Based in Ontario, ACCU-DART integrates with AccountMate for inventory control with bar code scanning. It provides real-time, accurate inventory information, and ensures that you don’t ship the wrong items to your customers. This month, we have 5 questions for Irwin Ash.

1. How do you know iSOFT?

I was an AccountMate reseller and I knew Lisa from attending AccountMate conferences. I was looking for customization help. She’s well respected and has a great reputation for doing an excellent job. We have looked to iSOFT for programming projects for us.

Today I am no longer a reseller so I don’t customize AccountMate anymore. Our business has been focused on ACCU-DART for AccountMate and several other ERP systems for years now. iSOFT has clients using ACCU-DART, so we continue to work together.

2. What led you to create ACCU-DART?

I had a client using a bar code scanner that was attached to a computer via a cable. They would scan goods as they loaded a truck, to tell the computer what was shipping. 

The cords would fail after getting bent. Or the cord was stretched across a doorway and people would walk into it. There were people standing around waiting to load a truck while the PC that had the scanner was being used for something else.

I had expertise in both warehouse operations and RF and said, “Why don’t we write a wireless interface for your ERP system so you’re not tethered to your PC?” That was for shipping. Then we added receiving, and counting inventory, and more. 

Later that company moved to AccountMate. Rather than write a custom interface for them, we wrote it as a package in a way that other AccountMate resellers could help their clients scan inventory too. That was in 1998. We have continued to provide RF inventory solutions for over 20 years.

3. What is RF?

RF is short for Radio Frequency. In warehouse applications it allows for real-time communication between wireless handheld devices and the ERP solution.

You use a handheld bar code scanner to scan items to instantly verify and update the inventory data in your system as you receive items, pick goods off the shelf, move them around in your warehouses, or ship them.

Bar coding with RF is an inexpensive option for businesses—you just need to print the bar codes with your printer, the same as printing labels.  

4. What’s something ACCU-DART does that surprises AccountMate users?

It’s not a feature within ACCU-DART that surprises people; it’s discovering what adding bar codes can do for them big picture. 

Suppose you ship 5,000 orders per month, and 2% of the time you ship the wrong item to your customer. For example: the sales order said blue and you shipped red by mistake. That might cost you $150 to fix, with rush shipping for a blue one, and an RMA for the red one, and your time to process it. Plus, the loss of customer goodwill. 2% of 5,000 orders is 100, so that might be $15,000 in monthly expense. 

If you ship the red one by mistake, now your inventory count is wrong for both red and blue. Which means your inventory levels for purchasing decisions are wrong. And your counts for items in stock are wrong for both items, so you may lose sales. 

When the data can’t be trusted to be correct, people start creating workarounds that make things worse. Like the salesperson who hides three items under their desk after promising them to a customer, so that the items don’t get sold to someone else. 

And you get people wasting time walking to the warehouse to check the shelf while a customer is on the phone, because it takes two days for received items to get entered into the system manually. 

In contrast, if you’re scanning bar coded items with ACCU-DART as you pick and pack orders, you’ll be alerted on the spot that you grabbed a red one instead of a blue one. You’ll ship the right item to the customer. Your business saves money, allows you to make better purchasing decisions, improves efficiency, and increases customer satisfaction.

I like to sum up ACCU-DART as: accuracy plus timeliness of information.

5. You were going on vacation last month—where did you go?

My wife retired two years ago from education. We used to be limited to taking time off only in the summer. We’ve always wanted to go to the Mediterranean, but July and August are so hot there, we didn’t want to be tourists there in the summer so we kept putting that off.

Last month we finally went. We did a 15-day spring Mediterranean cruise to Rome, Athens and other cities. It was wonderful.

Here's a vacation photo from Irwin showing a beautiful view on the island of Rhodes in the Dodecanese islands of Greece.

We loved hearing your AccountMate questions

Shawn, Jean and I had a great experience visiting nearly all of iSOFT’s Minnesota clients. It was rewarding to see so many people in person and get tours of manufacturing processes too.

