Do You Need a Document Management Solution?

Five Worthwhile (and sometimes painful) Questions:

Every business has a document management challenge and every business has developed, over time, ways to cope with that challenge. Whether your current document management solution looks as complex as rooms in multiple locations around the country filled with filing cabinets, and a veritable army of clerks to maintain them; or as simple as stacks of cardboard boxes piled around the perimeter of the office you' re sitting in right now; there are affordable, realistic, and functional solutions available to help.

To help you decide if your company has outgrown your current methods of dealing with that document management challenge, There are five simple questions to determine your need for a more robust document management solution.

Does filing, retrieving and storing paper documents consume human and monetary resources that could be better used elsewhere?

If you currently have staff members that are dealing with paper filing and duplication tasks that are not a part of their core job function, or whose time could be put to better use, then you are missing a major opportunity. It' s not uncommon to be able to shift 2/3 of the resources dedicated to paper handling to other tasks after implementing a document management system. A recent Price-Waterhouse study concluded a lifetime cost per page at $.25. These costs are completely eliminated by going to a digital solution. Of course in addition to the costs are the various forms of labor associated with the retrieval of these documents.

Whether it is the ability to scale your business without additional hires or the option to reassign resources to more valuable tasks a document management solution should be in your plans.

Does your company have compliance standards or regulatory oversight that must be complied with?

If you' re a public company, Sarbanes-Oxley makes the answer an automatic yes, but even small and medium sized privately owned businesses face OSHA, taxation, employment, and other federal guidelines for document storage and security. Depending on your particular specialization your business probably also faces requirements associated with HIPAA, ISO, FDICIA, the USA PATRIOT Act, or a host of other rules and standards. When faced with the fact that 2-4% of all documents are misfiled and 7.5% are completely lost, the possibility of non-compliance is high.

Document management systems do away with the risk of misfiling or losing documents, meaning you can always produce the document that your auditors are requesting.

Is there gap between your paper information and your enterprise data?

Even after implementing CRM, Accounting and ERP systems a huge portion of your corporate knowledge still exists in paper form. Vendor invoices, bills, Purchase Orders' s, quotes, fax orders, and packing slips (to mention a few) are still filed, duplicated, passed around, and inevitably lost. Many businesses also have repositories of technical information or historical reports that are only available as paper at a single geographic location, not to mention, the documents stored on desktop hard drives and personal filing cabinets.

A document management system that is integrated with your enterprise software allows you to access your entire business knowledge storehouse from your desktop with security settings, back-ups and disaster recovery safeguards. 

Do you have paper-intensive processes that create delays or lack oversight?

Another study estimated that 90% of all paper documents passed around an organization on a daily basis are merely shuffled and that no significant information is added or decisions made – sound familiar? It is also said that corporate professionals spend 40-60% of their time processing paper. By ensuring that early steps in a process are completed correctly before passing them along, processing time can easily be cut by as much as 50%. Add the efficiencies of completing these approvals online and you can gain significant throughput improvements and a competitive advantage.

A document management solution with a workflow process lets you recreate cumbersome paper processes online allowing you to speed approvals, and giving you the oversight you need to determine where these processes are breaking down, stalling, or working smoothly.

Do you have multiple departments, sites, or remote employees that need access to the same content?

If you have multiple sites or remote sales representatives, a document management solution can almost certainly increase collaboration and speed document processing. In some cases the cost of physically sending packages between sites may pay for a significant portion of the system!

Whether it is allowing sales people to remotely submit expense reports and project quotes, or the power to reorganize your Accounts Payable processes to allow for central processing; the ability to share knowledge, route information, and silo responsibilities across multiple sites will save your business money and promote efficiency.

If you have answered yes to even one of these questions then implementing a document management strategy for your business can streamline operations, encourage cooperation, and enforce security and compliance – giving your company a competitive advantage.  For more information or if you would like to schedule a demo, please contact us at info@axisintegratedsolutions.com.  To view this web-based document management and workflow solution please visit www.docAssist.com and take the Tour.  Sample a FREE 30 day Trial Demo.

