Our Fax Number Is Changing!
Effective Immediately, you can now reach us by fax at (206)428-6035. You can continue to use the old fax number for another 60 days or so but by August 1, 2009, this will be our main fax contact point. Please update your records accordingly. We're doing this as part of our new support for the MyFax Internet Faxing Service which is included free, Free, FREE in SAFE XI.

Anniversary Deal Time Is Running Out!
Just a reminder: Our Annual Loyalty Discount expires June 30. If you're planning on taking advantage of this discount (and why wouldn't you?), it's time to get a move on!

Effective immediately, your business will receive a credit equal to $100 for every year you've been a registered user of Simple Accounting (up to $500). Use it as you will. At the least, it will buy your company a custom report that might shave an hour or two off a particular clerical task every month (and how much is that worth). At most (and you know who you are, you swell people!) it might pay for an entire year's with of technical support or a SAFExtensions module (like the very cool PDFExtensions which let you print or e-mail any SAFE Report or Form directly to an Acrobat PDF).

OK, Here's The Fine Print.
1. You may use the Program Discount towards any SAFExtension, custom programming or forms design we offer.

2. The discount may not be used on any invoices billed prior to May 15, 2009.

3. You must take advantage of your discount by June 30, 2009.

4. You can pre-pay if you like for specific work to be scheduled with this discount, but you can't just send in a check to be used 'on account'.

5. This offer POSITIVELY ends JUNE 30th, 2009. That's IT!

6. Now here's the latest curve. You may also use this credit towards your next Remote Support Subscription as long as you show proof of purchase of an upgrade to SQL Server 2008 before your next RSS subscription is due and before 12/31/09. In other words, if you purchase your upgrade to SQL Server 2008, either from us or anyone else, before December 31, 2009 you can take the amount of your eligible discount off of your next annual RSS invoice (whenever that occurs from May 15 2009 to May 14 2010.)

Wherever you fall within the spectrum of SAFE longevity, please accept this as a token of our appreciation. Thanks, and, as they say, 'Many More!'

FAQ's
1. I don't want to purchase SQL Server 2008 at this time. Can I use the credit towards RSS anyway. Nope.

2. Can I wait until closer to my RSS renewal date to upgrade to SQL Server 2008? Sure. But your paid invoice for SQL Server must be dated and submitted after May 15 and December 31 2009.

Til Next Time!
 

Call For Alpha Testers!
We've hinted at it and now it's ready to begin testing. The whole world seems to have gone iPhone, so why not us? We are currently looking for alpha testers for an impending iPhone application that will provide an enhanced set of functions beyond our current PDAXtensions. We can't talk much about it, but it will definitely including the ability to scan using common bar code and RFID protocols to track inventory as well as the ability to view and place customer orders in real time.

FAQs
1. Is this a simple port of PDAXtensions?
No. It's a complete re-write.

2. In the past, I've tried beta products. But what is an 'alpha'?
An alpha is the first version of a product that we feel can be tested 'in the wild'. It is not necessarily feature complete and in fact, the alpha is our chance to get feedback outside these four walls. However, expect occasional crashes, both minor and possibly major. Use at your own risk, blah, blah, blah. A 'beta', by contrast, has already passed a first round of testing and is considered feature complete.

3. Why iPhones? I've got a (BlackBerry, LG, Palm Pre, etc. etc. etc..)
Yeah, that is a problem. Sadly there is no current standard platform for phone development and developing apps for each product is completely different. We don't have the resources to support such a currently fractured market. We choose the iPhone mainly because it has the most 'buzz'. As the market shakes out we hope to support other products.

4. What will I be required to do?
It's pretty standard
a. You will need to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
b. You will agree to a program of regular reports on your experience. This will include weekly surveys.
c. You will agree to report on all bugs using our standard bug reporting system.

5. How long will the test program last?
We expect to run this test until August 1, 2009.

You can expect that this will require about 1/2 hour per day, but it could be more. If you fail to comply with any of the above conditions, you will be dropped from the program. On the other hand, the rewards for your successful participation will (hopefully) be worth your effort---er... in addition to the satisfaction that comes from furthering the success of the software that runs your business and improving the lives of people in your industry. :)

If you are interested and meet the above criteria, please contact Maireād at webmaster@suntowersystems.com for an application. We look forward to a strong participation

Til Next Time!
 

