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Stock item?
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FTP
- Get/Put
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General
Ledger – new feature
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ReesNews
August 2003
Happy Birthday
First,
lets start by saying:
Happy
Birthday to us, Happy Birthday to us, Happy Birthday Rees Software, Happy
Birthday to us, followed by 20 loud cheers.
Yes, it’s our birthday this month and we have reached 20 years of
age.
So
lets take a look at our past
August
1983
Rees
Software obtained it’s first ever client.
Programs were basic and almost juvenile in their functionality.
Early
1986
Easy
GST/Cashbook, first developed
Early
1988
Easy
Billing, first developed. An
invoicing and debtors system.
February
1989
Release
of EasyPay, our payroll software package.
September
1989
Release
of Easy Stock Control. Incorporating
invoices, debtors control and stock control.
July
1993
First
Release of ReesEasy Version 7
This
saw the Easy programs Easy Billing, Easy GST/Cashbook and Easy General
Ledger linked together on a modular bases to form an integrated package.
November
1998
ReesEasy
Verison 11 – the last DOS product was released
November
1999
32
bit Windows package – Rees2000 was launched.
This
software was made available by rental only.
A sophisticated business package that still kept with the basic
principles of ease of use and understandably.
August
2003
Rees
Software & Systems Ltd or former entities – 20 years in business.
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New Features
Rees2000 now allows you to reprice a job, for parts
only, labour only or both. Parts
can be repriced to the current sell price that the job is set up for
(including allowing for current special prices and the quoted price of
each stock code) or by percentage mark-up on cost.
Reprice Parts
By percentage mark-up, the system takes the current
cost recorded against each line item of parts and marks the sell price up
by the percentage requested. This
is across the board and does not allow for selected groups only.
The mark-up percentage affects all parts on the job, including
non-stock items and will not take into account current sell prices,
special prices and/or quoted prices.
To reprice parts without a percentage mark-up; the
system looks at:
a)
Is the item a stock code? – If not no change is made to that
item’s price;
b)
Is the item quoted on the job? – Then use the quoted rate, unless
the item currently has a special price that is better than the current job
price;
c)
Looking at the ‘Stock price’ rate on the job header, use the
sell price for that item? -
Unless the item currently has a special price that is a lower than this
price.
NB The special prices that are used are the special
prices relevant at the time the job is repriced, not at the date the parts
were entered to the job. The
sell prices are at the rates at the time the job is repriced also.
Repricing Labour.
This does not take the labour rate on the job header
and change all the labour entries to that rate (unless it is changed to a
special labour rate (A to Z)). It
leaves the rate code (i.e. 1-6) unchanged but will update the sell prices
to their current sell prices (as per stock file).
If you use ‘Special Job Labour Rates (Rees2000 menu
option 6.16) which uses rates A to Z. You can reprice your labour to
charge say $40 across the board for a job and reprice labour by changing
the labour rate on the job header to the appropriate letter, then
repricing the job.
This option is quite complex and very powerful.
Once a job has been repriced you cannot undo the reprice,
except by manually keying in the required prices on a line-by-line basis.
The option is especially useful if you forgot to
attach your quote to the job, or you change the client to charge the job
to. If uncertain how to this
feature will iimpact your job; print a job cost report first AND also
consider doing a back up of your data.
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Is
an item a stock item?
Background
Several
clients read in pricebooks from their suppliers. These electronic price books often contain several hundred
thousand stock items, most of which will never be used.
These items do not want to be set as stock items, otherwise your
stocktake reports would be thousand of pages long.
Why print an item on a stocktake report if you have never used or
purchased it? Therefore
the pricebooks were read in as non-stock items to avoid this potential
disaster.
Setup
options within Rees2000 (Menu option 14.14 password = SETUP) included:
Change Non-stock to Stock when receipting?
When
set at Yes, if you ordered a non stock item, such as an item from your
supplier, the code changed from non-stock to stock and therefore tracked
the reciepts, allocations, sales, orders and back orders.
Great,
just what was required, only sometimes clients sold an item prior to
receiving it (Yes, we also
wondered how, but apparently it can happen), or sold an incorrect item
that was not a stock item and therefore the bells didn’t ring when the
stock item went into negative (as there is no stock quantities for
non-stock items). So another question was added
Always change Stock Item?
When
set at Yes, this changed on item to stock when it was ordered or sold.
Again
great, but what about those other items that regardless of what you do you
never want them to be a stock item; codes such as freight, labour, tolls,
etc. Every time you
ordered or sold it became a stock item and you ended up with for example
negative 2000 hours in quantity against labour etc.
This resulted in distorted stock value reports at the very least.
Therefore
some companies set these setup questions to No, not realising the stock
control damage they could be causing.
Solution
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This
feature was introduced to enable you to send us specific files if required
in order to resolve a problem.
With
assistance from Rees Software support desk we can get required files
‘put’ onto our web site (a secure location not able to be viewed by
anyone else). We can
then ‘get’ the files and resolve the issue, then ‘put’ them back
up (if required) for you to ‘get’ them back into your system.
Sound
confusing? Well it may
help if we look at an occasion that we used this feature.
The
Scenario
We
had a client in the North Island who had trouble with a Purchase order not
printing, they could view it on the screen, but it wouldn’t print. We tried to assist over the phone but weren’t unable to
ascertain the problem. We
couldn’t re-create the error at our office.
The
Answer
We
got the client to ‘put’ the required files though our FTP link, and
‘got’ them from our site. Using
the clients actual data (and specific purchase order number), we were able
to see the problem, including their specific set ups and could advise the
client within approximately 15 minutes of them sending the files, that the
problem was due to the stock items on the purchase order being set not to
print on purchase order under the Setup stock screen.
Before
this feature was added the data would have to be sent to us (most likely
by courier) as it would have been too large to email.
This would have meant that the solution was at least 1 day away.
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Often
clients struggle with the concept of leaving your General Ledger open at
the end of financial year, while continuing to work in the next year (i.e.
Periods 13 – 24). Those
that use the General Ledger module will know what we are talking about.
The
General Ledger is left in period 12, which is the last month in the
financial year until your Accountant has completed the final financials
for that year. This is often
several months after your year-end and in the meantime you need up to date
financial records to monitor your business.
So we interface and journal into periods 13-24, 13 being the first
period in the new year, etc.
The
General Ledger Account Maintenance screen (option 7.1) shows the balances
of individual ledger accounts as they stand at the close of period 12, not
the new year. Therefore until
recently to reconcile your ledger accounts to their sub-ledgers you had to
print a report, such as a trial balance, for the required period, rather
than view the total from the Account Maintenance screen.
Now
we have an option (M) at the base of the Account Maintenance screen that
allows you to view the closing balances for each of the 24 periods for
each ledger code. M for
Monthly balances is also useful for assisting you to produce financial
budgets.
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