Accpac software series
  
• Sage 300 Standard – formerly Accpac 100
• Sage 300 Advanced – formerly Accpac 200
• Sage 300 Premium – formerly Accpac 500
• Sage 300 Construction – formerly Sage Timberline Office
• Sage 300 Trade/Specialty – formerly Sage Timberline Enterprise
• Sage 500 will be MAS 500 and Multi-user Fund Accounting
• Act!, Saleslogix, Sage TimeSheet and Sage TimeSlips will keep their current names

For a complete list from Sage’s website, see:

http://www.sagenorthamerica.com/Company/Brand/New-Sage-Product-Family-Descriptions

There has been much discussion recently among business software VARs about how to price our services. The traditional method has been hourly billing. How long does it take the consultant to do the work? Others are now saying we should scrap time tracking and should use “pricing on purpose” or value billing. What is the solution worth to the customer?

Those who want to get rid of the timesheets say it creates the wrong incentive, and could tempt some people (always not you, but others) to pad their hours. Opponents of value pricing say it creates an incentive for customers to minimize the value.

Both of these arguments point to the same thing, but never seem to discuss it: TRUST. We received a letter a few years ago from one of our allies (isn’t that a better word than customer?) which included the following:
“You have served us so well that we are convinced you are indeed a partner, an ally. I don’t think you could have taken our interests more to heart if you were the sole owner of the company; that is how confortable I feel in not only your technical support but also the recommendations you make on purchase of new/additional software.”

With this ally we do much of our work on an hourly basis. Sometimes on a project they will ask for a quote up front so they can figure out if the ROI is there to do it. Either way, they trust us to do quality work for a reasonable price, and we trust them to provide us honest answers to our questions so that we can make the system work for them efficiently and effectively.

They trust us, we trust them. The unit of measure on the invoice doesn’t matter.

Sage Mas 90 and Mas 200 version 4.50.01 is now available, and with product update 01, existing users can upgrade to use the new 4.50 features. For Mas 200 only, version 4.50 can now run on a Microsoft SQL database platform.  For both Mas 90 and Mas 200,  application enhancements include:

Accounts Receivable has added the ability to bill National Accounts while keeping statistics on branches and subsidiaries.

Payroll has added 5 new deduction calculation methods, including calculation of deductions based on changes in the earnings line made during data entry.  New features for importing payroll entries from popular time-tracking packages have also been added.  New Benefit Accrual figures allow you to set minimum hours for accruing types of benefits.

Automatically Create Purchase Orders from Sales Orders.  New features allow Purchase Orders to be created for not just drop-ship Sales Orders, but all Sales Orders based on specifications that you set.  This is really helpful for companies that don’t purchase products until their customers order them.

Additional Pricing methods have been added to Sales Order system, including pricing by customer for each product line that will allow a company to set default price levels for each of their customers by product line.  Discounts can now be offered by Total order quantity, quantity by Item Category, and for quantity by Product Line.

Assign lot and serial numbers during Sales Order entry. In addition to using lot and serial numbers to be tracked for potential recall of their products, this will also allow companies to reserve limited-quantity lots or serial numbers for their best customers or to match the product-lot previously shipped to a customer.

A new feature for default Split Commissions allows you to establish and maintain default Split Commissions between multiple salespeople for a customer that are invoked each time the customer is billed.

Version 4.5 includes a FREE user and server license of SageCRM 7.1 which allows you track communications with customers and prospects.  The new eMarketing module for SageCRM will deliver all the power of e-marketing software directly through SageCRM for end-to-end e-marketing campaign management. It will enable users to execute high-quality, targeted email marketing and create drip marketing campaigns quickly and easily.

Let us know if you would like to schedule an upgrade to your Mas 90 or Mas 200 system to take advantage of these new features.

Atlanta Rod and Manufacturing Co, Inc. in Lavonia, Georgia manufactures anchor bolts, embeds, headed bolts and construction fasteners to customer specifications. They had become frustrated with their old Thoroughbred software, and chose Friendly Systems to implement PostBooks by xTuple as their new business software. PostBooks characteristics easily handled recording the specs needed for each custom order for both sales and the shop, giving them a software package that works for them, rather than manual processes to work around deficiencies in their previous software.
Friendly Systems installed PostBooks on their new Linux server, worked with Atlanta Rod to set up the software, and did a “train the trainer” approach to get them up and running quickly and efficiently. We also imported customers, vendors, items and GL data from the old system.
According to Madeline Spratt of Atlanta Rod, “The new xTuple software is easy to use” and “Any glitches we discovered were very quickly resolved.”

Companies using Sage Platinum for Windows and Sage Pro ERP can receive significant discounts by migrating to one of Sage’s flagship products, including Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200, and Sage Accpac under the Sage Investment Protection plan until Dec 31^st 2011.  This is an important deal, and it should be reviewed as part of those companies’ strategic planning.  This also includes customers using SBT, BatchMaster and VisionPoint software.  Friendly Systems, Inc. is a reseller of Sage MAS 90 & MAS 200, and also Sage Accpac, and we are available to help you in evaluating these products for your needs.  Friendly Systems is also an authorized Silver Developer Partner for Sage MAS 90 & MAS 200 and can modify the software to suit specific needs.  Do you have customized software?  In addition to Sage Mas90/200 and Accpac modifications, we are dealers for one of the top open-source manufacturing software packages, xTuple.  See the home page of our website for more info.

Most businesses reviewing their information systems and processes for improvement total up the costs of making  changes. What will new software cost? What will it cost to train employees?  You can quantify those answers, because you can get quotes that put those costs on paper.  What’s harder to quantify is the cost of not changing.  Just keep doing what you’ve always done is safe, right? General Motors thought so as they lost market-share.  Each of the “what does it cost to?” questions should bring up the opposite “what is it costing NOT to?” question. What is the old system costing in lost productivity? What is it costing in employee morale and stress-induced errors?  What is the long-range cost of not having  up-to-date tools?

Companies are using new software features to SAVE MONEY, provide BETTER CUSTOMER SERVICE and WORK MORE EFFICIENTLY.   Some questions to ask include:

Does your software allow automatic e-mailing of invoices and statements to customers, PO’s to vendors, reports to managers and accountants without multiple steps and fax machines?   How much time is spent faxing documents or stuffing envelopes and mailing?  Is important information, like leads and prospects, copies of documents, and memos stored in multiple systems or workstations where it is hard to locate?  Is your software compatible with Windows7 which comes on all new computers?  Can you export management reports to excel and other packages to do analysis without keying-in the data?   Does your system track Electronic transfers that make timely bill-paying simple?   Efficiently handle and track credit-card payments and credit-card purchases?  How much time/money is lost manually doing things that are addressed by more current software?

Friendly Systems represents several kinds of software, and can help explain their features.  We can also modify software to do things you need.  Let us know if we can help outline your savings by using more efficient software tools.

Lee hiked the Highline Trail in Glacier NP – August 11th.