Sage MAS Intelligence (SMI) is intended to replace Frx for Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200 as Microsoft will no longer be supporting Frx as of 12/31/2012. It will also replace F9, which Sage will no longer sell as of October 2010. Sage will no longer support F9 when customer-support-plans are renewed after October 2010. New and current MAS 90 and MAS 200 customers will receive a free single-user license for 4.4 as a support-plan benefit.

SMI is built on an Excel platform and requires MicroSoft Excel 2007 or newer for the designer, 2003 or newer for the viewer. For people not already using Frx, Sage MAS Intelligence has “out the box” financial statements that are delivered with no user input required. SMI also includes sample reports from non-G/L data such as Customer Sales, Inventory Status and Vendor Purchases. That means that people analyzing data from non-G/L modules now have a new tool for creating sophisticated spreadsheets. Sage is also offering several free on-line learning courses on the product.

One FRx instructor said: most of the “functions” are actually Excel functions. The “drill down” capability does not go back to the MAS transactions, it brings up raw data. The trend analysis report looks like it bombed until you select a specific GL account. There is no reporting tree capability similar to Frx; you must “group” by chart segments unless you want to get it done in Excel. Many clients would not want to spend money to re-do most of their Frx reports in Excel. They can already send raw data to Excel and manipulate it much cheaper.

There is a learning curve involved in designing new reports and until there are some real improvements made to SMI, we wouldn’t encourage clients to “upgrade” from FRx to SMI. For people not using Frx or F9, Sage MAS Intelligence is a great new tool for generating spreadsheets from your MAS 90 and MAS 200 database, for both financial and non-financial reporting. For Sage’s details on Sage MAS Intelligence, see:

www.sagemas.com/lp/sagemas/SMI/solutions.html

Yet more time wasted talking to the wall: Got the assigned case mangler, Alexandra, on the phone, and she repeated the same corporate policy to not warranty the screens on the laptops, and while she admitted she had a boss readily enough, she also claimed she was not allowed to give out his name or phone number. She referred me to a “corporate” (ie not 800) number, where I was routed to the “executive customer service” department, where Danielle served up the same corporate double-speak (HP is redefining “warranty” like Clinton tried to redefine “sex”) and claimed that she could not override the decision of the “case managers”.

Oh, yeah, almost forgot – the person who answered the phone in the case manager department asked me what my “complaint number” was.

Don’t buy HP – they don’t stand behind their products.

Another lesson in How Not To Run a Business, this time courtesy of HP. Last November I purchase an HP laptop for my daughter’s birthday. A couple of days ago, she opened it up to a screen full of horizontal lines and what looked like a jagged marker scribble diagonally through the middle. We tried to call HP support, but after two hours on hold we gave up. The next morning I called Best Buy and asked if the Geek Squad handled HP warranty repairs. They said they did.

When we brought it in, they told us that HP classifies any screen problems as “accidental damage”, and will not warranty it. Back home, we called HP again, finally reaching a “customer service” rep who repeated the policy about not warrantying screens, admitted it was certainly possible for the screen to become damaged through no fault of the user, and pleading lack of authority passed the case on to a “case manager”, who would call back “within three business days”. This is after being told that my daughter is leaving for college in 14 (calendar) days. Oh, yeah, and the replacement of one part in a laptop that cost $460 (including tax) would be over $400!

Finally heard from the “case manager” at about 6 pm on the third business day, and all she offers is 25% off, which somehow still comes to over $400!

Obviously it does not make sense to do the repair. We continue to try to escalate the case and see if we can find someone at HP who actually comprehends what “warranty” means. If not, I guess I will be stuck with the bill for a replacement laptop, which will NOT be an HP!

Further update: I just called the “case manager” department and asked to speak to a supervisor. I was told by one person that their supervisor didn’t take phone calls. When pressed for a name to attach to said supervisor, I was hung up on. When I called back, a different person told me that they didn’t report to anyone, just some vague notion of “corporate”. Looks like Mark Hurd was the role model for integrity at HP.

