Auto Populate!
Entering Payments Made SIMPLE
In our continuing quest to examine some under-utilized features of SAFE, today we talk about entering payments the easy way.

The Set Up
Amongst those myriad check boxes in Setup, there is an arcane little box which says 'Auto-Populate Payments'. Evidently most of you ignore this. How unfortunate. Because if you do have the courage to check it, a most amazing thing will happen next time you enter a customer payment.

The Pitch
So now go enter a customer payment as usual. Wait: something looks different. There is now another Auto-Populate check box. Will it never stop! But check this one. Now press [Insert] to add your first Line Item. Woah!

You're now looking at a list of all open invoices for this customer. Just tag the ones that apply to this payment and press [OK]. Hey guess what? You're done entering that check.

In Summary
Those of you doing Summary Billing usually receive a single check that might cover hundreds of invoices. What a pain! But try this: Enter the Invoice Number you used for the Summary Bill in the REFERENCE field of the payment and check Auto-Populate. Presto! Every invoice from that Summary Bill appears ready to tag for payment. Did they short pay (they almost always seem to do that, don't they?) No problem. Just untag the ones not included with their check and press [OK]. You'll be done in a fraction of the time you usually spend laboriously validating each invoice.

TIP: The green counter at lower left always shows you how many invoices you have tagged. Make sure that number matches the number of items paid for on the check!

Well, that about covers it. Not much to it, is there? Nope. But we think that once you try it, you'll always want to use Auto-Populate.

Til Next Time!
 

Save $200 On PDFxtensions Now!
Have we gone insane? . Our TransLog SAFEextension is now on sale for $495 until October 18, 2004. To refresh your memory: PDFxtensions is a SAFExtension which allows you to print any report or form directly to an Adobe Acrobat document.

HOW IT WORKS
PDFxtensions is completely transparent. After installation it adds a PDF button to the Print Preview on all reports. To generate a PDF, simply press the button!

E-MAIL
Additionally, you can use PDFxtensions to e-mail forms to customers, vendors and contacts. For example, let's say you have a batch of purchase orders. Instead of printing them to paper, you can instead, e-mail them to their respective vendors, using the e-mail addresses you have set up in their Vendor Masters. With PDFxtensions, SAFE will generate a separate PDF for each PO, then attach that PDF to each e-mail. Your recipients get a clear, totally legible purchase order (no worries about readability as with faxes) and you get an audit trail of what was sent (your e-mail outbox).

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
When you e-mail PDFs of forms, you can also attach other files such as graphics. So when you e-mail a PO for a given product, you not only attach the PDF, but also any artwork files you have already linked to the product in SAFE (remember how we did that in our last issue?) You now have a fool proof way to ensure that your vendor gets all the materials he needs to print your job; every time.

THE OLLIE CONNECTION: PDF FORMS
And if that wasn't enough, if you are accepting templated orders from customers on-line (using Ollie) these templated PDFs can automatically be attached to your POs as well. So your vendor gets not only the PO, but also the artwork (which your customer automagically created in Ollie!) and all you had to do was press the [Print] button!

This works great not only for POs, but also for customer statements (if you've ever received an electronic statement from us that's how it's done.), RFQs, invoices, forms management reports and in fact almost any document generated from SAFE. SAFE will route it to the proper e-mail address intelligently.

And you can get even more creative: for example, we use PDFs for our training contracts. We e-mail the PDF contract to customers and attach that PDF to the sales order so that we can always refer back to the original (there's that Linked Image idea again!) Maybe your company has forms or contracts that you can do the same with?

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
PDFxtensions is by far our most popular SAFExtension. Hopefully now you can see why. So order PDFxtensions today here or by calling us today at (206)-241-4859. You won't know how SAFE is really being used without it!

SQL Server Reporting Services Update!
Many of you have been asking for a low cost front end for Reporting Services. One of the best solutions we have come up with is a $99 wonder called Microsoft Visual Basic.

Wait, come back! Just because it's a programming language, there's no need to be afraid! But inside all that technical gobbledygook is a wonderfully user-friendly report writer. If you have felt comfortable with any report writer program you will feel right at home with VB's report writer module. Even if you have never used any report writer, if you are comfortable with Microsoft Word, you should have no trouble working with the VB report writer.

You can purchase VB directly from us (just call or e-mail your PO.) or from pretty much every software dealer on planet earth.

TIP: Though you can run these reports from any computer, we suggest that any reports you create be saved to your Simple Accounting Folder so that you can run them directly from the SAFE UTILITIES menu!

Ciaran's Corner: Phishing For Our Best Ideas!
Two things: Both concerning 'security'.

PHISHING FOR DOLLARS
I've talked about this before, but it begs repeating: You are surely being phished for, both at home and at work. To review 'phishing' is the practice of sending bogus e-mails which attempt to gain confidential information from you or your company, usually with the ultimate purpose of identity theft.

The messages are almost always indistinguishable from bona-fide e-mails. In other words, they look 'real' to the untrained eye (and often to the trained eye as well.

Common counterfeit 'phish' e-mail scams appear to come from:

E-Bay
PayPal
Citibank (and other credit card providers)

I cannot stress enough that these look completely 'real'. But they are not. And the way you can tell they are a fake is extremely simple: None of these institutions will ever send you the kind of e-mails phishers do. No reputable sender will ever ask you to 'click here to re-enter your password'.

There is a simple solution which is 100% effective in preventing phishing expeditions: If you get an e-mail from, say E-Bay, do not click on any hyperlinks. Instead, open your internet browser and type in their URL by hand and log in manually. And never reply to these e-mails.

YOU'RE GIVING AWAY THE STORE!
We frequently receive e-mails from customers and prospects taking us to task for 'giving away the store'. That is, describing in-depth various features of our software, including our plans for future development. I received on particularly impassioned letter from a customer who uses our PDAxtensions. He was quite upset that we had spent a lot of time explaining how PDAxtensions works with his Palm Pilot and SAFE. His gripe: a competitor of ours now has a somewhat similar offering. He feels that by being so free with sharing our ideas we're only enabling our downfall. To which we respectfully reply:

1. Thanks for the concern! Seriously.

2. Every year we have continued to grow by at least 10%. So the end does not seem to be immanent. I keep my resume polished, of course, however, but despite my well-known disagreements at how we sometimes market SAFE I cannot argue with the fact that my stock in Suntower continues to grow. In other words, something's working.

3. As to -why- it's working, I think the key is that if competitors are copying our ideas (which is true) the fact is that they aren't exactly doing so in record time. For example:
1989 - We offered faxing directly from SAFE. It was at least 3 years later before we heard that a competitor was doing this
1994 - E-mailing forms. Is -anybody- else doing in a transparent way yet?
1996 - 32 Bit Windows Software. Our first competitor that shipped a real product? 2000.
1998 - PDFxtensions - I just saw a competitor has a similar item this year.
2000 - PDAxtensions - OK, so now someone else has co-opted this idea.

There seems to be a lag time of between 3 and 10 years on our ideas. And in the mean time, we're polishing the idea; refining it. And then moving onto other stuff.

The 'Document' industry has always been somewhat sluggish in adopting technology, but we believe, and time has shown that when we are at the leading edge of technology, ultimately we win; simply because there are enough of you who want to separate yourselves from the rest of the pack and are not willing to wait those extra years. In other words, if you've been with us for a while, it's because you choose to be ahead of the curve.  And that's why it doesn't bother us when others 'borrow' our ideas. Because by the time they do so, you and we both have moved on to other opportunities.

You can either lead or follow. And leading seems to work for us.

Til Next Time,

Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
cm@suntowersystems.com