e-Newsletter, August 12, 2005

Patch 21: Updates for Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Inventory

Version 4 Patch #21 addresses the following items:

in Accounts Receivable program 2 (Ship-Tos), if you edited a ship-to address and changed the ship-to number in certain instances it could 're-sort' the record into the list incorrectly, making it look like you had lost some of your ship-to records for the customer (relinking would bring them back). The new version of the program is 4.01.

in Accounts Payable program 1 (Vendors), if you entered an invalid account number at the Default Debit COA field you would properly receive an error but then the cursor would go to the wrong field afterwards. The new version of the program is 4.01.

in Inventory program 36 (Shrinkage/Spoilage) if you used the Specific option to record shrinkage and you were interfacing with General Ledger, the Zero Proof and Net Profit/Loss running totals (as seen in General Ledger program 10 in the upper right) would not be properly affected. The Range option performed properly. The new version of the program is 4.02.

when using the Data Export Tool to export data to an MS-Access database, if the title of a field being exported includes a period (.) then you get an error saying the file cannot be created. This is a limitation of MS-Access. We changed the one instance we could find of a default field name including a period (the Vendor Account No. field in the Accounts Payable Vendor Master file) so that the default field name will no longer cause this error. If you come across this error in other instances check your field names for periods and other special characters. Field names can be edited to be anything you like to get around this limitation. The file changed is the ADFMDATA.DAT file; the new version is 4.02.

If you prefer to not download patches, registered users can order a replacemnt CD from their dealer that contains all current patches.

Click Here To Download This Patch

Q&A: Importing From Web-Based Trading Partners

Q: I am working with a web-based company that sells my products. They send me files of the new orders once a day and I have to key all that stuff into Order Entry. Is there any way to automate this time-consuming procedure?

A: We do not offer a 'canned' import program for importing orders. There are two reasons for this. First, there are practically an infinite number of custom file formats for importing orders--most every company involved in this sort of business has a proprietary format (notwithstanding the standard offered by ANSI, which is ridiculously complex and so no one uses it in its pure form). To have a standard import application be capable of working with all of them would be a huge task. Second, the flexibility of RTS-Advantage allows users to run their Order Entry with any number of individual quirks and foibles, so that defining the import destination details in a standard program would be at best complex and in many instances impossible.

What we offer instead are custom import programs that are tailored to fit your exact needs. All you need to do is supply us (through your dealer, please) the file format template used by your trading partner, a few sample files that use the format, and an explanation of how you want the data imported (in other words, tell us what you do now when you manually enter the information). We will start by giving you a detailed proposal with a firm price on the custom import. Once you give us the go-ahead we'll produce a custom program that quickly and simply imports your orders or for that matter, any other importable files you use, like time clock records, bank notices, inventory updates, etc. Typical delivery times for custom import programs is less than two weeks from project acceptance.

Roundtable Software has produced hundreds of these import programs over the years, interfacing RTS-Advantage users with companies like Wal-Mart, Target, Macy's, the U.S. Army, Overstock.com, Yahoo Shops and many others. And you may be surprised at just how inexpensive these interfaces can be. One user commented recently that they saved enough man-hours of manual order entry that they more than paid for the custom program in the first week they used it.

If you would like to know more about our custom programming services or would like a price quote on a project please contact your dealer. All of our custom programming projects are handled through our authorized dealers.


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Q&A: Slow Printing Under Version 4
	Q: Since I upgraded to version 4 I find that my printing is slower to certain printers. Did you change something about the printing? A: The 'regular' printing functionality of the software has not changed, so you should not see a performance difference unless you have changed something else about your system. You might want to bring this change to the attention of your system administrator to see if they made changes to the printer drivers or some other aspect of the system that can be corrected. On the other hand, if you are now using the Windows Printer option since you upgraded to version 4, you may see slower performance when printing using that option as compared to the direct printing you used before. When using the Windows Printer option you will usually see at least slightly slower performance. There are two reasons for this: first, when you print direct to a printer (selecting Printer) you bypass all the Windows overhead of spooling and reformatting the print job as a Windows based report. This results in reports printing much quicker because they don't have to go through all the ins and outs of the Windows interface. This will be most pronounced when printing to dot-matrix printers, which suffer most from dealing with all the Windows overhead. The simple solution to this is to print using the Printer selection instead of the Windows Printer selection when possible. Second, the Windows Printer interface checks for print jobs at a scheduled interval. By default, the interface is set to check for print jobs every three seconds. Sometimes three seconds can seem like an eternity when you are used to instant gratification. You can reduce the interval to as little as one second to speed things up. Just right click on the 'Artie head' in your System Tray. Choose Edit Setting from the pop-up menu. Change the setting on "Poll For New Jobs Every ___ Seconds" to 1. This will cause the Windows Printer interface to check for jobs as often as possible.