The Dollars and Sense of Online Backup

Businesses today face unrelenting data growth. IT staffs are struggling to ensure data availability under tight fiscal constraints. The unreliability and intensive management of tape-based backup has forced administrators to create manual, error-prone processes in order to protect their data.   

Online backup answers these challenges by leveraging existing servers and networks to securely and efficiently protect servers, desktops, and even laptops against data loss. The key is to immediately move data backups securely off-site away from any potential site disaster. Greater security and reliability, and easier administration, make online backup the right choice for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) that are serious about protecting their business-critical data.

Heightened awareness around business continuity and regulatory compliance has caused businesses to increase spending on their data protection activities. Over 75% of companies are looking to change their backup approach.  What' s behind the growing trend to online services?

 IT Challenges: It' s ugly out there

In order to understand the cost advantages of online backup, it is important to recognize the challenges that SMBs face in protecting their business-critical data.

Today' s Data Protection Challenges

Now is the time for online backup - Technology should enable business not constrain it.

Market conditions and technology maturation have contributed to the traction online backup and recovery has made over the past few years.

Automation provides an added security layer - Using industry-standard encryption algorithms has made data transport over private or public networks a more secure way to transport backups than manually managing tapes. Having backups centralized in a secure facility further improves the security, reliability, and availability of data for retrieval or recovery.

Increased reliability drives better processes, lowers cost - Efficient processes make online backup a more reliable choice than tape. Scanning and storing only block level changes, for example, minimizes the volume and exposure of data traveling across the network. In addition, the data blocks are compressed, encrypted and then copied to remote disk drives. Companies can keep data longer, spend less time on backup management, and reduce costs for storage, backup management, media, and data retrieval. 

Online backups facilitate business continuity - If an employee accidentally deletes a file or folder, the data can be retrieved online quickly and simply - around the clock.  If a company is required to produce a string of emails pertaining to a lawsuit and has an online backup, it can avoid contempt of court charges.  Imagine the cost and productivity savings. 

What to look for --

1. • Automated and unattended backups with the ability to backup open files and open databases
2. • Ability to centrally manage the backup and restore process from one or more locations
3. • Control of files and directories to be backed up, with file-filtering capabilities
4. • Secure, Tier-1 facility
5. • Spontaneous file restores 24x7x365 via end user or central administrator control
6. • No special hardware requirements or changes to your network
7. • Ability to restore data either over the network or via a dedicated storage device
8. • Customizable data retention schedules
9. • Data encryption while data is stored on the storage array and during transmission over private or public networks

Changed data is compressed & encrypted

1. • Automatic notification of exceptions and problems encountered
2. • Detailed usage reporting capabilities

Conclusion

IT staffs face more challenges than ever before to keep costs in check as they service employees and customers who are increasingly dependent on data access and intolerant of downtime. Even the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is urging businesses to protect themselves with a Disaster Backup/Recovery plan.  A convergence of regulatory and economic drivers, as well as technical innovations has led thousands of SMBs to implement online backup.

CoreVault online backup provides SMBs with the solution that best fits their needs. By controlling the growth of data being backed up, CoreVault customers quickly realize significant cost savings. They are also better able to support the backup and restores of remote offices and meet applicable regulatory, legal, and audit requirements.

The IT functions in your business are complicated enough. For small and mid-sized businesses, adding data protection expertise as a core competency simply does not make fiscal sense. Turning that function over to the leader in online backup and recovery—CoreVault—will save you time, money and aggravation. CoreVault has the right online backup solution for companies like yours that are serious about protecting their business-critical data. For more information on CoreVault solutions, visit us at AXIS or call Manny Buigas at 305-418-9440.

Tracking Time and Expenses For “Remote” Employees

The Internet has made it possible for Employees to " telecommute" to their offices by accessing systems and information in the office from their homes. This is one way technology has created more flexibility for workers that don’t always need to be in the office or to help them stay on top of their assignments if they can’t make it to the office due to circumstances such as inclement weather or family emergencies.

