Customer
Excellence Conference
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.
Click here for the preliminary class
schedule.
Check
www.osas.com for additional details.
Start planning and budgeting now so you
can attend.
Don't
forget, the Early Bird Discount ends
June 30.
Hurry and register!
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Keeping Orders in Control
When your customer places an order for
goods or services how are you keeping up
with these orders?
Whether you are manufacturing the item,
purchasing the item, or shipping the
item out of Inventory you need to be
able to run a report at any point in
time that will tell you what orders
(Work-in-Process or Future Work) you
still have to produce and in what time
frame.
Many customers will keep up with future
work on clip boards, work order books or
other manual methods. Using these
‘paper’ methods orders can be misplaced
or lost creating lost revenue and
customer dissatisfaction.
The Sales Order application can assist
not only your Sales Reps and office
people keep up with orders, but also
your shop, or warehouse floor.
When an Inventory Item is entered into a
Sales Order the quantity that is entered
becomes a ‘committed’ quantity within
the Inventory Item. Reports can be run
to see committed amounts vs quantities
on-hand so that orders to manufacture or
purchase additional items can be placed
in a timely manner.
When the original order is entered the
order itself has a status of “New”. Once
the picking slip is printed the order’s
status changes to “Picked”. Upon
shipment of the order’s items the order
is then “Verified”, which also changes
the status in the Inventory Item from
“Committed” to “In-Use”.
Packing Slips can be generated for each
order for inclusion with the shipment.
The final step is to print invoices,
sales journals and post to create the
Open Invoice for the
Customer.
Sales Reps can enter ‘Quotes’ using the
Sales Order application. Quotes allow
the Sales Reps to list and total up the
Customer’s request and keep that quote
on file until the Customer actually
places the order. At this point the
quote can then be turned into a ‘New’
order and processed as
normal.
The Open Order Report can be printed by
Status of the Order (New, Picked,
Verified, Credited, Backordered, or
Quoted). It can also be printed by
Customer or Item ID. The report will
show the quantity available for that
item along with the quantity requested
on the Order.
Running the report by ‘requested ship
dates’ not only gives management an idea
of upcoming revenue it also allows your
purchasing or manufacturing departments
to keep up with the incoming flow of
orders and thus the coordination between
all departments.
If keeping up with your Orders is taking
too much of your time, then you should
take a look at the Sales Order
application so that you can take back
control and know exactly what is in your
Work in Process.
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Vacation Checks
To generate a vacation check in addition
to the employee’s normal weekly check
enter the normal weekly hours as usual.
Then drop down and change the sequence
number for the vacation hours you enter.
When calculated two checks will be
generated.
To generate two checks for a salaried
employee calculate checks as usual then
‘add’ a manual check using the vacation
pay-code for this employee. Calculate
that one check and process payroll as
usual to get two checks.
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Spring
Clean your IT
When most people think of spring
cleaning, they think of clearing rooms
of their house, scrubbing the
baseboards, and touching up paint. Like
your home it is always good to ‘Spring
Clean’ your computer network and data on
a regular basis. The following things
can be done to protect your IT
infrastructure:
-
Clean out dust from your computers and
servers. Blow out the dust that can clog
up the fans with compressed air.
-
Archive your data. Remove from My
Documents all those spreadsheets and
data you don't use on a daily basis.
This allows for easier synchronization
to laptops, etc.
-
Review your backup process. Are your
backups working? Do you have enough
space on your tape or backup drive? Have
you tested your backups lately by doing
a restore? Do you have an off-site
backup? If not how secure are your
backups should total destruction of your
building occur?
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When Checks Jam
You are in the middle of printing checks
and one of them jams, or you didn’t put
in enough checks, or you ran out of ink,
what now?
In this example the last ‘good’ check
that printed is number 2285 and the next
good, blank check number is 2288. Checks
number 2286 and 2287 were destroyed.
