Sure, some businesses are inherently seasonal, like snow shovels and farmer’s market sweet corn, but even businesses that you might not think of in that regard often have a “summer lull” or slowdown in June/July/August. Does yours?
The most obvious factor is, with kids out of school, summer is a great time for family vacations—so the business decision-making process generally slows down this time of year with staff out of the office.
And, it’s common in manufacturing to have “shutdown weeks” around Independence Day and Christmas for preventative maintenance on equipment—and it’s from there that we can take some lessons.
First, yes, get some R&R for yourself! During the last month I made a trip with my middle school children to Stroud, England—which my family left almost 400 years ago—while Mark spent a week in an overwater-bungalow in Bora Bora. Life is short and we DO have to enjoy it along the way outside of work!!!
OK, with our heads now back in the office, of course we can take advantage of the summer lull to get some things done which we don’t normally have time for:
- Process Documentation: Almost every month we get a call from a client saying, “Our payables/receivables/purchasing/inventory/payroll person is suddenly gone and we don’t know exactly how to do what they did?!” We can certainly provide training on the application software, but there’s almost always business-specific rules which apply that we/NexLAN are unaware of… Summer is a great time to get your staff roughly documenting their processes, such as an MS-Word document complete with screenshots, which you can then review and fine tune over time. Earlier this year Rachel was out on maternity leave and she built some fantastic documentation specific to our business that made it possible for an accounting-experienced temp to step right in.
- Review the List of Newer Features: We can easily provide you a list of the enhancements from your current version and modules up to the latest version so you can see what process improvements are available in the software merely by implementing the latest version.
- Fully Implement Your Current Version: I’ve previously asked, “Are You Really Running the Latest Version?“—because many companies aren’t! Instead they’re “doing what they’ve always done” and not leveraging built-in capabilities like credit card integration, direct deposit payroll, vendor payments via ACH, online customer payment portal, etc.
- Clean Up Reports of Open Items: It’s not uncommon for systems to have REALLY old open sales orders or purchase orders—making the backorder reports useless for tracking open items—and now’s a good time to get them cleaned up. Gee, it’s even happened that clients have REALLY old data in their AR Aged Receivables or AP Past Due Aging which are, by now, no longer valid—making it difficult to validate the Balance Sheet and having financial impact when they’re corrected. If not now, when?
- Work “On the Business,” instead of “In the Business”: Possible even from your overwater bungalow in Bora Bora, lean back in your chair and stare at the ceiling (how I do my best thinking) and consider, “How do I know my organization is doing a good/bad job?” I’m sure there’s goals for revenue, inventory turns, on-time order delivery, etc. which can be defined as KPIs/dashboards for “Instrument Rating” Your Business so everybody has visibility to them.
- Confirm Your Backups: Last but not least, as this just might be the most important item on list, PLEASE CONFIRM YOUR BACKUPS ARE WORKING!!! At least once a year we get an emergency call from a crashed system (usually one at least a decade old) and there’s no data backups so then recovery of the physical harddrive is critical—and not always possible.
Hopefully above are ways to use your summer lull productively—which we’re always standing by in the cornfields to assist you with!
Regards,
Kevin E. Stroud
kestrou@nexlan.com
NexLAN, LLC
https://nexlan.com
Gentle Reminder: Check for AccountMate Payroll Tax Updates
There’s regular updates throughout the year to payroll tax tables. Already seven updates since the initial release in late December 2022.
The current release is 2023.08 and you can check what version you’re running under <Help><About AccountMate> on the “Payroll” tab.
The initial release for each year is a little complex to install, so clients often have NexLAN perform this initial update, but mid-year updates are simple as the process is automated. So, if you see something less than 2023.08, then please hit <Utilities><Check for Payroll Tax Subscription Updates> and just follow the prompts.
AccountMate Payroll Module Class September 18-22
The AccountMate Payroll module just might be the module where existing users can gain the most new efficiencies in their work, simply by taking a good class. The module offers robust capabilities with a multitude of ways to pay workers, manage employee benefits, file with governmental agencies, and run reports for internal use.
Whether you’re a beginning or advanced Payroll user—you’ll gain insights and learn tips and tricks to make your work easier. And you’ll come away with a solid understanding of which other integrated AccountMate modules are impacted when you do something in Payroll.
It’s 18 hours of hands-on live training, online. There are plenty of opportunities to ask the instructor about the best ways to handle aspects of your company’s payroll processes.
Class details:
Call or email NexLAN to register, or if you have questions—you can speak to someone on our team who’s taken the class!
