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A-1. You have Company, Invoice, Product and Customer
Managers in this program. What are they and how do I use them?
The "Managers" provide you with tools to add, modify, view and delete data. For
example, when using the Invoice Manager, you can add, edit, delete, view and
print invoices. All of the current invoices are listed in the window. Simply
click on the invoice you want and choose an option. To make this system EASY to
use, all Managers function the same, they just manage different data. Some
options, such as add, edit, delete, close and help are found on all of the
managers, but some managers have other features. For example, you can only print
envelopes and statements from the Customer Manager but not from the Product
Manager. Please note that because of the way we designed our system, you can
actually setup, edit and delete products and customers in the middle of doing a
new invoice! On the fly! Our managers are very powerful tools!
NOTE: you can also right-click your mouse on the list for a pop-up list of
editing options.
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A-2. How do I setup MY business?
From the main menu, click the File Menu and choose Company Manager. From the
Company Menu, select ADD and fill in as many options as you need then click the
save button and close the Company Manager window. This new company is now
available for use. You can edit any of the company data by opening the Company
Manager and clicking on the company you want in the list and selecting EDIT from
the Company Menu. To make any company in the list the default company,
double-click on the company in the list or choose the Company Menu and select
Set As Default. The currently selected default company is used when adding and
editing data.
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A-3. What is the Default Company?
This program can manage 32,000 different companies all with separate customer,
invoice and product files. The default company is the company currently open for
processing. All of the system options are stored at the company level, such as
tax rates, printing preferences, company name, etc. If you only run one company,
you will need to set it as the default company only once. The system will
automatically open the last company you were working on when you open the
billing program. To set any company as the default, open the Company Manager and
double-click on the company you want. The currently selected default companies
name appears in the other managers windows.
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A-4. Where do I set the
system options?
The "heart" of the billing system is located in the company setup. The system
options are all set at the company level, allowing you to define different
options for different companies. This is great if you run a bookkeeping service
as you can modify the company options to suit your customers requests! To change
any system options, open the Company Manager and click on the company you want,
then select EDIT from the Company menu. NOTE: If you assign a password to the
system, the password must be entered in order to allow changes the company setup
options. This allows you to restrict people from changing your system options.
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A-5. Can I create an audit trail or
password-protect the system?
You can do both! You can use the "Require System Audit Trail" checkbox on the
company setup (general tab option) to turn on the audit trail. When this option
is ON, editing and deleting invoices is not allowed, requiring a new invoice to
be entered for the required adjustment. Furthermore, if you assign a password to
this system (Tools Menu), the password must be entered before changes to the
company setup options can be made. These two options provide you with the means
to make your billing system very secure!
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A-6. Can your system print mailing
labels for my packages?
Yes, and more! Not only can you create your own label sizes, you can also create
custom mailing lists by classifying your customers and vendors! If you use a
large label you can also print your bitmap picture logo and return address on
the label. And, if that's not enough, we provide options for auto-copying
customer addresses to the label print queue when creating invoices or batch
printing! We have also pre-defined four (4) popular label sizes for you to use.
Four labels are designed for 300 DPI and four of them for 600 DPI.
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A-7. Can I add a fee to my customer accounts?
There are several ways to do this. You could incorporate the fee in the unit price
or add it as a separate line item on the invoice. The question is, do you want to track
the income from this fee or are you interested in only getting the charge on the
invoice. Also, if you want to add a fee for past-due account balances, use the
Interest Wizard to generate the invoices. Which method you decide on will determine what
kind of information you get back on your reports.
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A-8. PLEASE backup your data files!
PLEASE safeguard your data files using our built-in backup utility! Eventually,
computers do fail and you risk loosing all of your data when that happens.
Please make backups! We suggest that you get three new formatted floppy disks
and label them "A", "B" and "C" and rotate them once a week or month. This
ensures that you have three backup disks, in case one of them gets damaged,
erased, or simply goes bad. These things do happen! Please backup your data
files before something goes wrong. Our customers have had lightning strikes,
power outages, floods and hard disk crashes, so we want to emphasize to you how
important it is to safeguard your data. Also, please do not backup your files to
your hard disk, unless you do this in addition to other backup methods. If your
hard disk should crash, your backup would be worthless to you on your hard
drive. Backup to floppy disks, zip drives, CD ROM’s and tape to ensure your data
files are safe.
Use more than one method to be safe. For example, if you backup to a tape drive,
what would happen if you needed to replace your tape drive and the newer tape
drives no longer supported the type of tape cartridge you are currently using.
So keep more than one backup source and the best method would include backups to
different media types. Remember, ZIP drives, floppy disks and hard disks fail,
so make your backups to multiple media types. Whatever you do, don’t rely on
only one backup disk!
Also, our version 1 programs can't make multi-disk backups if you have a large
amount of data files. Our version 2 programs can compress the data and back it
up to multiple disks if needed. If you have a lot of data, consider upgrading to
version 2.
We have also confirmed that there is a program on the market called Zip Magic,
which interferes with our backup and restore utility, by causing a bogus error
message "files not found", when trying to restore from your backup disk.
