Ed. Note: You Skipped A Week!
Sure did. It was my fault for notifying you ahead of time in our last issue that we'd be skipping a week. Sorry about that! Got a number of e-mails asking 'wha hoppened?' Nice to know people read this and expect it. By the way, from time to time, we find out anecdotally that some of you don't receive your issues nice and reliably every two weeks. If that's the case, we want to know about it right away! Just send me an e-mail if that happens. Of course, you can always go to www.suntowersystems.com/newsfrom.htm to read all back issues, but we want to make sure that every subscriber gets his or her issue without any extra clicking. ---MO'D
 

SAFE/X Tip: A/P Credit Cards!
Our latest release improves the handling of A/P Credits; especially with regard to payments made via plastic.

As you know, handling vendor payments is usually only tricky when something is out of the ordinary. When a bill comes in and you pay the full amount? No problem. But when there are partial payments, or credits from previous payments, or payments that were made and need to be voided and re-applied? You get the idea. It can be hard to track for even the most experienced bookkeeper.

Here are some tips for tracking more complex bill payments in SAFE.

A. Paying A Vendor On A Credit Card
Easy enough. Locate the Bill to be paid (Fred's Printing) and click the 'Manual' button. A new Bill is created which transfers the debt to the Credit Card Vendor (BankOfHysteria-MC).

B. Reversing A Payment Made On A Credit Card
In this case, you might think to go to the Credit Card Bill and void that. Nope. Remember: we have a payment to reverse. So the thing to do is to go to the original Bill (Fred's Printing) and click on the 'Payments' button and void the Payment. That voids the payment and the Bill for BankOfHysteria-MC.

C. Receiving A Credit From The Credit Card Company
OK, you paid Fred's Printing, but then found out there was a problem with the order. Fred's a great guy so he issues you a partial credit on your credit card. Still not too hard.

1. Locate the original Bill.

2. Clone the Bill, changing the cost to a negative for the amount to credit.

At this point, we'll pause to tell you that you don't have to clone. You could have just as easily created a generic new Bill. We chose to Clone because it's faster and because we wanted to adjust the cost on the original Sales Order. If that's not an issue, no need to clone.

3. Now select the new Bill (Credit Memo) for Fred's Printing and hit the Apply Credit button to transfer the credit to your Credit Card Vendor (BankOfHysteria-MC).

4. From the Apply Credit Window, select Credit Card and the Bank Of Hysteria Vendor ID (BHMC) and hit 'OK'.

D. Reversing The Credit From The Credit Card Company
Oops! It turns out that there was not a problem with the order after all and you don't get a credit back from Fred. Still not a big problem. Again, the trick is to remember to go to the Payment to reverse the 'credit to the credit card'.

1. Locate Fred's credit memo (in scenario C.) You'll see that you cannot Void the Bill (credit memo) because it was 'paid' (ie. the debt was transferred to BankOfHysteria-MC.)

2. Click on the 'Payments' button and void the Payment to BankOfHysteria-MC. That voids the payment and the credit Bill for BankOfHysteria-MC.

3. Now you will be able to Void the Fred's credit memo (Bill). Do so and all's well that ends well.

Summary
Credit card payments in SAFE are actually fairly straight forward. What can be tricky is keeping track of what is what since the word 'credit' seems to get be used to describe just about everything!

If you remember to always void the payment history of the source transaction (the transaction that created the payment/credit) you'll likely have no trouble.

Til Next Time!
 

Ollie Tip: Customer Specific Folders
When getting started with Ollie, typically you'll simply dump all your product images and documents into a single folder. But over time, this becomes difficult to manage. So Ollie makes it possible to segregate each client's documents into separate folders. To enable this feature, you need to go into the SAFE Setup under the Global Options tab and locate for:

PARAMETER: UseCustomerSpecificImageFolders

Set that VALUE to 1.

Then, you need to create a subdirectory (folder) directly underneath the main IMAGES folder for each customer using their Customer ID. (in other words, if their customer id is SMITH01, then the folder name should also be SMITH01.) That's all there is to it.

Note: You do not need to create a unique folder for every customer. But you do need to create a folder for every Ollie customer. This is critical! If you forget to create the customer specific folder (or forget to place the images in that folder), your client will see no images next time they log into Ollie!

Note: Once you enable customer specific image folders, you should no longer place any images in the main IMAGE folder as these will be ignored. So, if you've enabled customer specific image folders, you should find a 'home' for every file in the main IMAGE folder; and that 'home' will be the customer's specific folder.