The Sage Mas 90 and Mas 200 4.40.02 Product Update is scheduled for release in late July. Here’s a summary of the new features.

Accounts Payable
ACH Electronic Payments – define the format for each financial institution. This includes pre-note functionality, and the ability to allocate amounts between one or more accounts.
Paperless Office storage and retrieval of Accounts Payable checks, stubs and remittance advice documents puts documents in a pdf format for transmission and storage, and indexes them for easy retrieval.

Bank Reconciliation
Positive Pay Export creates a file of checks and amounts that have been authorized for payment to send to your bank for verification. The Positive Pay Export Wizard assists you in creating the export-file in the format specified by your bank. If your bank changes their format, you can use the Export Wizard to make changes to your export file format.
Auto Check Reconciliation Wizard Automatically reconcile checks with information downloaded from your financial institution. This new feature helps you configure the settings based on your bank’s format.
Tighter controls over adjusting entries – specify users who can make adjusting entries for each bank account.
Enter Checks, Deposits & Adjustments ‘On the Fly’ while you are still in the Reconcile Bank function.
Recalculate Outstanding Entries Totals Utility sets total of all ‘non cleared’ transactions.
Expanded comment-field in the Check, Deposit and Adjustment Entry now allows 2048 character comments.

Lots of improvements have been added to the Sage MAS90 and MAS 200 version 4.40 Inventory module. Here are some of them:
Dual Grid entry on Inventory Transactions Entry – you can now rearrange the field sequence to meet your needs and put unnecessary fields on the lower grid. You can also move entries up or down the screen to rearrange the sequence. Handy Find feature allows you to locate lines on multi-screen entries using lots of search criteria options.
Batch Entry and Update for Inventory Transactions allows users to enter and update their own batches, or to create batches for each entry-type (issues, receipts, adjustments, transfers) and update separately.
Crystal Reports format for all inventory reports. Crystal allows report modifications and much improved exporting of data to other formats, such as excel. New report-selection format allows you to save multiple default-settings, and make selections based on user-defined-fields.
Longer Inventory Item #’s. Previously the item-codes were up to 15 characters, now there’s an option to have 30-character Item codes. Inventory, Purchase Order and Sales Order forms and reports are fine but Non-graphical forms in the Job Cost and Work Order modules are no longer supported if you expand to 30 character item codes.
Ability to add User Defined Fields (per Custom Office) in ALL of inventory – including UDF’s for Lot/Serial #’s, Transaction Entries, Buyer-Planner codes.
Warehouse record now has: country, contact-name, e-mail, phone and fax fields.
Increased decimal precision – up to 4 decimal places for Qty field without losing places-to-left on other figures.
Lot/Serial Inquiry allows you to search by Lot or Serial # to find the item, cost, transaction # and warehouse information for a Lot/Serial #.
Standard Cost Adjustment Register/Update makes the GL entries for you.
New Quantity on Hand Report Business View – see the Inventory Explore menu.
Alias Item look-ups show on screens in Inventory, like Item Inquiry, Maintenance and Transaction Entry. Earlier versions allowed alias lookup in Sales Orders, Invoices and Purchase Orders only.
Right-click menu options within Inventory functions display tasks & reports related to your screen.

Physical Count worksheets – there is now an option to show existing balances on count-sheets and during count-entry so you don’t have to wait for the Variance Report to spot obvious mistakes.
Also, there’s a new option to pre-populate on-file quantities into the count quantity to relieve tedious re-keying of amounts that haven’t changed.
Standard Cost Valuation improvements – standard cost of zero (sample items) are accepted.

Standard Cost adjustment selection, entry and update. These new programs streamline the process by automatically calculating and posting the General Ledger Variances when you change the standard costs. See the new item utilities menu.
For all other valuation methods, use Automatic Cost and Price Change to change the cost.
Item Utilities is now a menu (it was previously an option on the setup menu, with 4 sub-options). The Cost/Price change function was pulled from the Main menu and put on Utilities menu.

It’s acronym soup out there with all the credit card compliance changes coming for July 1, so I thought an explanation of the difference between these two might be helpful.