For workers in service businesses such as engineering, consulting or temporary placement agencies, their " office" is usually a client’s location. They may seldom, if ever, show up at their Employer’s office for work. Because these " remote" Employees bill most of their time and travel expenses to customers they need to complete timesheets and expense reports to document how much time they worked and on which projects, what expenses they incurred and what time and expenses are billable to the client and which expenses are reimburseable to the Employee.

It can be difficult for Employees to submit their time and expenses on a timely basis if they hardly ever get to their Employers’ offices. More importantly, Managers need to know the status of projects or jobs to see if they are within budget and which Employees will be free to work on other jobs.

Keeping track of multiple Employees working on multiple projects for multiple customers can become an administrative nightmare. Fortunately, the Internet has also made it possible for " remote" Employees to submit timesheets and expense reports on a timely basis, daily if necessary, and for Managers to be able to track and approve time and expenses " online" with a new solution from Norming Software called eTimesheet.

Norming eTimesheet automatically consolidates employee timesheets by job and client. You can organize clients, projects, leave and Employees in a central database and report work and costs in many different ways.

Unlike traditional PC applications or client-server applications, Norming eTimesheet uses your Internet browser to run the application. The only software that is required on the client PC is a standard Windows IE browser. The application is installed and runs on your web server.

eTimesheet is a web based, stand alone solution that consists of 4 key modules: 1) Timesheets; 2) Expenses; 3) Leave and 4) Billing. All of these modules can be integrated to several SAGE ACCPAC ERP modules including General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Project and Job Cost, Payroll and Bank Services. It can also be integrated to Payroll service providers and other back office systems if necessary.

The Timesheet module allows Employees to enter time in whole or fractional amounts against specific Tasks on a Job based on their Role on that Job. Since each Role is defined with both a billing and cost rate, the time entry becomes the basis for generating invoices to the customer as well as timecard entries for payroll or project and job costing.

There is a great deal of flexibility with Job set up. How you set up your Job directly affects what Employees will see on their timesheets and expense reports. A task may allow both billable and non-billable work, or an Employee may have multiple roles and rates. If a task allows both billable and non-billable work, the user will be required to select the appropriate billing option when entering timesheets for Employees.

Reports are helpful for determining how time is utilized throughout your organization and for reviewing job costs and client billing. You can generate reports to review detailed or summarized data.

The Expense module can track individual expenses by dollar amount or by quantity (ie mileage allowance based on the number of miles driven). Each expense can have a different approver.

The Leave module tracks vacation and sick leave for Employees either based on the number of days taken or the number of days remaining.

The Billing module generates time and expense billings to customers either in detail or summary. Detail invoices are based on AR Items in ACCPAC.

eTimesheet supports multi-level workflows for online submission, acceptance and approval of timesheets and expense reports by Job Managers, Supervisors, Line Managers and even Clients. Depending on the selected approval process, Job Managers, Department Heads, Clients, and Supervisors can approve, reject and/or comment on timesheets and expense sheets.

Norming eTimesheet sends e-mail notifications (if enabled) to inform approvers when an employee submits timesheets, expense reports or leave requests. Users can view their timesheet/expense/leave history at any time. The timesheet/expense/leave history is a record of old timesheets/ expenses/leave including comments and approval details.

eTimesheet’s audit trail keeps a record of every timesheet, expense report and leave request submitted, who submitted it and when it was submitted. It also tracks each time the timesheet, expense report or leave request is approved or rejected, and which approver performed the edit/approval/rejection.

A user can authorize another user to manage his/her tasks by assigning a substitute user. Each user can have multiple substitutes with different permissions. Each substitute user’s permissions are determined by the user who sets up the substitute. For example, if John Smith assigns Martha Brown as his substitute and gives Martha the right to enter his timesheets, Martha will be allowed to log in to the system as John and enter the timesheet on behalf of John.

eTimesheet makes tracking, billing and reporting of time, expenses and leave requests more efficient and cost effective for organizations of any size. If you are a service based business that works on projects or jobs for your clients or a company with employees who travel to conduct their work, eTimesheet may be the right solution for you.

Human Resources: All Your Players are Free Agents!