Although the files are indeed there, Zip Magic wants control of them and reports
this error message. You need to disable Zip Magic in order for our restore
utility to work correctly again. Apparently, since our backup files are in ZIP
format, Zip Magic thinks it needs to handle our file, when it should not, and
creates this error message. If you receive this error and have Zip Magic
installed, you should contact Zip Magic for instructions on how to disable their
product.
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A-9. How do I move data from computer A to computer B?
Simply install the program on computer B, then make a backup from computer A using our backup program
on the Tools Menu. Then take the backup disk
to computer B and restore from the backup, using the restore button on
the backup utility. After the restore, use the rebuild data files on the Tools
menu and you will be ready to go!
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A-10. Are there any user-defined fields in your
programs?
Yes, we have a "user-defined" field called the Key Code field. It is in the
invoices and PO screens. The Key Code field also has a special Key Code report
in the Report Wizard. It is extremely flexible and quite powerful. Create your
own Key Codes and sort on them for special reports. This field is 10 characters
long and a combination of alpha/numeric input will work. We created this field
so our customers could add customized options to their billing /inventory /
reporting system! For example, if you wanted to monitor sales by salesperson,
you could enter the salespersons employee ID or their initials into the key code
field on the invoice. Then run the Key Code Inquiry report, sorted by key code
to see the total sales by salesperson.
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A-11. Can I send out late (past-due) notices to my
customers?
Yes, several ways. You can use the Customer Statements found on the Customer Manager.
You can also define your own aging categories,
i.e., 30, 60, 90 and 90+ days, etc. The batch-print statements option in the
Customer Manager (the mail box picture button) can print statements for any
aging category. For example, you could print statements for all customers who
have a balance in the 90+ aging category. Also, you can create a form letter using the
Letter Wizard to create a customized late notice which also includes the aging
fields and customer information. For more help, see the online help for these topics in our program.
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A-12. Are your programs multi-user?
Our Inventory Pro Deluxe software is multi-user and supports 1 to 50
simultaneous users.
All of our other products are single-user programs.
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A-13. Can I print the customer notes on my reports?
The customer notes do not print on any reports. They can be printed on that
customers invoices however, by setting this option in their customer setup. The
customer notes will over-ride your sales message when this option is turned on.
For example, you could use this feature to print driving instructions or
directions to your customers location on each of their invoices for your people
working in the field.
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A-14. Can I email invoices to some customers and
postal mail the rest?
Yes, the e-mail address for the customer is the key. The "Include Customers
without E-Mail Address" (email settings in Company Manager) option will cause
the system to send e-mail for ALL customers, even if the customer does not have
an e-mail address entered in their customer setup. When this option is turned
on, all e-mail for customers without an e-mail address will be sent to your
return e-mail address, alerting you that this customer has an empty e-mail
address in their customer setup. If this option is turned OFF, customers
without an e-mail address will NOT be sent. They will not be marked as
printed either, so you will need to run the batch print option to print out
these invoices. This allows you to have some customers who receive their
invoices by e-mail and some customers who have their invoices printed and
mailed.
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A-15. What does "Error 5XX" mean when I try to email
an invoice?
This is also mentioned at the bottom of your email FAQ's in the program
online help. Any error message number starting
with a 5, i.e., 503, is coming from your ISP server computer. We do not have any
error messages in our programs that start with the number 5 for this reason, as
those numbers are used by internet host servers. You need to contact your ISP and
find out why they are giving you this error message. Your ISP may be
requiring you to use email authentication, enter a password or use a different
SMTP address. Those options are found in the email setup options in our
programs, however, you will still need to contact your ISP about the error
message and find out what you need to do to stop the error message. They could
also be experiencing problems with their computers, so you need to give them a
call.
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A-16. How can I import data into
the program?
You can import products and customers into our programs, using the "Import
From Text File" menu options in the Product and Customer Managers. The import
file MUST be a comma-quote delimited text file, such as "Field1","Field2","etc".
Therefore, the program that currently holds your data, must be able to create a
comma-quote delimited file in order to be able to import those records into our
program. Our online help for these features contain much more help to get you
started. If you want to import from Excel, Microsoft has a how-to article on
their web site at:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q123183
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A-17. Can I export from your
programs?
Yes, you can export customers and products to text files, which can be read
from any spreadsheet program as well as many other applications. When exporting
from our programs, you select what you want the delimited character to be,
therefore, simply pick a delimit character that your software program wants,
usually a comma or semi-colon, and open our text file with your spreadsheet
program or other import feature.
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A-18. Do you have barcode reader
support? Can I print barcodes?
Yes to both. Our FF Inventory Pro software can print barcodes on invoices and
labels using the setup features in our software found on the Barcode Tab.
Everything you need to do this is already contained in our software. If you also
have a scanner, you can scan those barcodes into the line items of your invoices
and PO's. Simply print out product labels with the barcodes and place them on
your products. When you sell a product, scan it into a line item on your
invoice. Our program will work with any scanner, so select a scanner which is
right for you and you'll be ready to go!
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