PCI DSS standards apply to each merchant who accepts payment via credit cards. There are various rules regarding the securing of credit card information depending on whether you record it on paper, in a computer, or both, and physical security rules also apply if you have credit card terminals.

PA-DSS is the certification being required for commercial applications that process credit cards. This requirement is on the software developers, not the merchants.

Sage is currently in the process of getting certification for MAS 90 and MAS 200 version 4.3 (with update 18) and version 4.4 (with product update 1).
PCCharge is already certified. On the Accpac side, third party providers are getting their apps PA-DSS certified, and Sage is reportedly developing its own Accpac credit card processing module that will be certified when released.

Did you know you can automatically create leads from your corporate website? Using the Web To Lead feature you can save time and generate new leads instantly! Web To Lead can be found in the Administration -> Customization -> Lead screen.

Use the Recent button to quickly find a recently viewed company, person or case. The button is on the top left under the SageCRM logo. It displays a drop-down list of recent companies, leads, opportunities and people you have accessed for you to select from.

Use the backwards and forwards arrows to navigate SageCRM.com, using these buttons will return you to exactly where you were. They are under the SageCRM logo on the upper left.

Did you know that you can quickly upload contact details into SageCRM? For example, you can upload your entire mobile phone contact by uploading a CSV file in Administration -> Data Management -> Data Upload. A Quick Step Guide on updating your data to SageCRM.com can be found here.

Tired of writing similar emails? Why not create Email Templates? You will find these under Administration -> E-mail and Documents -> E-mail Templates.

The document drag-and-drop functionality provides a shortcut for linking documents, emails, or any type of file from another application to customer data.

Changing the default grid size in your Preferences will enable you to store more than 10 records in a list.

Configure your personal Dashboard as the first page you land on when you log in. This will enable you to easily and quickly view the information most relevant to you, such as your outstanding appointments, recently viewed leads, the companies you most often work with!

Right-clicking the mouse on any menu button will activate shortcut pop out lists.

You can use the wild card search on any field on the search screen. The wild card in SageCRM is the “%” symbol. The % wild card means ‘contains the value’. To search using a wild card select the Find menu button.
In the company or person context type, for example, %software in the Company Name field and select the Find action button. All companies containing the word “software” are returned from this search.

By the way, try the Search button on our blog to search for particular topics.

If your company accepts credit card payments, you have probably already heard from your credit card processor about the requirement to be PCI DSS certified by July 1. As long as you process less than 6 million transactions per year and have not had a data security breach, the certification consists of answering a questionnaire and arranging for a periodic security scan, rather than a on-site audit.

Sage Payment Services has arranged for Trustwave to provide the security scan and a wizard interface to walk you through the questionnaire part. The modest fee includes tech support, so if any of the questions leave you wondering “what the hell does that mean?”, make them earn their fees.

Here are some web sites with more info on the subject:

The PCI Security Standards Council – straight from the horses mouth, but also trying to sell consulting services so it is not particularly user friendly.

Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200 PCI info

Sage Accpac PCI info

And last but not least, the PCI DSS Guru site which includes a template for a company credit card security policy, which is one of the requirements of PCI DPS certification.

