SAFE 6.5!  Controversy
As we said last time, we'd have more on the 'bigger deals' in SAFE 6.5. Once a Sales Order is invoiced, it is no longer completely frozen. You are now able to add and edit to the order in a number of new ways mainly having to do with costs. Now everyone wants these features. Yes! Yes! Yes!

But implementing these features are not the problem. The problem is how to use them SAFEly. Which is to say that using them is subject to various rules, some of which can get complicated depending on the Sales Order. It is up to you to decide how best to use (or not use!) these new capabilities because, as Spider Man likes to say, 'with great power comes great responsibility!'

THE BASIC RULES

1. You may not edit any piece of data which the customer will see on their invoice. This is the most important rule! This includes pricing, addresses, sales tax and quantities of non-Blind Line Items. So if you made an error in any of these, you must still Void and Rebill. This policy will never change.

2. You must be granted Security to do use these new features.

3. You may not  edit any aspect of the order if the G/L Period in which the order was posted is now Locked.

4. You may not edit the order after invoicing if the Commission has been Locked.

5. You can now add costs as Blind Line Items directly onto a sales order after invoicing. This includes costs which are posted to A/P and which affect inventory.

6. A new flag 'PermaLock' is present for each Sales Order. If a user with Security 'permalocks' an order it is frozen and may not be edited ex post facto in any way. (This feature includes commissions, inventory, notes, etc.) This feature is in response to user's requests for orders to be locked down. You can set PermaLock to automatically be set for every order that is invoiced, which effectively disables one's ability to change anything on Sales Orders after billing.

7. There is a Global Option you can enter into Setup|Company which will allow you to add an Activity to the Sales Order which will log that a change has been made to an order after invoicing. Such activities cannot be deleted by the user.
   Ed Note: This is not the same thing as our TransLog SAFExtensions which offer far more comprehensive logging!

8. If you add costs onto a S/O after invoicing, the new costs will be posted into the current G/L Period; not into the original G/L Period when the order was invoiced.

NEW FEATURE #1: ADDING BLIND LINE ITEMS TO ORDERS AFTER INVOICING
You can now add costs as line items directly onto a sales order after invoicing subject to the rules before. This is completely SAFE and is the least controversial of all these changes.

1. You may add any costs you like for freight or art, but not add any freight or art to be billed to the customer since this would change the invoice for the customer. If there are A/P bills involved, they are posted to A/P as per usual.

2. In this initial version of SAFE you only get one shot! Which is to say: When you open the order, you can add any number of new Blind Line Items. But when you are done, you must OK the order. This then closes the transaction and  immediately posts the effects to G/L, A/P and inventory. In other words, once you press [OK] the new Blind Line Items become a permanent part of the S/O (as with any line items entered before invoicing). The upshot? Be careful

3. You will, however, be allowed to Delete any Blind Line Item which does not have a Purchase Order attached or A/P Posting and which has no customer pricing for Art or Freight. This includes not only Blind Line Items added after invoicing, but those added before invoicing. In other words, as we keep saying, we let you edit it (and that includes deletion) so long as it would not affect the appearance of the customer invoice.

NEW FEATURE #2: CHANGING COSTS ON LINE ITEMS AFTER INVOICING
In other words, you can edit the costs on various line items after invoice a S/O without having the Vendor Bills and then, instead of going into A/P to create a Vendor Bill and link it to the S/O you can simply open the S/O and enter the Costs as you currently can with unbilled S/O and have SAFE automagically post the Costs into A/P. And if you did enter a Vendor Invoice into the S/O before invoicing you can also change the Costs posted to A/P in the same way. Of course, all this is subject to the following fine print. Read carefully...

1. If there are existing (unpaid) Vendor Bills linked to a Line Item, edits you make to the Cost on the S/O will be reflected on the linked Vendor Bill. Since this will change the G/L, the G/L Transaction for that A/P Bill will be re-posted.

2. If there are existing and paid Vendor Bills linked to a Line Item, you cannot edit the Cost. You would need to first void the A/P Check (which re-opens the Vendor Bill) and then you would be allowed to edit the Cost as above.

CAVEAT DISTRIBUTORUS!
But there is no free lunch!I So there are two important 'gotchas' to be considered: one for Blind Line Items and one for Changing Costs.

• Gotcha #1 Forms Management: If you add a Blind Line Item using a Product which is Customer Owned, you may be affecting their Forms Management values. This is nothing new: the potential for this kind of screw up exists before invoicing. But our concern is that users might want to use Blind Line Items to make all manner of 'fixes' to releases and this is not recommended. To this end, we are offering a new Security ID to block users from creating Blind Line Items for such Products.

• Gotcha #2 Inventory Updates: If your changes affect inventory, you must run a Calculate Usage for all Products on the Sales Order. SAFE will not automatically update any changes. Note that Blind Line Items cannot experience this situation. They are always handled automatically.

THE FUTURE: TRANSLOG!
The big improvement everyone is already asking about is 'undoability'. The current feature set offers none. You get to make edits, but you only get one shot. However, since TransLog has the ability to track these changes, our plan is to offer licensees of TransLog this capability in a future free update. In other words, get TransLog now and you will be able to have the features above plus undoability.

SO WHEN, ALREADY?
The plan is to offer SAFE 6.5 September 1, in time for the 'really big shoe' (..er the DMIA convention.)