SAFE XI Tip: QLIT Improvements!
One of the most overlooked features of the Sales Order Browse has always been Query Line Item Tag (QLIT). QLIT is a little different from the regular Query tab in that it allows you to tag Sales Orders which fulfill criteria of their line items. Read that again to make sure you get it. Line Items is the key. Here is an example:

Show me all Line Items in Shipped Status and which have not been Invoiced. Note that this combines a filter on the Line Items (Shipped Status) and the S/O's Header (Invoice).

Another example?

Show me all Sales Orders which have one or more Line Items for which P.O.s have been generated, but which have not been Acknowledged and for which the Order Date is older than five days. The Purchase Order and Acknowledgement data comes from the Line Items and the Order Date from the S/O.

This is a huge benefit for rooting out Sales Orders where you know that the information is in there 'somewhere'. What you're doing is getting a list of the Orders in the Sales Order Browse, but searching based on information that is in each Line Item (such as Ship To Address, Product, Price, Cost, Vendor, etc.).

The only drawback to QLIT (aside from learning to work with Queries in general) was the speed factor. If you had a large Sales History, a very complex QLIT Query could take 2 minutes. SAFE XI improves on this by increasing the speed of execution many, many times over. In our tests, Queries that took over two minutes in SAFE X now take 5 seconds!

If you haven't checked out QLIT before, you should give it a try now. The time you spend learning to manipulate the Query Manager will be more than offset by the time you save in finding orders that otherwise require laboriously, one-at-a-time 'eyeballing'. If you have tried QLIT, but shied away because of the speed issue, we strongly recommend that you give it another shot as soon as possible. The new fast response will turn it from an option of last resort to a tool you'll use many times a week.

Til Next Time!
 

Ciaran's Corner: Still Faxing?
Are you still faxing? I've always hated them. A big waste of time and paper. But things are getting better as people use the vast InterWeb for the majority of B2B communications. Frankly, we use our big. honkin' fax machine/sheet fed scanner about once a day now. And soon, it will be put on e-Bay as we are now eating our own dog food (programmer-speak for using our own software to perform mission-critical functions) using MyFax (http://www.myfax.com) and the built-in interface we included in SAFE XI.

Over the past decade e-mail and the web were slowly killing fax, but the fact is that fax has several advantages that the web has never fully addressed; one is security. You know where a fax is going. And a fax isn't as easily doctored in transit as are some other types of electronic documents. In other words, you're pretty much guaranteed that what you stick in the hopper is what the person at the other end gets. Another advantage? Guaranteed delivery. When you send a fax, you know whether or not it was received. And finally? Pretty much everyone knows how to use a fax. Sad to say, but there are still far too many people out there who just don't cotton to any of that new-fangled e-mail stuff. Let alone, texting or Tweeting.

We've supported network faxing for twenty years. But that required dedicated hardware and configuration. Not so easy for the small user or the guy with the remote office.

Our MyFax interface makes faxing any SAFE document as seamless as printing. Tag ten invoices or POs and they all go to the proper customers or vendors. It's slick because you don't think about it. It just works like how you'd expect it to work. You get a complete audit trail with confirmations of all transmissions (sends and receives) via e-mail. And it hits your recipient pretty much as instantly as a real fax. (Before the screaming starts, yeah, you need your forms to be set up for faxing and yeah, that costs---but if you already had this done for use with NetSatisfaxtion, you're already done.)

The potential downside for us was MyFax. It took a lot for us to partner with any company... to make a SAFE feature contingent on any other company besides Microsoft. And asking you to pay a monthly fee? We thought double hard on that one. Still, MyFax has a great track record and the service speaks for itself. And did I mention the money savings? If we reduce our land line requirements by even one phone line, we'll more than cover the monthly fee. Way more.  I strongly encourage all of you to check out what they do. They even have a thirty day free trial so there's zero risk.

I will not miss faxes when they finally die. I anticipate that, at some point, some secure and guaranteed form of delivery will become standard over the web. Until that day, faxing will continue to be necessary and the SAFE/MyFax interface makes it easy to have one's cake and eat it too.

Oh yeah, I've been asked to say that our new fax number is (206) 428-6035.

Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
cm@suntowersystems.com

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End of E-News From The Suntower, Volume XI #12