eAccounts Global - Newsletter 141

1st April 2006 - Newsletter 141

Please read and pass on for your staff to read.

Happy Easter!

I cannot believe it has been nearly 4 months since the last newsletter! These newsletters are meant to come out monthly (my apologies) but due to how busy we have been over the last couple of months, they have gone on to the back-burner.

The 1st of April is traditionally the busiest day of the year for eAccounts. With all our customers not only doing End of Periods but the poor servers working overtime to handle the extra workload of it also being End of the financial year for 99% of our clients.

So far all the roll overs have gone without a hitch as expected.

Internet Speed Increases In April

Telecom is rolling out better broadband offerings. For a lot of eAccounts customers, that could mean up to six times faster than your current plan for teh same price. When you get a chance, please check with your ISP (not just XTRA are offering this speed upgrade) to ensure you are on the best plan.

Over the past few years we have seen download speeds increase dramatically. At the same time the cost of connections only keeps dropping.

These improvements that Telecom and the other ISP's are rolling out reinforce that the eAccounts model is on the right track.

Autosend Price Lists On A Regular Basis To Your Customers

How many of you have customers that you regularly send price lists?

We now have a new automated feature under Stock Price Lists.

Create a Price List

Save the Price List Definition

Click on the Recall Definition Button

Select the "Autosend" link on the particular line.

Enter up to 5 Debtors and/or 4 email addresses of people that aren't necessarily debtors.

Select the frequency to send the price List (i.e. first of each month)

Save the Price List Definition Autosend page and rest easy knowing your customers will never bother you for a price list ever again.

Your Logo On Price Lists

There is now the ability to have your Logo appearing at the top of the price lists. Because this needs to be setup uniquely to each store please contact your eAccounts representative if you would like this feature added to your price lists.

Order Processing Add/Edit Functionality

For those of you that raise orders through eAccounts (as opposed to using ePos) you may have noticed some streamlining on the screen where you confirm each product.

You can when saving (or editing) a product line now:

Move the line to any position in the order

Overtype the line to any position in the order

Copy the line to any position in the order.

Also if the order has more than 3 lines on the order an extra option box appears allowing you save all product lines on the order with the same product code with the price.

These new options are particularly useful for customers who do large quotes (200 – 300 product lines) within eAccounts.

Auto Expire Orders And Self Closing

The order processing system now automatically deletes any order started that has no transactions each night (at midnight). Any order that has been reopened (this includes quotes) now automatically re-closes after 2 hours. Previously if you raised an Invoice without updating it, then went back into without re-saving it, it would be treated as a new order. Now after 2 hours the order will automatically re-save with the status of Invoiced.

Statements to different email address

A new feature allows you to redirect emailed Statement to a different address than the Account default for Invoices etc.

Under Maintain Debtors you will see "Statements Are" option you can now redirect the statement to any of the 5 email addresses we store in the Debtor Master.

TIP Here : A number of clients are saving lots on postage by sending their statements (and invoices) by email.

Invoice copies to different email address

When in the Customer Enquiry program you can now select to send copy Invoices to any of the 5 email address held in the Debtor Master.

Sales Budgets By Branch

This is a huge new feature within eAccounts. Under "Maintain Sales Budgets" (on the Order processing menu) you can now set the Sales Budget for the next 12 months forward (and back) These can be loaded by Branch if you are running a Multi Branch operation.

If you don't fill in the budget, when you roll over the system will automatically fill the new months budget with the Sales value of the previous month.

Under the Statistics button on the front menu (available to managers) there are several places you will see the budget/s being displayed.

New Sales Projection Feature

Another huge new feature under Statistics is the ability of eAccounts to calculate the projected Sales for the month using a formula incorporating the Budget, Sales To Date, Trading Days in the month and Days that have traded so far.

At the beginning of each month you will need to count up how many "Trading Days" there are in the current month and update the value using the button at the bottom of the Statistics Screen. You can under Maintain Budgets (see above) set the correct days for each month for the next 12 months in advance.

Sometimes you may need to adjust the "Days Gone" in the current month. This can be done through the same button at the bottom of the statistics screen.

Graphs under Statistics

Also under the Statistics screen are three new buttons to show very powerful graphs of your business.

Stock On Hand Graph – Displays our stock holding at the end of each month, can also optionally show the Monthly sales. Use this graph to keep on eye on your stock holding and prevent stock blowouts.

Sales Graph – Use this to compare actual sales against your budget.

Customer Balances – Use this to compare the Debtors balance, are they rising ? do they follow the same pattern as sales (they should) and is the overdue component of your debtors balances under control?

Use the <F11> to toggle your screen to maximum screen and then use the Screen Print function of your browser to print the graph to your color printer (now you can impress your Bank Manager)

Branch Sales Summary

For those of you that run multiple Sales Branches, under Statistics you can also get a breakdown of your sales by Branch. It will also show the Budget, Projected Sales and Actual vs Budget % by Branch.

New Customer Enquiry Financial Breakdown

Under Customer Enquiry when you key in an invoice to search for, the system now shows you a summary of that invoice showing everything that has happened to that one Invoice. Previously if an invoice was paid over multiple months and especially if a Credit was involved it was sometimes confusing to understand what happened. Now its much easier to follow.

Managing Negative Stock

Two new features here to manage Negative Stock which technically there should never be any of:

Under Statistics, click on yesterday's date in the left hand column. You will then see under the Stock's Expanded Stats it will show you the total Qty and value of Stock in your system that is negative.

If there is any negative stock, run the Stock Report program, select report # 5 (All Negative Stock), once printed analyze and correct through stock adjustments.

Perpetual Stock Updating Of The General Ledger

There are now two ways to manage your Sales/Stock integration with your General Ledger. The "Legacy way" required you to make an adjustment of opening and closing stock at the end of the month manually. This has the disadvantage that your cannot run meaningful Financial reports for the current month until the end of the month.

Our new "Perpetual Stock" method automatically calculates and adjusts "Cost Of Sales" and "Stock On Hand" dynamically in your General Ledger. The advantages of this is that your "Trading", "Profit And Loss" and "Balance Sheets" always reflect your true stock 100 percent accurately every day (assuming your Stock is correct in your Stock system) and there are no messy journals to do at the end of the month.

The other advantage is that the system takes into consideration in the GL the Stock Received but no invoice received through Creditors, and yes it does this 24/7 as well.

Creditors Bulk Run Report Option

Under Maintain Creditors there is the option to categorize your creditors into "Bulk Runs". This feature allows you to easily do multiple payment runs during the month i.e. Small Trade Creditors, Key Creditors & Service Creditors.

You can also report your creditors by "Bulk Run" under the Creditor List report.

Making sure all Creditors have a valid Email Address

One of the best features of the eAccounts Creditors system is the fact that it can email your Creditors their remittances in advance of your payment. This only works if you ensure you have all the email addresses of all your Creditors on file. And then have every Creditor configured to have their Remittance sent automatically be email.

To test what Creditors are not configured use the "Creditors List" report and select the option "Only those not receiving a remittance"

Trust me, your suppliers love receiving your electronic remittances because they always know what invoices you are paying when your payment hits their bank account.

After hours (emergencies only) Ph Neil on 021 921188 or email neil@eaccounts.co.nz

The Team - Neil, Mark and Darron
(and our consultants Peter, Lee and Mark Tod)