Technology Management's Software Answers Blog

Webinar: why more companies are switching to hosted services

Technology Management's managing director, James Crowter, is being interviewed by business system publication FSN to discuss the emergence of running hosted business systems (or so-called 'Cloud Computing').

You can join the 30-minute discussion and learn about the issues on Wednesday 11^th March at 5:00 PM.

Free registration and further details are available here.

March NAV Workshop: Analysis and Reporting

The March 2009 workshop will cover the Sales and Purchase Budgets and Analysis Reports which are available in Dynamics NAV. We will look at setting up Budgets and Analysis views against Customers and Vendors and how to use the reporting to extract this information for Analysis against actual Turnover and Costs.

This event is free to Technology Management customers and is scheduled to run on Thursday 19 March. Book your place now.

How the Internet Can Shield You from the Downturn

Figures from the Office of National Statistics recently highlight that although the overall value of sales in the run up to Christmas fell by 0.8% the volume of Internet sales over the same period was 3.5% of the total sales - a rise of almost 20%! Other statistics from the British Retail Consortium show the figure, excluding food sales, is higher still - showing a growth of 30% over the previous December.

This means that if you are not currently selling online then you could be missing out on the one growth area in the economy at the moment. And don't think it's just the business to consumer sector that benefiting because as businesses are forced to review costs, more and more are turning to internet searches to find new suppliers. If your business has the right internet presence and provides a compelling proposition the business will follow.

So how do you provide the rich internet presence combined with the competitive pricing that helps you win this business, well in Technology Management's experience the golden rules are that your site has to frequently change and always seen to be up to date as well as be easy and quick to use, in fact quicker than picking up the phone.

How can you do that, well by integrating it with your Microsoft Dynamics or Pegasus Opera.

order processing system to make maintenance pretty automatic. In fact you don't have to do anything over and above what you already do to:

• Add new product simply by setting them up on your stock system
• Set customer pricing exactly how you do for your order processing system
• Have orders appear on your order file within second of being placed online
• Give customer information direct from your sales ledger including deliveries, invoices and account balances

If you don't believe that we could build a site complex enough for your products have a look at Davenport Burgess or  RD UK.

Having the right systems in place, both in the back office and on your web site, should mean that transacting business online represents a huge saving in time and efficiency for you - reducing your overheads and costs in processing orders, as well as providing a better service to your customers. This all helps towards coping through the current economic slowdown - if your systems are helping you.

10% Off Microsoft Software

With everybody looking carefully at Software costs in the current economic climate Microsoft have responded by cutting the cost of their Open Licences for many of their products by 10% until March 27^th.

This applies to the following Software on the Open Licence programme:

• Windows Vista Business and Enterprise Editions
• Microsoft Office 2007 Pro Plus and Office 2007 Standard
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and CAL's
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and CAL's
• Windows Small Business Server 2008 and CAL's
• Windows Essential Business Server 2008 and CAL's

And with Microsoft Offering some great finance deals on purchasing Software as well, it's a great time to be getting on the latest version of the software.

Liam

Outlook 2007: Colour-Code incoming E-Mails

You can colour-code your incoming e-mail to spot quickly what's important. 1. Click an e-mail message, and then click Tools. 2. Click Organize. 3. Click Using Colours, and then select your colour of choice. All future e-mail from that sender will appear in that colour.

Posting Dates – Microsoft Dynamics Nav Tip

When you post a transaction in Navision, the system will first look at the allow from and to date fields against the User Setup.  Here you can set different posting periods for different users.

Version 3

·         General Ledger

·         Setup

·         Users

·         User Setup

Version 4, 5 and NAV 2009 (Classic)

·         Administration

·         Application Setup

·         Users

·         User Setup

NAV 2009 (RTC)

·         Departments

·         Administration

·         Application Setup

·         Users

·         User Setup

If the user is not listed within user setup the system will then look at the Allow from and to date fields within General Ledger Setup. 

Version 3

·         General Ledger

·         Setup

·         General Ledger Setup

Version 4, 5 and NAV 2009 (Classic)

·         Financial Management

·         Setup

·         General Ledger Setup

NAV 2009 (RTC)

·         Departments

·         Administration

·         Tasks

·         General Ledger Setup (under Financial Management Tasks)

Dates are normally amended as part of the month-end

Please refer to the blog posted on 28^th July 2008 – Running the adjust cost –item entries which goes through users and General Ledger Setup date settings when running this routine.