WORKS FOR PDFS TOO!
There is also a separate option to store PDFs in the same way--by customer specific folder. This is useful for managing large numbers of templates for business cards and other imprinted items. This is referred to as Customer Specific PDF Folders.

Again, to enable this feature, you need to go into the SAFE Setup under the Global Options tab and locate for:

PARAMETER: UseCustomerSpecificPDFFolders

And set that VALUE to 1.

Then, you need to create a subdirectory (folder) directly underneath the main PDFs folder for each customer using their Customer ID. (in other words, if their customer id is SMITH01, then the folder name should also be SMITH01.) That's all there is to it.

Repetitious Note #1: You do not need to create a unique folder for every customer. But you do need to create a folder for every Ollie customer. This is critical! If you forget to create the customer specific folder (or forget to place the PDFs in that folder), your client will be unable to view any PDFs next time they log into Ollie!

Repetitious Note #2: Once you enable customer specific PDF folders, you should no longer place any images in the main IMAGE folder as these will be ignored. So, if you've enabled customer specific PDF folders, you should find a 'home' for every file in the main PDFs folder; and that 'home' will be the customer's specific folder.

Til Next Time!
 

Ciaran's Corner: No Glass Ceiling, But No Guests?
This is a tough one. It's probably my most overblown rant to date. Ready or not: There aren't enough women in university. OK, there are women in school (boy are there -are- ever women in college... ever watch MTV's 'Real World'? WOW!) Sorry. Got a bit distracted. Right. There are women in college. In fact, I take that all back. As you may know, there are now more girls than boys in college. All that gender equality stuff some of us went nuts over in the 60's and 70's has borne fruit. There's just one problem: Girls insist on studying, well, girl stuff. And it's hurting our country. Seriously. Stay with me for a moment.

You may or may not know that there is an ongoing cage-death-match over here on the left coast over visas for high tech immigrant workers. Many of us at Suntower Systems came over here on these H1-B visas.  The idea is to allow for an input of 'brains' in industries where there is a shortage of domestic talent. Every year, the requests from tech firms for these workers increases. Or, to save even more money, the work is simply shifted overseas to exotic places like Bangalore. Some of the staunchest opponents of immigration reform turn out to be, not farmers or meat packers, but the executives at Microsoft. They need cheap labor too! Another kind of cheap labor. But cheap labor all the same.

But these are jobs that Americans don't want to do. ...er... that is, women don't seem to want to do. See if women make up 60% of your college enrollment, but only 10% of your physics enrollment, you don't need a slide rule to figure out that there's going to be a shortage of physicists down the road. Hence the need to import workers from abroad.

Did I say 10%? I was being generous. In the non-glamorous fields of engineering, in some specialties--like civil engineering, it's as low as 2%. That's two. Hmmmm... Remember all those bridges that need re-building? All those roads we need? The power grids that are falling apart?

What got me started on this? There have been a couple of recent studies which have debunked the traditional 'girls aren't good at math' idea. Based on analysis of standardised testing, it seems that girls brains are just as good at math as boys. If there aren't as many young women studying engineering and math it's probably socialisation and not the dreaded 'XX'.

What can you do? You can support education. Specifically, instead of sponsoring the local football team (sacrilege!), you can ask your local high school about programs that support and encourage the brainier girls. Seriously. They get so much reinforcement about hair-styles and make-up and all that, but the most technical thing a lot of teen girls learn is how to 'text' as fast as they can talk. If you have a younger girl, you can do a self-check next time you're in the toy store or on a 'play date'... how much are you encouraging Jimmy with the chemistry set while little Brittany heads straight for the Barbies.

America is the big land of choice. We hate being told what to do and we're totally leary of any government 'call to action' (...er... unless we just got bombed--then we swing into action, really well!) But we need a call to action. Market forces aren't gently nudging us to use the fifty percent of our brain potential we're going to need to rebuild our infrastructure and compete globally. It's really up to us to get our daughters to become the scientists and builders our country so desperately needs.

Til Next Time!

Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
cm@suntowersystems.com

THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. The information contained in this document represents the current view of Suntower Systems on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Suntower Systems must respond to change in market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Suntower Systems and Suntower Systems cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication. INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED 'AS IS' WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND FREEDOM FROM INFRINGEMENT. The user assumes the entire risk as to the accuracy and the use of this document. This document may be copied and distributed subject to the following conditions:
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End of E-News From The Suntower, Volume X #16