As the baseball season draws to a close, many managers are either making decisions to try to keep key players or wondering if they will walk as free agents to go other teams.  This happens from little league baseball all the way up to major leagues.  The same story holds true for companies and is one that employers and employees face every day.  It does not matter if you have a small business or are a Fortune 500 company, it is imperative that companies keep their key players. 

One of the key factors to understanding of how to keep key players is to understand why they actually leave.   Leigh Branham, CEO of Keeping the People, has conducted over 19,700 post exit surveys and has provided employers some vision into why employees leave.  When questioning most Managers, almost 9 out of 10 said that the employee left for " more pay" . 

Much to the surprise of most business owners and managers, actually only about 1 out of 10 employees say that they left for " more pay" .  In Ms. Branham' s post survey 88% of employees left for reasons other than money.  These reasons are not obvious to most corporate leaders so she has written a book called " The Seven Hidden Reasons Employees Leave" .  In this book she outlines and enlightens corporate leaders why employees actively disengage and become "free agents" in the employer pool.

The seven hidden reasons employees leave are:

1. The job or work place is not as expected.
2. Job doesn' t fit their talents or interests.
3. Little or no feedback and coaching.
4. Feel no hope for career growth.
5. Feel devalued and unrecognized.
6. Feel overworked and stressed out.
7. No trust or confidence in leaders.

Employers need to motivate employees.  Motivated employees are a company' s best performers.  Only 25% of most corporate workers are actively engaged in the jobs that they perform. 

Communication and engagement is the key to keeping valued employees.  When hiring employees is imperative to properly communicate job duties, corporate expectations as well as have an understanding of what the employee expects in return.  As a corporate leader, you should no longer be spending your " sleepless" nights wondering if your key players are going to leave or stay, but instead focus on what have I done or what should I do to improve communications and engage and motivate my employees to want to be a part of " our" successful business.  Refocusing your goals as a corporate leader will keep your key players close and minimize those who are looking to become " free agents" and try out another team.

How Much Does Bad Data Cost You?

It' s amazing how businesses can spend so much time and money analyzing software features, assessing hardware and training requirements and then completely forget about the data their systems hold. Many businesses don' t regularly back up their data. But even those organizations who do, don' t really know if the data they are backing up is any good.

Too many businesses have experienced this "Good News Bad News" story:

Consultant 1: My client' s system crashed the other day.
Consultant 2: Oh no. Did they have a back up?
Consultant 1: Well, there' s good news and bad news. The good news is that, yes they did have a tape back up on the network server.
Consultant 2: Oh that' s good. What' s so bad? Weren' t you able to get them up and running within a few hours?
Consultant 1: Well, the bad news is that the back up data was corrupt and their back up files got overwritten. They had to manually re-key the first 6 months of the year to get current. It' s taken 2 weeks to get caught up.

Sound familiar? I hope not. If you have never had the pleasure of restoring from back up count yourself as one of the lucky ones. However, the law of averages does eventually catch up to us and Murphy' s Law is bound to strike when you least expect it.

There really is no excuse for not taking better care of your data. You need this data to generate reports for decision making and keep your system running smoothly so your daily transaction processing is not interrupted. The cost of checking your data is miniscule compared to the cost of fixing corrupt data, restoring from back up or worse having to re-key lost transactions. How much would it cost your business to lose valuable data and processing time during business hours? How many missed dinners would it take to justify investing in a tool to schedule regular data integrity checks?

If you use a business management software such as SAGE ACCPAC ERP (formerly Advantage Series) then you have the ability to run Data Integrity checks at any time. The problem companies face is remembering to run Data Integrity Checks and finding the best time to do them.

That is where a utility module called Unattended Data Integrity Checker (UDIC) can really help. Unattended Data Integrity Checker allows SAGE ACCPAC ERP customers to control when and how their accounting and business data is reviewed for integrity errors and fixes any errors found. It is recommended practice to check data for integrity errors to ensure that all data is accurate and reliable. By scheduling automatic data integrity checks at off-peak times, daily transaction processing is not interrupted and no employee time is used.