July 20 Acumatica Webinar: CRM for Marketing, Sales, and Support
This webinar will demonstrate the two areas of Acumatica’s CRM (Customer Relationship Management) that get the highest volume of use:
- Opportunity Management: Manage your sales pipeline to generate new leads to source a new, loyal customer base and accelerate growth and revenue
- Case Management: Support your customer base when things go wrong, to increase customer satisfaction and retention
When we saw that Acumatica scheduled this one to run again in July, we wanted to recommend it. It’s the kind of webinar where you sit back with a cup of coffee, imagining how you could improve your company’s workflows across your customer touchpoints.
Manage your marketing leads as you continue to reach out to them to turn them into qualified sales leads. Then manage your sales leads to convert them to become your customers. Once they are a customer, manage their support issues quickly without anything falling through the cracks, so that your customers remain satisfied and loyal. Acumatica has all this integrated tightly into the core product.
You’ll also see how Acumatica’s CRM integrates with Microsoft Outlook email, Gmail, and Microsoft Teams, while ensuring that messages, customer contact data, and file attachments get captured in Acumatica, giving anyone on your team a current status.
Register now for this July 20, 2023 12:00 – 1:00 CT webinar: Go to Acumatica’s webinar event page and click the CRM webinar. If you can’t make that time, register anyways and you’ll receive a link to the recording after the event.
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Here’s an example of the CRM Email Template; one feature covered in the webinar.
It’s an email that gets sent saying:
“One of our service representatives updated your support case and is requesting more information.
Please click the link below to review your case and provide the information requested.”
3 New Features in Acumatica 2023 R1 That You Can Learn Right Now
The first of this year’s two Acumatica releases is jam-packed with new features. We’re highlighting three more this month—each is applicable to most companies, quite helpful, and quick to learn so you can begin using it right after learning about it here. If you’d like to browse the list and explanations of ALL the new features, go to Acumatica’s Help Wiki and do a search for Release Notes, then click the link to Open in a New Tab. Scroll through the table of contents on the left.
1. Temporarily delegate approvals
Suppose someone in your organization is assigned to review and approve all purchases over $30K, or all quotes with a discount of more than 30%. And that person is going on vacation. Or maybe you have an interim department manager who needs to take over some approvals for awhile.
You can now set a delegation of an approval responsibility to another employee temporarily, so that anything that matches the approval criteria gets automatically forwarded to them. To do this, under your User Profile, go to the Delegates tab and then assign a delegate, a start date, and an expiration date. Or get to the same screen from the Employee list after choosing an employee.
Watch a step-by-step demo: 2023 R1 Feature Review – Delegate and Re-Assign Approvals (3 min. 21 sec.)
2. Monitor your sales pipeline
Two new built-in reports, Opportunity Summary By Close Date, and Opportunity Summary By Class, help you track and analyze your pipeline’s performance and overall health while identifying opportunities for growth You can view sales opportunities in various stages, broken out by year, quarter, month, and salesperson. Also view the aggregated numbers and amounts of all opportunities grouped several ways. Find these in the Opportunities menu, under Reports.
Watch a step-by-step demo: 2023 R1 Feature Review – Opportunity Reporting (1 min. 32 sec.)
3. Get more, and better, help from infotips
Pop-up tips no longer pop up automatically as you’re working in Acumatica. Instead, when you briefly hover over something, a question mark icon will appear if tips are available. Click the question mark to learn more. Plus, tips are now available in many more places in this new release. You can view infotips for boxes, check boxes, and option buttons that appear in the areas and on the tabs of most forms, as well as the columns of tables on these forms.
So, the next time you’re not clear what value to enter into a form, hover over it and look for an infotip to learn more!
For more details on this, go to the Acumatica help wiki, do a search for Infotips (that’s one word), and then click Usability: Improved Delivery of Built-In Infotips.
AccountMate Tech Note: Understanding the Multi-Currency Feature in Accounts Receivable
AccountMate’s Accounts Receivable (AR) module offers the multicurrency feature that allows you to record customer transactions in foreign currencies, revalue multi-currency invoices, and recognize foreign exchange gains and losses. You can also transfer to General Ledger the multicurrency transactions in both home and foreign currencies.
Article# 1249: Understanding the Multi-Currency Feature in Accounts Receivable, discusses how to best use the multicurrency feature in the Accounts Receivable module.
It also describes the reports that display transaction amounts in home and foreign currencies.
AccountMate Tech Note: Understanding the Multi-Currency Feature in Accounts Payable
AccountMate’s Accounts Payable multi-currency feature handles automatically the significant aspects of multi-currency transaction processing, making it easy for you to transact with foreign vendors. You can record vendor transactions in foreign currencies, revalue multi-currency AP invoices, and recognize foreign exchange gains and losses. You can also transfer to General Ledger the multi-currency transactions in both home and foreign currencies.