Repeating-orders are for customers who routinely order the same items. After a repeating-order is created, the customer, line item, tax, commission, and freight information is stored for immediate retrieval when creating a sales order. After repeating-order information is copied to a standard sales order, it can be modified or processed “as is”.
Master-orders document the total quantity of items to be delivered over a period of time using standard sales orders. Master-orders are different than repeating-orders in that master-order quantities can eventually be fulfilled. The master-order tracks the original quantity ordered and the remaining balance as sales orders are created. After either master or repeating order information is copied to a standard sales order, it can be modified or processed “as is”.
Entering Master or Repeating-orders in Sales Order Entry.
Order Number = A new Sales Order #. You can create a Master or Repeating order by copying from an existing order of another type, but be sure to specify Master/Repeating as the new type when copying if the source-order is a different type.
Order Type = master-order or repeating-order
Cycle Code = Enter a 2 character code to use in selecting groups of orders to create in the Auto Generate Orders Selection program on the Sales Order Main menu. Examples for repeating-orders might be: MO for monthly, SA for Samples, SP for Spring Orders, SU for Summer, HO for Holiday orders
Master-Orders display quantities on the Lines tab with the remaining quantity displaying in the Balance column. Each time an order is created referencing (not copied from) the master-order, the balance-quantities will be recalculated. If an order referencing a master-order is deleted, the balance-quantities will be restored to the master-order’s lines.
Sales Order Entry of single orders based on Master or Repeating orders. To reference the master or repeating-order when creating a new single “standard” orders in a Sales Order Entry, select the master/repeating-order number in the Master/Repeating No field on the Header tab. The system will create the new order based on the master/repeating order.
Auto Generate Orders Selection can be used to create new orders from either Master or Repeating Orders. Selections include Order #, Date, Cycle, Customer & Salesperson.
Auto Generate Invoice Selection can be used to create new invoices from Repeating Orders, but not Master-orders. See the Order-Type-to-Generate-From selection. Selections include Order #, Date, Cycle, Customer, Ship-Date & Promise-Date and Salesperson.

Sage has given their current 2010 roadmaps for their MAS 90 and MAS 200 products. These roadmaps are not guaranteed, but do show Sage’s priorities so far as introduction of new features.
Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200 version 4.40 has now shipped, with the Inventory, Purchase Order, Bill of Materials modules upgraded to their business framework, previously done for GL, AP, AR & Sales Order. 4.40 adds many usability features to these modules, along with enhanced Custom Office features.
MAS 90 and MAS 200 Extended Enterprise Suite 1.4, which incorporates the 4.40 modules was announced as “soon” in mid-March.
March 2010 is the 1st 4.40 Product Update, in which Sage bundles former Extended Solutions (see *) into the standard product.
Product Update 1 was announced as “available for download” on March 31st, but pulled due to last-minute fixes needed, so we’re still waiting for that.
It will contain:
AR Enter cash receipts by invoice number (*AR 1200)
AR Ability to search by additional customer fields & Lot/Serial #’s (*AR 1027)
AP Enter wire transfers in Accounts Payable Manual Check Entry
IM New search by Lot or Serial # (New)
JC Prevent accidental posting of costs to a closed job (*JC 1046)
LM Enhanced Search tools in Data File Display and Maintenance
PR Automatic application of multiple earnings codes per employee during a payroll run (*PR 1018)
SO Prevent accidental re-use of a customer Purchase Order number in history (*SO 1096)
SO Control which items customers may purchase (*SO 1271)
SO Print a picking sheet with backorder line items
SO Prevent accidental printing of picking sheets twice
SO Quick-print a picking sheet from sales order (*SO 1035)
Credit Card Processing Industry Security Compliance: PA-DSS Certified
Windows 7 (32 bit only) compatibility testing is currently in process for Sage MAS 90 and 200. Sage says Windows 7 compatibility information to be published by the end of March 2010.

Product Update 2 scheduled for June 2010 will contain:
Bank Reconciliation
Electronically reconcile your BR transactions between your software and bank (*BR1005)
Utilize Positive Pay to verify check information (amount, payee, etc.) prior to the bank’s payment, which helps protects against check fraud (*BR1004)
Business Insights Intelligence
New Advanced Analytics and Financial Reporting tool as an alternative to Frx.
Complex reporting and analysis with a familiar excel-like interface.
Single-user license comes free. Frx users can trade their add-on licenses for B.I.I. licenses.
MAS 200 only version 4.45 – targeted for 4th quarter 2010.
SQL server database support for MAS 200, business framework modules only (AR,AP,BM,GL,IM,PO,SO).
Bundled SQL server license will be available from Sage with MAS 200.
Note: this will initially be for new installations, with upgrades of existing installations available at a later, currently unspecified time.

Call us at 678-273-4010, ext 2 if you have questions about upgrading your MAS 90 or MAS 200 system this year.