Once you are ready to start printing
checks again enter 2288 as the NEXT
CHECK NUMBER and enter 2285 as IF
RESTART, LAST GOOD CHECK
NUMBER.
This will allow printing of what would
have been check number 2286 to actually
begin printing on the physical check
number 2288. All checks printed will now
have the proper number on the proper
printed check.
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Non-Customer Receipts: Bank REC vs
Cash Receipts
When you get a refund or other type of
payment that you have not produced an
Accounts Receivable Open Invoice for
should you enter this payment as a Cash
Receipt in Accounts Receivable or should
you enter this receipt through Bank
Reconciliation?
Using Bank Reconciliation to enter this
DEPOSIT allows you to enter a full
description for this deposit. Remember
that you will want to use a separate
deposit slip for this non-customer
deposit so that it will match up with
your bank statement.
Using Accounts Receivable Cash Receipts
without entering a Customer ID allows
you to enter the General Ledger account
to credit for this deposit and you can
use the ‘Invoice Number’ to describe the
deposit.
If your Business Rule (TRAVERSE) or
Options & Interfaces (OSAS) is set to DETAIL
you will see the dollar amount and
‘invoice number’ in the General Ledger.
If the Business Rule is set to SUMMARY
you will only see the amount.
Using either application to enter these
deposits will correctly apply the cash
and revenue.
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Hiring
Incentives to Restore Employment
(HIRE) Act was enacted on 03/18/2010
New tax benefits are now available to
employers hiring workers who were
previously unemployed or only working
part time. These provisions are part of
the Hiring Incentives to Restore
Employment (HIRE) Act enacted into law
on 3/18/2010.
Employers who hire unemployed workers
this year (after Feb. 3, 2010 and before
Jan. 1, 2011) may qualify for a
6.2-percent payroll tax incentive, in
effect exempting them from their share
of Social Security taxes on wages paid
to these workers after March 18, 2010.
This reduced tax withholding will have
no effect on the employee's future
Social Security benefits, and employers
would still need to withhold the
employee's 6.2-percent share of Social
Security taxes, as well as income taxes.
The employer and employee's shares of
Medicare taxes would also still apply to
these wages.
Form 941, Employer's Quarterly Federal
Tax Return, will be revised for second
quarter filings. Any first quarter
credit amounts would be treated as a
payment for the second quarter and would
need to be claimed on the second quarter
Form 941 filing. In addition:
--The 2010 Form W-2 will have a box 12,
code "CC" added for reporting HIRE Act
exempt wages and tips for qualified
employees.
-- Form W-3 also will have a line added.
-- The first quarter exempt amounts are
to be treated as a payment made on the
first day of the second quarter on the
revised Form 941, just like the current
COBRA subsidy tax credit.
-- For the following quarters, employers
will report total amounts on the first
page of Form 941, and reduce the
liability on Schedule B, Form 941, by
the amount of the tax reduction.
Qualified employees will need to
complete a Form W-11. The form is to
confirm that the new hire is a qualified
employee under the HIRE Act. Employers
cannot claim HIRE Act (Pub. L. No.
111-147) benefits, including a payroll
tax exemption or a new-hire retention
credit, unless the employee completes
and signs the affidavit or similar
statement. The form is to be kept on
file by the employer.
A draft of the 941 and the W-11 are
available on the IRS website.
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=220745,00.html?portlet=7
What you can do now
As we await additional information from
the Government our suggestion eligible
employees is to:
1.) Keep tax calculations unchanged
in the software.
2.) From the W-11's you have on file
establish a list of employees who
qualify for the credit.
3.) At the end of every quarter, go
thru those employees and see how much
employer OASDI was paid.
4.) The dollar amount that the
accounting system calculated would be
the amount you could claim as credit on
your Q2 941 (and subsequent 941s)
5.) Make a manual adjustment to GL
when you take this credit.
We strongly recommend that you review
the instructions and qualifications from
the IRS.
www.irs.gov
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