Volume III #24
12/03/01

IN THIS ISSUE:
Preparing For SAFE 5.0!
Last Call For New Installs!
Deals, Deals, Deals!
Reminder: Suntower Closed For Christmas Week!
Ciaran's Corner: The Annual Rant Against Viruses!

A D M I N I S T R I V I A
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A I V I R T S I N I M D A

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Preparing For SAFE 5.0!
Simple Accounting for Forms Experts version 5.0 is on the way. We have a raft of changes, designed to to allow you to sell in more ways, easier than ever. What's new is both under the hood and in the styling. Here is just a sample:

UNDER THE HOOD
1. We will have completed an XML interface which is compatible with PrintTalk specification. This means that as third party vendors come into compliance with this industry standard, you will be able to seamlessly pass information between SAFE and these services.

2. We will have completed Windows XP certification from Microsoft. (Not that SAFE does not run under Window XP now, it's just that SAFE 5.0 has been tested and given the 'seal of approval' from Microsoft.) By the way, no other program in our industry can say that.

3. Free espressomatic. This will dispense a single tall mocha whenever you complete posting customer payments. OK, so maybe that's not really a feature of SAFE 5.0. Just checking to see if you're actually paying attention.

BODY STYLING
Sales Order entry has been even more stream-lined with big things like:

1. You can now control and view all postings to A/P directly from inside a Sales Order! Yippee! No more bouncing back and forth between Sales Orders and the Bills Browse to see which costs were posted to an order!

2. The same applies to Purchase Orders for inventory. You will be able to receive in products and apply any number of costs to each line without leaving the Purchase Order screen.

...and little things which really are big:

3. You can now change the order of Sales Order lines at will. In other words, if you add a line item to a Sales Order, you can make it appear as the first line of the transaction.

4. Selecting alternate package quantities has been made much easier. No more Unit/Lot/Package Quantity. You will be able to 'purchase by the thousand' and 'sell by the carton' and never have to worry about selecting the proper buttons or Units of Measure on Sales Orders and P.O.s. This will make the entire process 100% fool-proof, once and for all.

Inventory has been beefed up in the following ways:

1. You can now automatically create Assemblies (a.k.a. Kits/Bills of Material) by simply dragging the component products into a basket. The Assembly can then be used as a single line item on a Sales Order. Best of all? You can post separate A/P Bills to each component which maintains the correct overall profitability of the line on the sales order.

2. We will have a Product History Error Scanner which will identify and help you correct any invalid postings to inventory. This feature will make it easy to find any errors which are affecting inventory levels.

Reporting is better:

1. You will be able to track sales history by Attention Line (Contact) within your customer base. So you can, for example, run a report for all sales to Valerie Johnson at a particular customer location.

2. You will be able to view or print sales history and forms management reports in a matter of seconds for any Location without requiring complex queries. In other words, you will be able to run a sales history or inventory report for any Site

3. Broadcast fax and mail merge is now much easier. The integration between MS Word and SAFE has been refined to where you can simply tag a list of Customers or Contacts to send a letter to and your mail merge or mass e-mailing will automatically be generated. If you have hesitated on using broadcast faxing or e-mailing because it seemed to complicated, this is for you.

Pricing/Availability

SAFE 5.0 will ship January 23, 2002.

As always, SAFE 5.0 will be free to current Remote Support Subscription customers. Users of earlier versions of SAFE 4.2a may upgrade for $1,295. SAFE users who do not have a current Remote Support Subscription will also be required to purchase a new block at the prevailing rate.

But Wait, There's More!

There are many more features and improvements to SAFE, such as improvements to ThinSAFE and Ollie which we will be only too happy to impart to you, next time. By next week we should have a complete feature list available on www.suntowersystems.com

Suntower Systems Closed Christmas Week!
Just a note that we will be officially closed Christmas week ( Saturday Dec 23rd through Tuesday January 1, 2002.) We will re-open for normal hours (7AM-5PM PST) on Wednesday January 2nd. For those of you who insist on continuing to work full tilt that week, two lumps of coal for your stocking, but fear not: for genuine dreaded emergencies we shall have people on stand by.

Last Call For New Installs!
Dear readers, in the past week or so, many of you have started to notice that the year is coming to an end. And the need to upgrade, update and otherwise improve that you have been putting off has finally. A couple of tips:
1.    We are pretty well booked until the end of the year for new installs of web servers.

