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Customer Conference in Las Vegas
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!
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.
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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 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
What does this act mean for you? Employers who
hire unemployed workers this year (after
02/03/10 and before 01/01/11) 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 03/18/10. 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 the Social Security taxes, as
well as income taxes. The employer and the
employee’s shares of Medicare taxes would also
apply to these wages.
Form 941, Employers 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:
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The 2010 Form W-2 will have a box 12, code “CC”
added for reporting HIRE Act exempt wages and
tips for qualified employees.
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Form W-3 also will have a line added.
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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.
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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 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 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 kept on file by the Employer. Drafts
of the 941 and W-11 are at
www.irs.gov.
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