Article #1248: Understanding the Multi-Currency Feature in Accounts Payable, discusses how the Accounts Payable multi-currency feature may be used to conduct business in or with vendors using foreign currencies.
It also enumerates the Accounts Payable reports that display values in both home and foreign currencies and discusses the AP multi-currency feature’s limitation.
Acumatica Technical Tips
Unable to update the unit cost on stock items
Q: I have a number of stock items that need pricing updates. In Stock Items, it doesn’t allow me to input a Pending Cost and Pending Cost Date. Is this a security access restriction for my role?
A: If you update the valuation method to Standard Cost, then you can update the Standard Cost. In Stock Items, go to the first tab, General. Under Item Defaults you’ll see Valuation Method – use the dropdown menu to select Standard.
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Frozen inventory when doing a physical inventory during business hours
Q: We want to enable the Acumatica physical inventory module. It seems that the inventory selected to be counted will be locked in the system during the process, but we typically count during our operating hours. Is there a way to deal with this?
A: The stock items contained in an open Physical Inventory Document are frozen for inventory transactions. You could split the counting into batches by location, or product category, etc. to minimize the number of affected products at one time.
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Can I change an existing item from finished good to a kit?
Q: We have an item made of two components that we’ve purchased as a finished good from a vendor. Now we’ll be purchasing the two components from different vendors and we’ll assemble the components. Can we convert the existing finished good to a kit, while keeping the same SKU in inventory?
A: Yes. On the Kit Specifications page, click the “Is a Kit” checkbox and enter the kit specifications. You’ll still also be able to purchase kits as finished goods and receive them in as well.
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How to enter and pay for landed costs before the purchase receipt
Q: Can we set up a workflow where landed costs can be entered and paid for prior to the purchase receipt?
We are importing items from overseas and paying landed costs in the form of freight and duties. We want to capture these costs and apply them to our item costs, but often we need to pay bills before items are received, as the freight companies and the brokers won’t wait for us to receive the inventory before they get paid.
A: You can use AP Prepayments to pay the vendor before creating a Landed Cost document and AP Bill.
- On AP Bills and Adjustment screen, create a prepayment request
- Create a check on the Checks and Payments screen for the prepayment.
- This generates a Prepayment document on the AP Checks and Payments screen.
- When an AP bill is generated for Landed Cost, apply the above Prepayment to the Landed Cost AP Bill.
AccountMate Technical Tips
Why Is the GL Accounts (2) Tab in the Vendor Record Disabled?
Versions: AM12 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM11 for SQL and Express
AM10 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM9 for LAN
Module: AP
Q: What is the purpose of the GL Accounts (2) tab in the vendor record and why is it disabled?
A: The Vendor Maintenance ► GL Accounts (2) tab is enabled only if the Use Authorized Reference Accounts Only checkbox is marked in the Settings tab. This tab allows users to list the GL Account IDs that can be used as GL Distribution Accounts when posting AP invoices. Once activated and set up, only GL Account IDs listed in this tab can be used in AP Invoice Transactions ► GL Distribution tab ►GL Distribution Accounts grid.
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How to Post a Payment in AR from Non-Customers
Versions: AM12 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM11 for SQL and Express
AM10 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM9 for LAN
Module: AR
Q: Can I post a payment in AR from non-customers?
A: Yes. Check Article #1088 (Understanding the Non-Customer Receipts Feature) for the procedure.
Note: If you have the Bank Reconciliation module, then you can also post the transaction in the Bank Reconciliation module by recording an Other Receipt transaction, but this will make the receipt a “standalone deposit.” So, if the cash receipt will be “paperclipped” to regular customer cash receipts, then the Non-Customer Payment in the AR module is the best approach.
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Why Are Totals Different in the Invoice Total Paid Amount vs. the Payment Distribution Report?
Versions: AM12 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM11 for SQL and Express
AM10 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM9 for LAN
Module: AR
Q: I generated an invoice through the Print Invoice function. The Total Paid amount displayed in the invoice is higher than the total payment (App Amt, Discount, Adjustment, Write-Off) in the Payment Distribution Report. Why?
A: This happens when an open credit generated from a sales return has also been applied to the invoice. Generate the Payment Distribution Report, and be sure to mark the Include App Credits from Sales Returns checkbox. The report will show the open credit from the sales return that was applied to the invoice; this transaction will show “APPCR” in the Receipt # column.
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Set Up a Default Reason Code for RMA Transactions
Versions: AM12 for SQL and Express
AM11 for SQL and Express
AM10 for SQL and Express
Module: RA
TIP: A Reason Code can be set up for a return code in the Return Code Maintenance function. If a Reason Code is assigned to the return code in the Return Code Maintenance function, then a default Reason Code will appear in RMA Transactions ► Line Item Details tab for the return code.
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