Annual Conference - September 22-23rd

It’s not too soon to begin planning to attend this year’s annual OSAS and TRAVERSE Customer Excellence Conference being held September 22-23.       The agenda will include two days of breakout sessions with several classes to choose from for each session.  The venue is South Point Casino in Las Vegas.                Check www.osas.com for additional details. Start planning and budgeting now so you can attend. Top

Making use of the various fields found within the Customer Set up can assist you as you mine the data and produce the reports you need to analyze your business. Below are some fields and their uses that you may not have thought about utilizing previously. 

Attention This field appears above the Company name on the Invoice or Statement. It does not appear on Customer Labels.

Contact This is informational and does not print.

Status This defaults to ACTIVE. If you do not want any transactions posted to this Customer change the status to INACTIVE. Payments may be posted to an inactive Customer.

Bill to If this is a Customer whose purchases you want to keep up with, but is billed to another Customer that you.

Group Code is a free standing field for your use. There are no reports that use this field as criteria but you can use this field to sort your customers when mining your data.

Terms Code can be set up specifically for each customer. Discounts and days to pay can be set up from Invoice Date or from End of Month.

Distribution Code signifies the Accounts Receivable General Ledger account to post invoices to as well as the Freight and Misc GL accounts found on the total screen. The distribution code can be changed on an invoice by invoice basis depending upon the GL account you want the purchases posted to.

Class Code can be assigned to a customer for purposes of sorting. Class code is used as selections for sorting and printing in the Customer Activity and Customer Sales Reports, as well as use when extracting your data.

Credit Limit can be set for customers. A message will appear when entering an invoice for the customer if they have already reached their credit limit. This is just a message it will not stop you from invoicing the customer.

Document Delivery will set this customer as to whether invoices or statements will be printed on paper, faxed, or emailed to the customer. With the Sales Order application you can specify how quotes acknowledgement, and RMA’s are delivered in addition to invoices and statements.

Credit Hold will give a warning at invoice entry time that the customer is on hold. It can be bypassed.

Partial Shipment will also give a warning at invoice entry time if the customer will not accept partial shipments.

Ship To If a customer has several locations you can set up multiple ship to addresses and also assign different Territories, Tax Groups and Distribution Codes for each shipping address.

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Open System, Inc. continues to offer a FREE one hour class on Thursdays at 11:00 am. This Webex class will allow you to see some of the new features of TRAVERSE version 11. The April dates are the 1^st, 15^th and 29^th.          

Whether you are currently using OSAS or TRAVERSE you can sign up for a Thursday morning demonstration class at www.osas.com or contact us and we can get you signed up.           

See how this new version of TRAVERSE can assist your company. Currently the following modules are available for version 11: General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Sales Order, Accounts Payable, Purchase Order, Inventory, Bill of Materials, Bank Reconciliation and Banking. We are currently expecting the release of the Payroll and Project Costing modules mid-summer.

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The standard way to void a check is to use the VOID CHECK function found in “Pay Invoices”.           

Voiding a check or series of checks this way will reverse the Cash and Accounts Payable Entry (Debits cash, Credits Accounts Payable) and places the invoice or invoices back out in the Open Invoice File.

Assuming these invoices will not be paid to the vendor you then go into Transactions and select Miscellaneous Debits. Using the same Vendor, Invoice Number, General Ledger Accounts, and Amount duplicate this invoice as a Miscellaneous Debit. Once it’s posted, it will align with the original invoice in the Open Invoice File.           

If your option in Business Rules is set to allow posting without printing checks you can just release both the invoice and Misc Debit memo and the next time you ’Prepare Payments’ these will net to zero and flow out of the Open Invoice File.           

If your option in Business Rules is set to NOT allow posting without printing checks you can then PREPAY these invoices from within Hold and Release. Normally I use a check number of 999 to signify payment for both the invoice and the Misc. Debit Memo. Next time you prepare payments these invoices will flow out.           

Another way you can ‘void’ a payment is to not use the actual ‘Void’ function but to enter a pre-paid Miscellaneous Debit. Enter this Misc Debit exactly as the original invoice. Then on the TOTAL TAB enter the payment information using the same check number that was originally used to pay the invoice. After posting transactions, Prepare Payments and this will appear as a negative on the Pre-paid line.            

When payments are posted they will correct expense, cash and AP. In Bank Rec it will appear as a negative under the original.

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To easily keep up with Customer Deposits and to be able to apply the deposit amount to the Accounts Receivable (or Sales Order) invoice to show the total amount of the invoice along with the deposit applied and the remaining amount owed we recommend you keep up with deposits outside of the Open Invoice file.           

Set up a General Ledger account within the Current Liabilities section of your Chart of accounts. When you receive the deposit check from your clients enter it into Cash Receipts without a customer ID. This will open up a General Ledger account for you to apply this deposit to. Enter the Customer Deposit account that was set up and for the invoice number use the Customer ID and apply the amount.           

Next set up a Method of Payment (DEP) in Accounts Receivable (Sales Order) that is a write off. Use this Customer Deposit General Ledger Account number.           

When the Customer is invoiced go to the Payment section and use the Method of Payment (DEP) you set up above and apply the Deposit payment. The invoice will then show the total due, the amount of deposit applied and the net amount currently due.           