Stay tuned!
 

Save Over 40% On Translog Now!
Have we gone insane? . Our TransLog SAFEextension is now on sale for $895 until August 31. To refresh your memory: TransLog is a SAFExtension which allows you to track changes to any and all data tables in SAFE. Want to know who changed an address? Arguing over who billed a customer with the wrong Ship To Address? Interested in data on gathering data as to which CSRs are performing particular tasks? The answer to all these questions and more is in TransLog.

HOW IT WORKS
TransLog is completely transparent. After installation it adds another menu option to your Utilities screen. From there you can

• Set up events to monitor
• Browse and report on monitored events using our Query functions.

Until now, sales of TransLog have tended to be by our larger customers. After all, if you're doing large volumes of transactions, monitoring isn't just a good idea; it's essential! But thinking about TransLog as being only for 'big companies' is a shame really, because whether you do 50 orders a month or 5,000 there are many times when you need to know 'who did what, when'. As we so often say, 'Even the smallest broker/distributor has almost all the business complexity of the big shops!'.

Plus! In addition to the above, users of TransLog will be able to further benefit from the new editing features in SAFE 6.5 and be able to undo changes to Sales Orders, even after invoicing!

So we're glad to be able to offer this discount as a way of spreading the gospel. We're convinced that once you start using TransLog you'll find literally dozens of important benefits; not just in terms of find out "who's responsible?" but also as a management tool that can actually increase sales and provide better customer service!

So order TransLog today here. You won't know how SAFE is really being used without it!
 

Ciaran's Corner: SAFE 6.5 Saving You From You!
It might amaze you how many times we'll get the following type of question:

'Blah, blah, blah happened. Please go into our system and let us know why this occurred. Oh, and can you get back to me within the hour? I have a customer waiting.'

Here's the thing: This seemingly innocuous request is loaded! I could devote 4-5 pages to just this topic:

1. Why it costs you at least 1 hour every time we 'just go into your system'

2. Why we can't tell you what happened without a -lot- of effort unless you have Translog.

3. Why it is in your best interest to -have- Translog.

OK, you've heard this rant before. Knowing "who did what when and why" is a big deal but not too many of you seem to care enough to actually buy Translog. And the answer as to why this is (aside from sticker shock) is simple: You think accounting software should be 'self-describing'. Which is the technical way of saying that from your point of view SAFE should never do something (or let you do something) that can't be figured out afterwards by printing a report or looking at an audit trail.

Yeah, right.

Actually, I support this point of view 110%. But my cynical remark is not because I disagree, but rather because this capability, so very easy in a pen and paper accounting system is surprisingly difficult in a computer system. And in fact, I would suggest that it is the struggle for good auditing which is the single biggest hurdle in making user-friendly accounting software. It's like security: convenience is the inherent enemy of good security. Similarly, iron-clad auditing tends to run contrary to 'easy fixability'. But for years many of you have wanted to be able to do something in SAFE that could easily be done with pen and paper: edit costs after a job was billed. Or add costs to the job after it was billed. And though perhaps you did not say so out loud you groused. And groused. So we're giving you what you want. But remember that old adage...

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
When you make a change on a piece of paper it is sort of self-describing. Everyone can see that you made a change. And unless someone is being deceitful, it is usually easy to see just from the writing who made the change. Not so with computers, unless one creates some method of logging changes. And that method is our program Translog. So if you don't have Translog you can't always reliably know 'who did what, when.' Which many of you do not choose to purchase. (Perhaps you're waiting for it to be included in core SAFE? Keep dreaming; Wayyyyy too costly for that, I'm afraid.)

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!
So if you have gathered by now that I am personally not doing cartwheels over SAFE 6.5 you are correct. For without Translog, how will you guarantee the trustworthiness of entries? In other words, if you print a pre-bill today and it looks different tomorrow, how will you know that the editing to the S/O was legit or no? How many more calls will we take about 'why did this happen?'

It took serious fighting (I mean, punch, duck, stick, jab---no kidding) to add these features to SAFE 6.5. So many of our beta testers have complained 'We're all big boys and girls. We accept the risk because we need this.'  Fine. I'll assume you're not just saying this and won't get upset when it's you who gets into trouble over a changed order. But then we still have to ask ourselves from an ethical standpoint what it means to add these features. After all, we're potentially allowing you to really shoot yourself in the foot if you have an untrustworthy employee (or a really careless one for that matter).

SO QUIT RANTING, MAN! WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?
Here are my recommendations for Best Practices

• If you're going to use these new features? Get Translog. At the least it will tell what happened. And at best, it will allow you to undo boo-boos. If it pains you to get out your checkbook, just remember how much your people want to be able to edit costs after invoicing. Maybe it's worth it just for that alone. And you can let them do it and still sleep peacefully at night.

• Assign only one Employee ID and I mean one to edit costs after invoicing. Do not give that person access to A/P or G/L. (If you do not have Require Employee Log In enabled do so immediately.)

• Enable the feature 'Create Activity' whenever you do change a cost after invoicing.

• Print a Pre-Bill immediately before and immediately after each change and add it to the customer's file (even on releases). Don't like having all the paper? Great. Use SAFE PDFExtensions and keep PDFs of all changes! Don't have PDFExtensions? Get them here now !

Til Next Time,

Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
cm@suntowersystems.com