Improvements to Account Maintenance and Transaction Entry

This release brings a new interface to the account maintenance and transaction entry within the Sales and Purchase Ledger.

The first change is to the menu options available – an ACTION button has been added which, when selected, lists the options available in more detail than can be shown on the individual buttons (you can select the action from here also). In addition a CLOSE button has been added, wherever you are in the option selecting this will abandon the current process and return you directly to the menu.

The second change, applying to account maintenance, is that when you are prompted for the account code to process IF the account code is displayed on screen you will be prompted within the input for that option rather than a pop-up at the bottom of the screen. All the usual <F4-Select> options continue to be available. If the account code is not shown on screen then a pop-up at the bottom of the screen is shown for you to select the account.

The third change gives you a utilities and enquiries panel on the right of the screen.

The Utilities panel allows you to see:

q Graph – comparison of turnover and costs for the last accounting calendar year.

q Web – link to the website for the customer/supplier (if recorded against the account record).

q Mail – launches your email client pre-set with the customer / supplier email address (if recorded against the account record). If more than one address recorded then a pop-up will allow pre-selection of the address to use.

q Word – shows existing Microsoft Word documents created against this account and allow amendment / print of these documents and the creation of new ones.

q Image – shows any image linked to the customer / supplier record.

q Links – opens a ‘Windows Explorer’ folder for this customer / supplier.Within this folder you may have files such as excel spreadsheets, PDF files, etc. If right-click and choose NEW then various options will be available depending on the software installed on the pc.

q Map – links to a map website showing the location of the customer / supplier based on the entered post code.

q Zoom – transfers to the ledger enquiry option for the customer / supplier

q Memo – adds / updates the memo recorded against the customer / supplier

The Enquiries panel allows you to see:

q Trans – shows the ‘current’ transactions, transactions outstanding at the start of the current period and those entered since.

q Retained – shows the full saved transaction history for the account

q Outstanding – shows the outstanding transactions on the account

q Invoices – shows the saved documents for the account

q Aged – shows the aged analysis of the outstanding transactions

The transaction input options are amended in a similar manner – the ACTION button and the CLOSE button having been added and the enquiries and utility panel on the right to allow quick access to the options listed.

Installation

DATAFILE.INI

These options are available via amendments to the DATAFILE.INI.

If you add the line:

R57LOOK=TRUE

to the DATAFILE.INI then this will enable this option together with similar features in the Invoicer ‘Maintain Products’ and the Payroll ‘Employee Maintenance’ and ‘Input Payroll’ entry screens.

In addition to enabling this option the font size will be reduced, throughout the system, in order to display this extra detail. The font size assigned is 9 point on an 800x600 resolution, 10 point on a 1024x768 resolution and 12 point on higher resolutions. You can amend the font size via an entry in the DATAFILE.INI if desired, though we do not recommend this as, depending on fonts some screen display problems may occur. The option to amend the font size can be added to the DATAFILE.INI, though it must be added after the R57LOOK entry above, is:

FONTSIZE=X,Y,Z

where X is the point size at 800x600, Y is at 1024x768 and Z is any higher resolution. Note: Datafile recommend a resolution of 1024x768.

Utility Options

Whether selected options on the Utility panel are active depends on data item names within the accounts file and the contents of these items.

q Web – this is active if a field name on the accounts file contains ‘WEB’ or ‘WWW’ and the item is not blank on the selected record.

q E-Mail – this is active if a field name on the account file contains ‘EMAIL’ or ‘E-MAIL’ and the item value contains ‘@’ on the selected record.

q Image – this is active if a field name on the accounts file contains ‘BMP’, ‘BITMAP’ or ‘IMAGE’ and the item value contains ‘.BMP’, ‘.JPG’, ‘.JPE’, ‘.JPEG’, ‘.ICO’ or ‘.EMF’ on the selected record. In addition if you have a field name containing ‘HTML’ and a value containing ".HTM” or ".HTML” the system will launch your web browser to display the selected page.

q Map – this is active if a field name on the accounts file contains ‘POST’ and ‘CODE’ and the item is not blank on the selected record.

None of the item name / value checks above are case-sensitive.