Reconciling this Customer Deposit is quite simple. Whenever the Deposit is received this account is credited and when the Deposit is applied to the invoice this account is debited.

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Making use of the various fields found within the Customer Set up can assist you as you mine the data and produce the reports you need to analyze your business. Below are some fields and their uses that you may not have thought about utilizing previously. 

Attention This field appears above the Company name on the Invoice or Statement. It does not appear on Customer Labels.

Contact This is informational and does not print.

Status This defaults to ACTIVE. If you do not want any transactions posted to this Customer change the status to INACTIVE. Payments may be posted to an inactive Customer.

Group Code A “C” is used to signify the customer you are setting up is actually a credit card that will be used to transfer invoices from your customer to this customer until actual cash payment is applied.

Terms Code can be set up specifically for each customer. Discounts and days to pay can be set up from Invoice Date or from End of Month.

Distribution Code signifies the Accounts Receivable General Ledger account to post invoices to as well as the Freight and Misc GL accounts found on the total screen.

Class Code can be assigned to a customer for purposes of sorting. Class code is used as selections for sorting and printing in the Customer Activity and Customer Sales Reports, as well as use when extracting your data.

Credit Limit can be set for customers. A message will appear when entering an invoice for the customer if they have already reached their credit limit. This is just a message it will not stop you from invoicing the customer.

Document Delivery will set this customer as to whether invoices, or statements will be printed on paper, or emailed to the customer.

Credit Hold will give a warning at invoice entry time that the customer is on hold. It can be bypassed.

Partial Shipment will also give a warning at invoice entry time if the customer will not accept partial shipments.

Ship Zone is a free standing field for the customer as well as the Ship To address for that customer. There are no reports that use this sort or print but with ODBC you can mine your data using this field.

Territory a free standing field that can assist in sorting your customers when using ODBC to extract your data.

Ship To If a customer has several locations you can set up multiple ships to addresses and also assign different Territories, Tax Groups and Distribution Codes for each shipping address.

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If you’ve been interested in looking at what TRAVERSE 11 has to offer, then we invite you to attend a FREE one hour class on Thursdays at 11:00 am. This Webex class will allow you to see some of the new features of TRAVERSE version 11. The April dates are the 1^st, 15^th and 29^th.          

Whether you are currently using OSAS or TRAVERSE you can sign up for a Thursday morning demonstration class at www.osas.com or contact us and we can get you signed up.           

Currently the following modules are available for version 11: General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Sales Order, Accounts Payable, Purchase Order, Inventory, Bill of Materials, Bank Reconciliation and Banking. We are currently expecting the release of the Payroll and Project Costing modules mid-summer.

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The standard way to void a check is to use the VOID CHECK function found in “Pay Invoices”.           

Voiding a check or series of checks this way will reverse the Cash and Accounts Payable Entry (Debits cash, Credits Accounts Payable) and places the invoice or invoices back out in the Open Invoice File.            

Assuming these invoices will not be paid to the vendor you then go into Daily Work, Transactions and select Miscellaneous Debits. Using the same Vendor, Invoice Number, General Ledger Accounts, and Amount duplicate this invoice as a Miscellaneous Debit. When posted, they will align with the original invoice in the Open Invoice File.           

If Options and Interfaces are set to allow posting without printing checks you can just release both the invoice and Misc Debit memo and the next time you ’Prepare Payments’ these will net to zero and flow out of the Open Invoice File.           

If your option is set to NOT allow posting without printing checks you can then PREPAY these invoices from within Hold and Release. Normally I use a check number of 999 to signify payment for both the invoice and the Misc. Debit Memo. Next time you prepare payments these invoices will flow out.           

Another way you can ‘void’ a payment is to not use the actual ‘Void’ function but to enter a pre-paid Miscellaneous Debit. Enter this Misc Debit exactly as the original invoice. Then on the TOTAL SCREEN enter the payment information using the same check number that was originally used to pay the invoice. After posting transactions, Prepare Payments and this will appear as a negative on the Pre-paid line.            

When payments are posted, this will correct the expense, cash and AP. In Bank Rec it appears as a negative under the original check number.

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Did you know that you do not need to void the next Accounts Payable check when the number of invoices on the previous check spills over onto the next check stub?           

When printing Accounts Payable Checks there is a question on the print screen that says ‘Use Check Saver?’. If you answer or click YES to this all your checks will print to the printer specified and when complete will prompt you to mount paper to print the remittance form.            

The check stub for the check with the overflow number of invoices will say ***See Remittance Advice Log for Invoice Detail*** and all the invoices that pertain to that check will be listed on a separate sheet of paper instead of on the next check stub.           

You can now attach this remittance copy to the check and stub for this vendor to mail the information to the vendor on the invoices that this check is paying.           

You probably want to make a copy of this remittance to attach to your file copy of the check stub and invoices.           

No more wasting check stock for overflow invoices.

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Based on requests from clients, we have created a number of enhancements that may also benefit you.   We will be making a section on our website to support a listing of these enhancements.  Each month we will feature an enhancement in our newsletter as well.  For more enhancements available from InterMicro visit http://www.intermicro.com/products.html. 

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