With Unattended Data Integrity Checker users can schedule and run data integrity checks at a particular time, on a particular day for any module they select in their SAGE ACCPAC ERP system. Typically these checks are run overnight to avoid any conflicts with important day-to-day activities. A log file is created to document any errors found so corrective action can be taken first thing the next morning. Once data has been checked and, if necessary, fixed it can also be backed up using ACCPAC' s DB DUMP function.

UDIC allows companies to set up multiple schedules within one company or across multiple companies. UDIC can also support scheduling of multiple tasks within the same company. UDIC stores a history of integrity logs so if an error does occur in your data, UDIC can pinpoint when it happened.  The standard ACCPAC integrity checker does not have this functionality.  The log files are overwritten every time an integrity check is run.

Using the Windows Scheduler allows you to schedule UDIC to run daily, weekly, monthly, one time only, when the computer starts or when you log in.  You can select the time and day you want the recurring task to start.  You can also set up multiple instances of a recurring task - for example you may need to run your Integrity Check twice a day. Within Windows XP the Scheduler is accessed through Start/ All Programs / Accessories / System Tools / Scheduled Tasks. If the functionality of the Windows Scheduler is inadequate (for example you may only want it to run if certain criteria has been met) then third party Schedulers can be used.

So we have some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that there are very cost effective ways to safeguard the integrity of your business and accounting data. The bad news is that doing nothing will eventually allow the law of averages to catch up with you. How much will bad data cost you? How much would it cost your business to lose valuable data and processing time during business hours? How many missed dinners would it take to justify investing in a tool to schedule regular unattended data integrity checks?

We sincerely hope you never have to find out. Unfortunately our consulting experience tells us that it is only a matter of time.  For more information, please contact us at info@axisintegratedsolutions.com

Complete Your Tasks and Appointments Faster and more Efficiently

Do you have several Tasks and Appointments you need to complete? Do you also need to update or touch each Company or Opportunity that the Task is for? Ever wonder if there was a faster way to complete your appointments and tasks while updating other information in Companies and Opportunities. Well there is!

Step 1: Making the My Communications Report Auto Hyperlink (This may need to be completed by the Administrator or someone with rights to edit Reports)

1. Click on Reports on the Main Menu
2. Click the Communications Category.
3. Click the Edit Button (Pencil Icon) next to the My Communications report.
4. Click the Auto Hyperlinking checkbox to enable it.

5. Click Continue
6. Click Save to save the report.

Step 2. Running the Report using Saved Search Criteria

1. Click Reports on the Main Menu
2. Click the Communications Category
3. Choose the period for which you want to see your Communications for from the Saved Search dropdown.

1. Click the Run Button.
2. Change the Communication - Status to Pending to see only your uncompleted Tasks/Appointments.
3. Click Run again.

Step 3. Start Going Through your Appointments/Tasks.

1. You will now have a popup window with the Report contents in it showing all your Appointments and Tasks.
2. Click on an item in the Report and the main CRM window will automatically take you to the corresponding Task, Appointment, Company, Person or Opportunity depending on which field you choose. For example, if you click the Company Name field the Company will open in the main CRM window. If you click the Date, the Task will open in the main window.

Report Window

Main CRM Window

1. Open the two windows up side-by-side or you can switch back and forth between the two windows.
2. Start setting your Tasks and Appointments to complete, or change the Company/Opportunity fields then move to the next record on the Report.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q - Can I change my Accounts Receivable control account in the Account Set form?

A - Yes.  This is a new feature in Sage Accpac ERP version 5.4.  You can now change the receivables control, prepayment liability, and retainage accounts in an account set that is assigned to one or more customers.  It is no longer necessary to create a new Accounts Set and manually assign each customer to the new account set.

Q - Is it possible to enter an adjustment directly in the Accounts Payable Payment Entry screen?

A - Yes.  In the Adjustment Entry form, you can easily write off small amounts when you adjust payments. For example, suppose that you post a prepayment of $250.00 for a vendor. Later, you receive an invoice that totals only $248.50. When you apply the prepayment to the invoice you end up with an overpayment of $1.50 in your system.  You can now write off the $1.50 amount while applying the prepayment to the invoice.