2.    As you may have guessed from the previous article, no new installs will be scheduled Christmas week.

3.    This is a bit touchy: many of you pre-purchase goods and services before year's end in order to get your expenses into the current accounting year. That's fine, but if that's the case you need to get your installs scheduled and your invoices paid before year end. If you cannot install until 2002, you must pre-pay in order to lock in current pricing. We will not honor 2001 pricing in 2002 on unpaid invoices. You see, as a courtesy, we would routinely invoice customers for work not to be performed for several months. Then we would have a price increase. The customer would call informing us of delays and asking us to keep the order on hold. Great; we'd hold the order and give them the old pricing. But, since this is a small industry, inevitably some new customers would find out that the aforementioned customers were getting special pricing and demand similar treatment. So to keep things fair, our policy is now (as it probably always should have been) Net 10 Days for all invoices.

Deals, Deals, Deals!
Hey it's that special season of the year when it's only natural to be thinking about Deals! Deals! Deals! So these fine companies want you to know that they've got some great specials going on:

IBM Leasing: All leases written before 12/31/01 feature payments and interest deferred for four months. So you get 120 days before your first payment and no interest accrues during that time. Contact Pat Burke @ 800-624-3514 for complete details.

FaxBack: Our absolute favorite fax server system is having a 50% off sale on many of their products, including an extremely cool T1, DSL web fax server which turns your Internet connection into an essentially free way to send tons of faxes. If you wince every time you read your phone bill for faxing, this gizmo is for you. By sending faxes over the Internet you bypass long distance charges. Works great. Call us for more information, to order, or go to www.faxback.com/bf for a trial of their broadcast fax solution.

 

CIARAN'S CORNER: More Windows Bashing!
The latest batch of viruses has been making the rounds. I have noticed that this is almost a daily topic on the DMIA ListServ. In true, chronic curmudgeon mode I want to tell you how, in one fell swoop, and without taking a single computer science class, you can decrease your risks by 90%. Ready: You have two choices: One easy, one which requires more work but works just as well, so long as you are diligent:

Option #1: No work solution: Stop using any Microsoft web browser or e-mail product. Use Eudora for your e-mail, Opera or Netscape as your browser.

Option #2. If you simply must use a Microsoft product such as Outlook, Outlook Express, or Internet Explorer (or don't want to be bothered with other options), then you must make certain that you are getting the proper updates to all the products on every single machine in your company, religiously. I don't know how many of you have Windows 98 SE or ME, but they both feature this nifty little 'auto update' utility. I have been tracking how many patches the auto-update service has performed on a test machine over the year 2001. The answer to date: 37. Want to know how many of them were for general Windows bugs? Zero. Want to know how many were to patch security holes like Red Code, Sircam, etc? Thirty seven. So, by taking the lazy approach, you really are creating more work for yourself than Option #1.

Now, obviously there is a bit more to it than that, but I'm assuming that you've had somebody give your network the once over and shown you how to turn off the options in your e-mail and browser programs which can wreak the most havoc (like letting attachments run macros in your e-mail!) And I sure hope that you never open any e-mail from someone you do not know, especially if it is in HTML (web format) or has an attachment.

FEEDBACK?
I have gotten a lot of, ahem, varied feedback over the past couple of months. Most of the criticism falls into two categories:

1. Why are you picking on Microsoft so much? As a boy, we were forced to study the Middle Ages, which I rather liked, what with all the armor and slashing and gore,etc. Anyway, they had this idea of Noblesse Oblige. This was a code of responsibility which the feudal lord who held sway over all his subjects had to abide by in order to deserve their loyalty. Well Microsoft is the feudal lord. And they reign over every single piece of computer gear you own. It is their obligation to protect us poor, helpless serfs from the nasties outside the city walls. That's what feudal lords do in return for indentured servitude and tribute. They are required, by the code of chivalry, to keep us safe. How well does Microsoft live up to their end of the bargain? When was the last time you saw Bill Gates or any representative of Microsoft express any contrition or sense of responsibility for the unending stream of viruses and bugs which seem to plague mainly us Windows users. In short: so long as Microsoft has a monopoly, we have the right and the obligation to demand an extremely high level of service in return for our complete reliance on their products.

2. Why are your articles so technical? Well, aside from the fact that my job is technical, it's simply because the things I tell you about are important to you. I can't make you care. I can only tell you that you should care. And that if you don't know, as you Americans like to say, 'well, if you don't know, then you better ask somebody!'   Look, I really do try to keep this stuff basic, but the fact is, that a lot of it is not simple. To compare with cars, I would say that we're still around 1920, when a driver was expected to know a lot about what was under the hood, and cars even came with tech manuals so you could fix it yourself when you broke down on a lonely road. Despite claims to the contrary, you need a good mechanic to keep you safe from all these nasty viruses, Windows bugs, etc.

Next time, I will stop ranting and give you some tips on selecting your own 'Computer Guy'. Call this sort of a quiz to see if he/she really is worthy of your trust.

'Til then,

---Ciaràn

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End of E-News From The Suntower, Volume III #24

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