Sage Mas 90 and Mas 200 General Ledger module Utility Menu has a General Ledger Exchange option that allows you to import and export
GL Account numbers, Budget figures, and GL Transactions to/from a variety of formats, including excel spreadsheets. One tricky thing about this is that the excel-spreadsheet format is hidden in the G/L Exchange FAQ entries in the help text which takes 2-3 clicks from the help button on the exchange screen (and some searching) to locate. For all those who may have missed this info, here are the formats for your source spreadsheets:

GL Transaction data fields that can be imported using either the Alternate Exchange format or the Standard Exchange format, depending on the length of your GL account numbers.

Alternate Exchange Format – for 9-digit or less GL Acct #’s
Account Number 9 characters maximum (not including separators)
Account Description 30 characters
Transaction Date 8 characters Must be formatted MM/DD/YY.
Source Journal 2 characters
Journal/Register No 4 characters
Line Sequence # 3 characters
Source Module 2 characters
Reference Descr 40 characters
Posting Amount Numeric
Posting Comment N/A

Standard Exchange Format – for greater than 9-digit GL Acct #’s
Account Number 41 characters maximum (including separators)
Account Description 50 characters
Transaction Date 10 characters Must be formatted as YYYY-MM-DD.
Source Journal 2 characters
Journal/Register No 6 characters
Line Sequence # 14 characters
Source Module 2 characters
Reference Descr N/A
Posting Amount Numeric
Posting Comment 2048 characters

For more assistance on this subject, call Friendly Systems support at: 678-273-4010 ext 2

Who done it?

Do you ever wonder who updated a particular register or journal in Sage Mas90 and Mas200? You can add the user code to all graphical reports in Mas90 & Mas200 by clicking a checkbox on the Company Preferences screen.

Go to:
Library Master -> Company Maintenance > Preferences. Check the Print User Logon on Reports check box.

The user code will print under the page number at the bottom right of the page, with the heading: User Logon: XZY

Verizon Communications has been granted permission to stop distributing the white pages in New York, Florida and Pennsylvania. Other states that have already approved the change: Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Wisconsin.

The reason is obvious – the internet.

These days, not only are phone books used less often, cell numbers often aren’t included in them, rendering them all but useless if the person you’re looking for belongs to the growing group of Americans who has eliminated their land line entirely.

A Gallup poll that indicated that only 11% of American households rely on the white pages.

In contrast, the yellow pages – polls quite differently, at least according to those who benefit from it. The Yellow Pages Association says that more than half of Americans still let their fingers do the walking.

In places where phone companies have stopped the mandatory distribution of the white pages, it’s still available upon request.
For the Atlanta area, see: http://www.mydirectories.att.com/

Despite Re-Circulating E-mail, It is Still Not Necessary to Register Cell Phone Numbers

As the number of phone numbers on the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry surpassed 139 million, the Federal Trade Commission reiterated that despite the claims in e-mails circulating on the Internet, consumers should not be concerned that their cell phone numbers will be released to telemarketers at any time in the near future. In addition, according to the agency, it is not necessary to register cell phone numbers on the DNC Registry to be protected from most telemarketing calls to cell phones.

The truth about cell phones and the DNC Registry is:

* Contrary to the e-mail, cell phone numbers are NOT being released to telemarketers, and you will NOT soon be getting telemarketing calls on your cell phone.
* There is NO deadline by which you must register your cell phone number on the Registry.
* Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations prohibit telemarketers from using automated dialers to call cell phone numbers. Automated dialers are standard in the industry, so most telemarketers are barred from calling consumers on their cell phones without their consent.
* The national associations representing telemarketers have stated that their clients do not intend to start calling consumers’ cell phones.
* There is only ONE DNC Registry. There is no separate registry for cell phones.
* The DNC Registry accepts registrations from both cell phones and land lines. You must call from the phone number that you want to register. If you register online, you must respond to a confirmation e-mail.
* While the telecommunications industry has been discussing the possibility of creating a wireless 411 directory, according to the FCC, even if a wireless 411 directory is established, most telemarketing calls to cell phones would still be illegal, regardless of whether the number is listed on the federal government’s National Do Not Call Registry.
See FTC at: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/02/dnccellphones.shtm

In recent research into malware trends, Websense identified the top three paths that lead to malware as: websites, poisoned search results, and malicious links, the latter typically spread by spam emails and phishing campaigns.

Attackers often target the web’s most popular destinations, rather than obscure locations, no doubt trying to compromise as many users as possible before the attack they’re using gets spotted and blocked.

Attackers often successfully link users with malware through the use of an “extensive network of partner sites that they are linked to,” according to Websense. For example, “62% of the sites that link to games also link to something objectionable or a security risk.” The same goes for about 25% of blogs. Don’t worry, Friendly Systems’ blog is safe. The sheer quantity of attack attempts makes it difficult for websites to stop and eliminate every one.

Links on Facebook are another risk. Websense said that roughly 40% of all Facebook status updates include a link, and that 10% of those links lead to spam or malicious code.

An interesting finding is that when it comes to risk levels, “popular beats porn,” said Websense, which found that “you have a higher chance of running into malicious content from a ‘breaking trends’ search such as a ‘World Cup 2010′ than you do from sexual content searches.” At one point, one-quarter of all World Cup 2010 search results were malicious.

Attackers are creative: they’re constantly varying their attacks, especially when it comes to search engine poisoning. “Cybercriminals are poisoning search results with malicious links for top trends at a startling rate,” according Websense. “For example, searches for trending news and buzz words increased from 14% in early 2010, to 22% a few months later.” Remember to Click Carefully when using the Web.

Do you have reports which take a long time to run? Are you letting users log into the server to run them, thereby creating a security risk?

One solution to both these problems is to deliver Crystal Reports via a web browser. Crystal Enterprise is available, but it is clunky to set up, finicky to maintain, and very expensive if you need more than a handful of users.

We recently found an alternative called Recrystallize. Recrystallize gives users access to server speed reporting via a web browser. With this tool, we (or someone in your company who has a basic understanding of Crystal and web pages) can take your Crystal Reports and quickly and easily create web pages that contain the report viewer. Just create one basic web page as a “table of contents”. The reports run on the server, so there is no delay for data traveling over the network. You can set user security rights per report as well.

Sage Mas 90 and Mas 200 version 4.4 has added some features to the Inventory Physical Count functions that you may find useful during Quarter-End or Year-End Inventory Counting. You may want to review these new options before your next Inventory Physical Count to see which options are best for your situation.

On the Physical Count Worksheet screen:

Print existing balances on count-sheets option. Check the Print Quantity On Hand box in the Options section on the right side of the screen. The existing balances will print on the worksheets.

Pre-populate on-hand quantity into the count quantity to relieve tedious re-keying of amounts. This option appears just above the Selections area of the screen. Check the box entitled: Default Quantity Counted to Quantity On-Hand.

Note that the on-hand quantity displays during count entry to help the operator catch errors during entry, rather than waiting to find them on the variance report. If you don’t want the entry person to see the on-hand figures, you can move them to the bottom of the lower-grid.

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.