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When your inventory data is very timely, it saves you money
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When Your Inventory Data Is Very Timely, It Saves You Money


How long does it take for the accurate inventory data in your AccountMate system to become inaccurate? Surprisingly, not long at all! 

It’s easy to think of your inventory as just sitting there in your warehouse. In reality, it’s in motion quite often. For example:
  • If you update shipments minutes or hours after goods are shipped instead of instantly, then during that lag your customer service team or your online store will be misinforming customers about item availability. The same goes for updating inventory receipts later in the day – your order desk may be telling customers that you don’t have stock when you actually do have inventory. This could lead to lost sales.
  • Are you updating put away, picking and bin transfers when they happen? If not, then you may have staff spending time looking for goods that are no longer where they should be. Maybe you even missed a transfer and you have an outage situation in one bin and extra stock in another location.
  • Are you planning inventory based on yesterday’s values? For companies who have high fill rates who want to keep minimal inventory levels, not having timely data may result in a failure to expedite POs to avoid costly out of stock situations.
Accurate inventory is important, but accurate data that isn't timely is not as beneficial as it could be. 

Get your AccountMate system to update instantly, every time your inventory physically moves

The best way to keep your AccountMate in perfect sync with your real life inventory is with scanners that automatically update your data in real time. 



We like the ACCU-DART inventory control add-on for AccountMate. It uses hand-held barcode scanners to allow your warehouse folks to update the accounting system and your entire team with every transaction. 

At the same time, it cuts additional costs, because swiping with a scanner eliminates hours of tedious manual data entry and prevents typos from causing data inaccuracies.

When does iSOFT recommend ACCU-DART?
  • We’ve seen that AccuDart is a great enhancement to AccountMate for anyone with a large number of inventory items and a variable storage pattern in their warehouse. ACCU-DART allows people to pick by bin order and location easily, scanning the location as well as the item.  
  • It also benefits companies that need to receive "right away," by allowing them to scan in the receipt to a receiving bin and put it away later. This allows use of those items to fill orders (especially to fill back orders) before there’s time to properly put them away.  
  • For companies with complex picking situations, it’s easy to stage orders in various shipping bin "zones" for assembly into pallets or boxes, while utilizing a picker to pick items for multiple orders based on the location in the warehouse instead of running all over picking one order at a time.  
Warehouse operations and accuracy invariably are improved with this inventory management tool! If you’d like to take a closer look at ACCU-DART to calculate cost or time savings for your company’s inventory, give us a shout here at iSOFT. 
 
Watch a demo of ACCU-DART in a warehouse (3 min. video)
View AccountMate’s PDF brochure for ACCU-DART 

"Today's Most Frustrating Thing"

 

When you get a new version of any software, AccountMate included, it’s common to use it the same way you always have because you’re too busy to explore the new features – even if some of the features could substantially improve your workflow and work quality.

Here’s a simple exercise for longtime AccountMate users to help prioritize which features to learn or set up. It's called “Today’s Most Frustrating Thing.” It helps identify the top few new features you could adopt that would make the biggest difference for you or your team. I’ve used this with many companies over the years and people find it to be quite helpful.

Download this worksheet and give it to your users and ask them to turn in at least one thing for each day for a week. This gives them and us a load of information on where they could get more (possibly a lot more) out of their AccountMate system with just some coaching, training or setup to get things rolling. And people like to contribute their insights and see action taken to implement some of them.  

  • Usually the most frustrating thing is information that users have to repeatedly look up that we can easily add to a screen or report they already view and use.
  • Sometimes there’s an issue with a business process where the system doesn’t match the flow of the business, which wastes time. We can either revamp the process or change the system to better match the specific business process.
  • Just recently we created a second packing list for a client. We call it a ‘drop ship packing list.’ They wanted to provide their own packing list to their vendor who drop ships to their customer and AccountMate wouldn’t generate a packing slip for items they did not have available to ship themselves.
  • It's awesome when a user notes something that's frustrating to them, and we can simply show them a setting or menu they weren't aware of in AccountMate that eliminates their frustration on the spot!
Consider handing out the Today’s Most Frustrating Thing to your AccountMate users to see what opportunities come to light. 

-Yvonne Wensloff
Download the "Today's Most Frustrating Thing" worksheet

Tech Note: Understanding the Accounts Receivable Import Invoice Function

AccountMate is really distinguished in the mid-tier market by its available source code – and the limitless flexibility that provides – but even without that it’s a phenomenally broad system in built-in functionality. One such built-in feature that's popular is the ability to import customer invoices.

This is covered in our Tech Note: Article #1107: Understanding the Accounts Receivable Import Invoice Function, which details the process and lists the sources for any default values not found in the text (TXT) or comma-separated-value (CSV) files provided.

View PDF: Understanding the Accounts Receivable Import Invoice Function

Tech Note: Reconciling the AR Aging Report with Your General Ledger Asset Accounts

It's important to regularly validate your balance sheet with the detailed reports from the subsidiary modules. Here’s a Tech Note with details on how to do that for your AR Asset accounts: Tech Note: Article #1187: Reconciling the AR Aging Report with the Accounts Receivable General Ledger Account Balance.

Note: If you have multiple AR Asset accounts, there are “tricks” to the reconciliation process, and this Technical Note discusses all the factors to consider for effective results. If you have any questions, you know you can always reach out to us here at iSOFT.
View PDF: Reconciling the AR Aging Report with the Accounts Receivable General Ledger Account Balance

Tech Tip: Now You Can Record Bank Deposits Directly from AR Apply Payment

 

AccountMate version 10.2 included a terrific new Record Deposit button on the AR Apply Payment Save window to save you steps. When you click the button it pre-populates the deposit fields with the payment details you just recorded. Check out these tips for details on how it can be used.

Version: AM10 for SQL and Express (MS1002 and higher)

Module: AR 

TIP 1: A Record Deposit button is added to the AR Apply Payment save window so you can record a deposit immediately after payment is posted without the need to manually access the Record Bank Deposit function. This enhancement is available starting in AccountMate 10.2 for SQL and Express. 

TIP 2: Clicking the Record Deposit button from the AR Apply Payment save window will display the Record Bank Deposit function. The following fields will be auto-populated with information from the Apply Payment function when the payment was recorded: 

  • Bank # - value comes from the Deposit Bank # field 
  • Payment Received/Refunded Date - value comes from the Receipt Date field 
  • Pay Code - value comes from the Pay Code field
  • Deposit Date - default value comes from the Receipt Date field 
  • Total No. of Receipts/Refund Registered and Recorded - default value is 1
  • Total Amount Registered and Recorded - default value comes from the Paid Amount field for the receipt
  • Checkbox is automatically marked for the receipt transaction in the grid 

TIP 3: When using the Record Deposit button from the Apply Payment save window, only those receipts that meet the auto-populated Bank #, Payment Received/Refunded Date, and Pay Code will be displayed on the Record Bank Deposit window. This means that some payments other than the current payment will be shown on the grid. 

Note: The current receipt recorded from the Apply Payment function is automatically marked. You can mark other receipts, if any. If you do, then be sure to review the value in the Total No. of Receipts/Refunds Registered and Total Amount Registered fields. 

TIP 4: Once the deposit is saved from the Record Bank Deposit window (and the Record Deposit button is used from the Apply Payment save window to access the function), the New button from the Save Deposit window is disabled. You have to manually access the Record Bank Deposit function if you want to record additional deposits. 

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