UDS Green Industry Software, Inc. Newsletter December 31, 2001
Wow! It is finally here, ActiveApplications Version 6. This new general ledger and payables applications is ready for your implementation. This newsletter is a must read for any ActiveApplications customer.
Topics in this newsletter:
Version 6 is delayed. What to do while waiting for Version 6?
Year End Procedure before Version 6
Getting ready for Version 6
What Do We Do Next? Please complete this survey.
User Conference
Using the Internet to get Orders
Task List without Implementing Departments and Sub Classes
Task List with Implementation of Departments and Sub Classes
ActiveApplications Version 6, How do I get it?
On Line Training Update
Much More…
Contents:
What to do while waiting for Version 6?
Sadly we will not have ActiveApplications Version 6 ready for you today. It will be available soon but you will have to close your accounting year before it is released. A delay in getting the new HTML help integrated will cause it to not be ready today. We will make it available as soon as the help is integrated successfully and we have retested every program.
This is the first release that will use the new help format and it has caused some problems. Not all of the help text will be available on release date but the new help must all function properly before it is released. This will be the first release to be so completely integrated into the HTML help system.
As you are aware we have been updating the help during version 5 and have most of it ready but many of the new programs have yet to be fully documented. As help documentation gets completed we will provide the new version on www.activeapplications.com for downloading to your systems.
What do you do until the release is ready? Close your accounting year by the procedure described in this newsletter. Make sure you have a backup copy of the database before closing. This copy will be used to get the previous year in the multi year financials when they are released. This procedure is the same as it has been in previous years so it should be familiar to you.
When the release is ready we will provide instructions on how to update this saved database for inclusion into the multiple year financials.
We want to make sure each ActiveApplications release is better than the previous and it has fewer of the program errors that seem to arise with every release. Revised testing procedures will make sure we reach this goal.
YEAR END PROCEDURE
UDS Active Accounting 5 (Windows) Year End Procedures (2001)
General Information:
Make a copy of your database before beginning any of these yearend procedures. This copy will allow you to easily create multiple year financials when they become available.
Billing: - Either end of Calendar or Fiscal Year
1) Make sure you run any inventory reports you need that have the Shipped This Year field on them.
2) Make sure you have entered and posted any invoices and payments you wish to be in the current year so the General Ledger Transactions are created.
3) Once all the reports have been printed, click Reports, Accounts Receivable, and Customer-Inventory Yearend. This is the Billing Year End Procedure. It moves the Shipped This Year to the Shipped Last Year and zeros the Shipped This Year in the inventory. Also it moves the Purchases This Year to Purchase Last Year and zeros the Purchases This Year in the customer file. Also does the same for Accumulated Service Charges.
4) You may wish to do a physical inventory and update the on hand quantities.
5) This concludes the Billing Year End Procedure.
Payroll: - End of Calendar Year
1) On the last payroll cycle of the year, make sure you check the Close Month, Quarter, and Year options on Begin Payroll Cycle. This will move the current year’s information to a quarterly table when check print is completed. From this table you will print the W2s and any quarterly reports you need. Do not do this twice or you will lose your yearend information.
2) If you do not close the year on the last payroll cycle you must close it before you run the first payroll of next year. To do this you must run Begin Payroll Cycle and check the Close Month, Quarter, and Year options. Then run Check Register, then Check Print. It will not print any checks but it must go through the process. This will close the year.
3) Once the last payroll cycle is completed, run any reports you need before beginning the next payroll cycle. At the beginning of the next payroll cycle all YTD balance information will be zeroed.
4) W2s may be printed any number of times until the end of the next quarter.
5) Payroll history reports can be run at any time for any time period because they are date dependent reports.
6) Once the next payroll cycle is started all the figures in the employee, department, and voluntary deduction files are set to zero.
Accounts Payable: - End of Calendar Year
1) Run a vendor history list if you want a hard copy of the vendor purchases information.
2) 1099 can be printed before or after the yearend procedure. You just need to tell the computer whether you have closed the year or not.
3) To close the year, click Reports, Accounts Payable, and Accounts Payable Yearend. This will move the Vendor Purchases This Year to Purchase Last Year and Purchase This Year is zeroed.
General Ledger: - End of Fiscal Year
1) Make sure you have posted all the transactions from the applications (Reports, General Ledger, G/L Transaction Posting). You cannot post the new year’s information to general ledger until you have closed the year. If you do you will need to reverse the transaction out and enter them in manually after you have closed the year.
2) Run an Income Statement and Balance Sheet (if necessary) for your company.
3) Print a General Ledger report) for all periods. This is not required but gives you a hard copy of the general ledger transactions and account balances and is essential for auditing. This probably will be a very lengthy report.