Q - When posting a batch in a subledger such as Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable, can I automatically post the General Ledger batch it creates as well?

A - Yes.  In Sage Accpac ERP version 5.4, batches from other applications can be posted automatically when you choose “Creating and Posting a New Batch” as the Create G/L Batches By option in G/L Integration forms.

Q - Can I view User Activity for an Individual User?

A - In CRM v5.8 you can view user activity for an individual by opening the User Details page for the specific user. To view user activity for a specific user:

1. Select Administration | Users | Users and search for the user whose activity history you wish to view. Select the hyperlink of the user to open the User Details page.
2. Select the User Activity History tab.

Q - How do I create a Default Set of User Preferences for a Sales Rep?

A - If you already have a User Template tailored to the Sales Rep function in Sage CRM v5.8, all you do is open up the template, and edit the User Preferences from the User Preferences tab. If you are creating a new template, then the user preferences are defined in the third step of the template creation.

To create a default set of User Preferences for a Sales Rep:

1. Select Administration | Users | User Templates, then search for the Sales Rep template. Click on the hyperlink of the Sales Rep template.
2. Click on the User Preferences tab.
3. Select the Change button.
4. Update the preferences and select Save.

All new users, who are set up using this template, will have the Sales Rep       User Preferences as their default settings. The user can then modify their own user preferences from the My CRM | My Preferences tab.

Q - How can I add new fields to tables in Sage Pro ERP?

A - Note: It is recommended that this be done by a Sage Certified Consultant or Business Partner. Create a full and verified backup before proceeding. This should first be attempted in a test installation and the results should be fully verified before implementing in a live system.

Follow the steps below:

• Open System Manager.
• Under the Maintain menu, point-to Dictionary and click Tables. The Table File Maintenance screen should appear.
• Enter the Table ID for the table to be modified.
• Select Field from the list box menu.
• Click Select.
• Enter the name of the new field in the Field Name field.
• Press Enter; the Maintain Fields message box should appear.
• Click Add. Another message appears asking whether to copy the default values from an existing record. There are three options: Field, Data Type or No.
• Select the appropriate option. If No is selected, the information for the new field must be entered manually.
• Save.

Note:  For more information, refer to the "Data Dictionary" section in the System Manager documentation.

Q - What causes the delay when populating payment priority and terms id field when creating a payable?

After selecting a vendor when creating a payable, there is a long delay in populating the Payment Priority and Terms ID field in the Enter Payables screen. In some cases these fields never get populated.

This situation usually involves a custom payment term assigned to a vendor and is affected by how the custom payment term was setup. It occurs when the fiscal calendar has no work days selected and the custom payment term has either any of the following options selected:

• move date to the preceding work day
• move date to the following work day

If these options are selected, Sage Pro ERP attempts to find the next available work day to calculate the due date of the payable. In the above scenario, Sage Pro ERP will create a payable due date outside the 3 year fiscal calendar window.

Refer to the list below to help troubleshoot this issue:

1. Verify which vendor payment term is assigned to the vendor that is causing the issue.
   1. Under the Maintain menu, click Vendors; the Vendor Maintenance screen should appear.
   2. Enter the vendor id in the Vendor field.
   3. Click the Purchases tab.
   4. Locate the Payment Terms field, the payment term can be found here.
2. Check whether either of the following options is selected for If due/discount date is not a business work day:
   1. move date to the preceding work day
   2. move date to the following work day

With either selection, the fiscal calendar should have at least one work day selected. Otherwise,Sage Pro will continue to look for the next work day to calculate the due date. Follow the steps below:

1. Open System Manger(SM).
2. Under the Maintain menu, point-to Companies and click Fiscal Calendars.
3. Enter the appropriate company id into the Company field.
4. Enter the appropriate fiscal year into the Fiscal Year field.
5. Click the Main tab.
6. Ensure that at least one work day is selected in the Working Days section of this tab.

TOOL OF THE MONTH

Microsoft Excel 2003 - Formatting Shortcuts