* New credit card processor rules which go into effect in July required changes to our X-Charge credit card interface. The new rule is that when a debit card is run for an amount that exceeds the card's available balance, instead of declining the transaction, as was done before, the card is to be partially approved for the amount equal to the available balance. We have added the capability to recognize this occurrence in our software, to automatically change the tender to reflect it, and to warn the user that a partial approval has occurred.

We also made some further credit card processing related enhancements. First, we have had reports that occasionally the X-Charge service will fail to start when we call it from our software. There seems to be no good reason for this, but the fact is that it does seem to. So we are now attempting to start X-Charge as many as five times before giving up and returning an error.

We also changed the interface so that it is no longer necessary for the APROGS directory to be your working directory for RTS-Advantage in order to successfully start X-Charge.

NOTE: Since the Point of Sale and Quick Sale 4.0 modules have been superseded by the Windows Point of Sale Invoicing module, the credit card processing changes were not made to the 4.0 versions of those modules.

* Default FICA tax rates updated for 2011 in Payroll program 25 (Tax Returns), General Ledger programs 22 (Quarterly Reports) and 23 (Tax Forms).

* New error messages and program info added for Windows product.

EARTH: 4.10
GL00: 4.01
GL22: 4.01
GL23: 4.04
PR25: 4.08
AR18: 4.04
BL04: 4.11
OE01: 4.12

ADMESSAG.DAT: 4.12
ADSAPROG.DAT: 4.12

The patch can be downloaded on the website or you can order an updated CD from your dealer.

* New capability added to accept debit cards through XCharge. Previously debit card tenders were treated the same as credit cards, which did not allow users to take advantage of debit card PINpads in XCharge. Now in Merchant Services (program 53) each credit card type may be designated as Credit Only, Debit Only or Both. If Both is selected for a particular credit card type, when taking that card payment the user will be prompted for whether the tendered card is debit or credit, and XCharge will be notified of the specified card type. When a debit card is tendered XCharge will process the tender as a true debit card, meaning that a PINpad entry by the customer will be required. PINpad hardware is any supported by XCharge (we tested with a Verifone 1000SE in-house but you should speak to your XCharge rep to determine hardware compatibility).

* New credit card processor rules which go into effect in July required changes to our X-Charge credit card interface. The new rule is that when a card is run for an amount that exceeds the card's available balance, instead of declining the transaction, as was done before, the card is to be partially approved for the amount equal to the available balance. We have added the capability to recognize this occurrence in our software, to automatically change the tender to reflect it, and to warn the user that a partial approval has occurred.

* New feature! When entering an Inventory item in the Invoicing program, the system will check to see if it has a Superseded reference in Inventory. If it does find one, it will ask you if you want to switch to the item that has superseded it.

* New program Purge Estimates (program 21) added for clearing old unwanted estimates.

* If you took an invoice off of hold in Invoicing (program 4) and then tried to edit an existing line item as the first thing you did, sometimes you could get a Windows error.

* On a refund invoice where the refund was given in the form of cash change, the negative payment detail was not being updated to the AR Payment Summary if PI was set not to do real-time updating of AR/IN.

* On negative sales with negative tax amounts, the tax basis amount updated to AR Sales Tax Master was positive instead of negative (the actual tax amount itself was properly negative).

* The Preset Print (program 81) Clear Totals tab Current Only option cleared accumulated figures instead of current figures from the Preset Master.

PI04: 5.03
PI10: 5.02
PI21: 5.00
PI81: 5.01

ADPI00FR.DAT: 5.03

This release of PI also requires the current version of RTS-Advantage 4.0 as of patch 41 and the current System Manager, 5.0.9.

The PI patch can be downloaded or you can order an updated CD from your dealer. Patches are available on the website for all three installation types: full version, remote version and Limited Edition. You will need to run System Manager ... Update Files to bring your data files up to date after installation.

* Added Reinitialize Files and Delete Files options (File menu), which completes the conversion of the DOS System Administrator to Windows. The only functions in the DOS System Administrator that were not implemented in the Windows System Manager are those that don't apply to the Windows product.

* Added the ability to specify a folder for backups in the Daily Maintenance option. This will allow you to change folders each day and more easily maintain a historical set of backups.

* Updated help files for new features in Point of Sale Invoicing and System Manager.

The System Manager is available as a free download from our website, at ...

WinAdv: 5.09
ADWINLST.DAT: 5.08

The current version can be downloaded or you can order an updated CD from your dealer.

Microsoft has tightened security on Windows 7 to the point where installing networked applications like ours has become a bit of a challenge. When you run most of our installer programs on Windows 7, and we ask for the destination directories, you will find that attempting to specify a valid network drive from a workstation will produce an error message saying that the drive does not exist.

Why? Because on Windows 7 your user account, even if it has administrator privileges, gets demoted to basically an untrusted status when you run any installer program. Untrusted user accounts are not allowed access to network drives. Hence the error message.

We have researched the problem and come up with two options. The first, which we don't really recommend, is that you can turn off User Account Control entirely on the workstation, then login as a user with domain administrator privileges. When you do that and run a setup program you should be able to 'see' the network drive. Although this procedure will get around the problem, this is a pretty drastic step to take just to install a piece of software. If you do this procedure, be sure to turn User Account Control back on afterwards.

Instead, we recommend this second option. After doing your initial installation of the software directly on the server, to install on the workstations log in normally on each one and run the setup, installing the package onto your local drive. After the setup is complete, go into the RTS-Advantage System Manager, select Edit ... Environment from the menu and change the System Data Folder (AFILES) and Data Folder (AUSER) to the appropriate equivalent directories on your network drive (which you should be able to successfully access from here). You can then delete the local AFILES and AUSER directories, which are not needed.