4) To close the General Ledger year, click Reports, General Ledger, and Yearend Procedure. You will be asked for the company number to close, the save company number, and the period to post entries to. The period to post to is usually period 12 unless you are on a 13 period accounting system.
A. Option 1 – You have made a copy of your database you can use the copy to go back to last year’s figures. Therefore you do not need to fill in the save company number. The program will remove all transaction history for the company being closed. Once the year is closed, the account balances for all income and expense accounts will be zero and the asset, liability, and equity accounts will have the current beginning balance. This is the only method we recommend. Make sure you have a copy of your data before beginning..
B. Option 2 – DO NOT USE THIS METHOD. If you want to maintain the previous year’s information in the current database, then the save company number is a company number that does not already exist (usually the year number (99)). Once the year is closed, the account balances for all income and expense accounts will be zero and the asset, liability, and equity accounts will have the current beginning balance. DO NOT USE THIS METHOD.
5) **** You will need to change to beginning period dates for your current company to the new years beginning period dates****. Use File, View, General Ledger, G/L Company to bring up the General Ledger Company information. When version 6 is released this step will become unnecessary.
6) DO NOT USE THIS METHOD. If you used the save company number option, to get at the information for the saved company, you need to add that company number to the G/L Company Information. This will allow you to print any reports or financial statements. You can also make any adjusting transactions you get from you accountant to this company. Once the transactions are entered and posted, you will need to get the ending balance of the accounts affected and change the beginning balance of those accounts in the current company.
GETTING READY FOR VERSION 6
Decision number 1 is to decide if you want a to use departments and sub classes in your ledger. Because we have eliminated the append character in sales processing, many of you will be required to create new departments so sales can be divided automatically. Most will not be required to change unless you want to use the new reporting features.
Other than append characters there is no requirement to establish departments or subclasses but we recommend you discuss with support how a change might benefit the information you see. Contact support to get more information
Decision number 2 is to decide how to handle the new location based costs in your inventory and sales processing. In all previous versions there was only one cost in the inventory. Now a single item can be tracked and sold using multiple costs. This will provide added capabilities if you want to use them but think about the ramifications to your accounting before implementing. Another way of representing the new capabilities is that we can offer LIFO and FIFO support if you wish.
If you are cash accounting as many nurseries are, then the only affect on you will be that the cost is reported to sales analysis will be drawn from the location it was sold from. This adds the capability to track the sales of the same item with multiple costs. This means that purchased items can be tracked differently from grown items. It also means that purchased items from multiple sources can be tracked in inventory.
These decisions can have significant affects on your accounting procedures so consider the decisions after consultation with your accountant and UDS support.
WHAT DO WE DO NEXT?
Once a big development like ActiveApplications Version 6.0 is completed we immediately start looking for our next project. What project should we work on next? Your responses could determine our highest priority when development begins on version 7.0.
The list is always longer than we can get done so everything is not an answer. We invite your comments and suggestions. Please complete the following and fax it to 616 942-5988 or click this reference to complete this form on the Internet. http://www.activeapplications.com/survey.htm
On a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest priority rate the following possible project for our programmers and support persons to consider:
___ Purchase Order Tracking Enhancement
___ Scheduling of Estimates
___ Route Accounting and Service Billing Control
___ Point of Sale Enhancement with store server concepts and drawer accounting
___ Handheld Applications- More of them
___ Internet and Automatic XML Order Processing
___ Voice Interface
___ Update TAGmaker for instant tagging
Make your own suggestions in these blanks
___ __________________________________________
___ __________________________________________
___ __________________________________________
Company Name _______________________________________
Completed by __________________________________________
UDS USER CONFERENCE
This year the users conference will be held on line using new interactive video conferencing software. This allows you to see an participate in the presentations as if you were at our conference. This should allow more people to attend. Since you will not have to leave your office you will have no excuse not to attend.
I am currently negotiating with companies that offer this service on their servers. The price of this service is falling rapidly but we still have a ways to go before it matches what we spent two years ago on the conference. My best guess is that we may have more than one of them scheduled in January and/or February.
You will have at least two weeks notice if and when we reach agreement. If it does not work out soon I will schedule a conference in Grand Rapids for February. If you are not from up here and did not like GR in December I know you will love it in February.
Seriously this should allow more people to attend at less cost for attendees although our cost may be more. I have attended several classes from Microsoft in this way and they have been very helpful. If you would like to see and participate in a class click on this link: http://www.u4all.com/registration/1,2145,4095_0,00.html
SUMMARY NOTES
Make sure to keep in touch with UDS support during this implementation. Before you try something make sure we know what you are doing and when you are doing it. If we know then we can make sure we have the necessary and immediate resources available for you. No one wants program errors but they seem to be unavoidable. The best we can offer you is a quick solution to unanticipated problems. Let us make sure we can help.
Brian