On our first day, there was a crazy blizzard. Then the rest of our trip was warm in the 70s and 80s. We thought the blizzard was fun. Most of you locals just rolled your eyes at that, ha ha. Home for us in Southern California is at 3,000 feet altitude in the high desert, where we get snow about once a year and it melts by 2pm, so that’s perfect.

The most productive part of our trip was the questions that AccountMate users had prepared for our visit. One company had dozens of questions in a list. Another company asked each employee in advance, “What questions do you have about AccountMate?” It really got everyone to stop and think, which is easy to forget to do in the daily routine.

The annual reviews that we did with each of our clients in January were similarly productive, going over your company goals to see what you want to accomplish this year and how we can help you get there efficiently. My goal is to do quarterly follow-ups to keep the momentum and the conversations going. 

So make a note that we’ll check in again by phone in July or August. And in the meantime, any AccountMate question is welcome and you're encouraged to reach out to us. We're just a phone call away.  –Lisa

 

Have you tried setting up Inventory Types?

When you enter a new inventory item there are many fields to fill in. Inventory Types let you create templates with default values already entered for those screens so you don’t have to rethink the field values every time. 

This saves research time and data entry time for the person who’s entering new items. It also prevents errors and ensures consistency. And it reduces training time when a new employee is learning how your company enters inventory items.

Inventory Types are ready to use right now in your AccountMate!

Inventory Type Maintenance exists in SO, AR, PO, and IC.  So, if you have any of these modules, you have access to Inventory Types.  



AccountMate includes many handy built-in features like this. We’re here to help make you aware of all it can do so you can get the most from your system.

The next Core Product Training class at AccountMate’s headquarters in Petaluma, California, is scheduled for Wednesday-Friday, June 19-21, 2019.

The three days of classroom training is applicable to both first-time and existing AccountMate users—and don’t forget that if you have an active Lifecycle Maintenance Plan, it includes one seat per year so your only cost would be travel expenses.

Contact us for additional information and see the course description here.

 

AccountMate provides built-in flexibility for calculating the customer freight charges on sales orders and sales invoices, allowing you to set a fixed minimum freight charge amount or calculate freight charges based on the weight of inventory items ordered. Please see Article #1123: How AccountMate Calculates Freight Charges for how these options are configured.

If you’d like integration with UPS, FedEx and USPS, then check out the ShipIt plug-in for AccountMate. We’re happy to set up a demo at your convenience.

Version: AM10 for SQL and Express

Modules: AR, PC, SO

TIP #1: Multi-level pricing can be set up either by Price Code or Order Quantity; however, starting in AccountMate 10.1 for SQL and Express, you can use a combination of these two multi-level pricing options.

To set it up, you have to mark the SO/AR Module Setup > General (2) > Enable Multiple Pricing checkbox; otherwise, unmark it if you want to use either of the two options.

The Multi-level Pricing section is removed from the SO/AR Module Setup > General (1) tab.

The Enable Multiple Pricing option is available only if you have purchased and activated the Pricing Control module.

TIP #2: Without the Pricing Control module, you can set up only ten multi-level prices by price code or order quantity.

Versions: AM10 for SQL and Express
AM9 for SQL and Express
AM8 for SQL and Express

Module: SM

Q: I find the report preview too small to my liking. I always end up clicking on Zoom and selecting 150% on the report preview each time I view the report. Is there a way to save the default Zoom setting so I do not have to configure it each time I preview a report?

A: Yes, perform the following to set the default Zoom setting in the report preview:

1. Click the List box button (drop-down arrow) next to the Printer icon in the System Toolbar (sometimes referred to as the Power Toolbar).
2. Select the Report Setup function.
3. Go to the Preview Magnification tab.
4. In the Magnification Factor field, enter your desired magnification percentage (zoom) when previewing reports in your workstation.
5. Click OK to save your changes.