May 2009 - Issue 10

We would like you to Join us at the 2009 Customer Conference will be held in Las Vegas this year.   It will be held on June 9th - 11th at the South Point Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, NV.

Customers who have attended this conference in the past have discovered new ways to improve business processes. Some reunited with friends they made last year, networked with new acquaintances, met one-on-one with their Open Systems authorized partner, and engaged in lively discussions about our software and services.

Conference FAQ

Session descriptions

Sessions Eligible for CPE Credits

Conference Schedule

Please Note:  During this time our office will be closed.  We will however be checking emails and voice mails periodically.

Periodic Processes

There are certain procedures that you can perform on a periodic basis that will insure that your accounting software is current and accurate. 

Monthly

A Look At Traverse V11

During the month of May Open Systems will continue to have free WebEx demonstrations of TRAVERSE version 11.   

Attendees to previous demonstrations have commented on the ease of use, expanded reporting capabilities and value that they see in this much anticipated version. This newest release will bring TRAVERSE to the forefront with .Net technology.

Each WebEx demonstration is approximately one hour long starting at 11 am CST each Thursday from May 7th through May 28th.

To register for one of these WebEx demonstrations simply call or email us with the Thursday in May that you would like to see the demonstration and we will get you signed up for it.

Spaces are limited so please contact us as soon as possible so  you can be assured a place.

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Archiving Solutions

With TRAVERSE version 10.5 certain forms like Accounts Payable Checks changed from printing all into one file to printing a separate file for each check making it difficult for people to archive all these individual files.

BroadGun is a pdf writer that automatically appends separate reports into one pdf file until you close that pdf. This means you can also combine journals and posting reports into one pdf file for archiving purposes. It installs as a printer so you can direct checks to print to that printer through Traverse form printer setup.

This is a $29 solution. You can learn more about it at http://www.pdfmachine.com/

OSAS users can also make use of this solution for archiving reports and forms or for emailing reports to management or Sales Reps, etc.

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Economic Stimulus & PR

By now you should have received your updated Payroll Tax Tables and 941 Report.

These changes have already taken place and employers were encouraged to make the changes as soon as possible.

With tax changes as large as these it would be wise to check through your employee Tax Setup and make sure that the Status of (M)arried or (S)ingle is correct. Several calls these past few weeks regarding either no taxes or small amounts of taxes being taken out have turned out to be a M or S being incorrect. For OSAS users make sure if an employee’s status is S then the FEDS table is being used, or if the employee’s status is M then the FEDM table is entered.

FYI, if no Federal Tax table is entered then the default is the FEDM (married) table. The differences between Married and Single are very large these days and it is very important to select the correct table.

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Bank Reconciliation Tips

Your Bank Reconciliation does not balance. Here are some systematic things you can do to assist yourself in getting it to reconcile:

w Run the reconciliation report in detail to see what your tagged disbursements and deposits are. These totals must match your bank statement’s cleared disbursements and deposits

w Check the box to ‘include un-posted transactions’ in case additional entries had been entered since last you posted. You can also go and post to the master in General Ledger for the period you are reconciling.

w Look through your cash account activity for the month and insure that all source codes are either AP AR BR or PA. If you see any M1 source codes that means your GL Cash account may be correct but there is nothing for you to tag in bank rec.

w Pull out your last month Bank Reconciliation report and make sure that the ending GL balance on that report is still what your ending balance for the GL Cash account is. Something may have gotten thrown back into a previous month that you have missed

w If the amount is small, watch if for a month and if it does not change then make a correcting entry to your cash account.

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Posting Payroll

When posting your Payroll ALWAYS make sure that the TAX LIABILITY MONTH is set to the correct month. May is a perfect example. You are probably processing Friday, May 1st payroll while still in April.

Double check that the tax month will be 5 for May rather than 4 for April.

This is especially true when a quarter is changing.

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Inventory Price and Cost Changes

Did you realize that you can quickly change prices for a group of items, locations or product lines? The change can be based off of Base, List or Minimum Price and can be changed by percentage or dollar amount. If you use Product Lines to signify certain vendor’s products then when the vendor has an across the board increase of 2% you can quickly adjust all your prices upward 2%.

Likewise you can change the costs of a group of items, locations, or product lines. The adjustment can be based off of Standard or Base cost and can be changed by percentage or dollar amounts. Now when your vendor does and across the board increase in cost and you want your current items to reflect this cost increase immediately you can run this process and update your costs all at one time.

This periodic process can also be used to lower costs and prices should there be a need for that.

If you are using Customer Special Pricing that is based off of Standard Cost, Base Cost, Base Price, List Price or Minimum Price these will automatically adjust to the new amounts. If you are using No Base for your customer special pricing and you want the special pricing to reflect your new numbers you will have to manually go into each Customer pricing and change the No Base amount that you will sell the items to the customer in the future for.

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