Product News, Tech Tips and the Inside Scoop
December 2003 l www.dsdinc.com l 619-683-9900
News Flash...MAS 90 and MAS 200
Save on Additional Users 'till Dec 31st, 2003!
Now, through the end of the month, Sage Software customers can save 25%* on the purchase of additional users for MAS 90 and MAS 200
*To be eligible for this special offer, you must have been a Sage Software Customer prior to Sept 30th, 2003 and purchase a minimum of 3 additional users.
For further information, please contact your Account Manager, Stephanie Smith at 619.683-9900 or stephanies@dsdinc.com.
Up Close and Personal
by Doug Deane, President of DSD
At DSD Business Systems, we believe that we must be leaders in our community, as a company and as individuals. This has been, and always will be, burned into our company consciousness. Many of us volunteer our time and resources to worthy causes and non-profit organizations. We are very proud of our own Stephanie Smith who recently completed the San Diego Breast Cancer 3-Day walk. Almost three thousand amazing women and men united in November to raise seven and a half million dollars for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the National Philanthropic Trust Breast Cancer Fund to help find a cure for breast cancer through research, education, screening, and treatment. You can read more about Stephanie's experiences in this newsletter.
This year, DSD has "adopted" two needy families for Christmas. We will be buying presents for Alondra, Frank, Tito, Angel, Bianca, Maria (mother), and Tiburcio (father), and for Alexis, Dayanna, Mauricio, Marina (mother) and Jose (father). If any of you would like to help us buy presents for these two families, your assistance would be welcome. No matter what you do, or who you help this holiday season, everyone here at DSD wishes you a peaceful and joyous Christmas and Hanukkah, and a very prosperous New Year!
-Doug
Miles for Melons - We Did It!
Well, I am happy to say
we conquered the three-day! It wasn’t easy, but with the support of
seven other fabulous
teammates, and thousands of other men and women, the San Diego walk was
able to raise over 7.5 million dollars in the name of breast cancer
research!
It started on Friday
morning at the Del Mar Fairgrounds with Opening Ceremonies, and then we
began the 20 mile trek to Miramar College. After setting up the tents, we
enjoyed a great dinner and some karaoke.
Day two was over 20 miles, through La Jolla with Ski Beach as our
destination. Saturday night was a blast. They entertained us with karaoke,
a comedian and then a live disco band. We danced all night (well, until
9pm when it was lights out). With each day, the energy grew. Not even the frigid
nights spent sleeping in our tents could slow us down. The overall vibe,
coming from volunteers, crew members and other walkers made the weekend an
incredible experience. The final leg of the walk was another 20 miles to
the Embarcadero Marina Park. This is where the closing ceremonies were
held. It was an emotional occasion, as they welcomed in the survivors who
walked. It was amazing. An empowering journey that I will never forget.
And, as a matter of fact, Miles for Melons are signing up for next year.
Hope to see you all there!
I want to thank DSD and all my co-workers, friends and family for their financial and emotional support. I couldn’t have participated without your contributions (Miles for Melons raised over $17,000), and couldn’t have finished without your encouragement. It meant the world to me.
Stephanie Smith
Account
Manager
Upcoming MAS 90 and MAS 200 Classes
| Library Master & Security | $425 | Jan 12, Feb 8 |
| General Ledger | $425 | Jan 13, Feb 10 |
| Accounts Payable | $425 | Jan 14, Feb 11 |
| Accounts Receivable | $425 | Dec 11, Jan 15, Feb 12 |
| Inventory Management | $425 | Dec 16, Jan 19, Feb 16 |
| Sales Order | $425 | Dec 17, Jan 20, Feb 17 |
| Purchase Order | $425 | Dec 18, Jan 21, Feb 18 |
| Crystal Reports (2 days) | $800 | Jan 22-23 (2-day class) |
You must sign up a week in advance of the scheduled class to reserve your spot! Late Registrations are subject to availability and an additional $50 processing fee.
All classes are held from 9am - 5pm, and cost $425 per person unless stated otherwise. Lunch is provided. They are held at the DSD Building in beautiful Mission Valley in San Diego.
To register, call Sandy McCauley at 619-683-9900 or e-mail SandyM@dsdinc.com
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MAS 90 and MAS 200 Promotions Existing Customers
* Some restrictions may apply, please contact Stephanie Smith for promotion details and expiration dates.
It's not too early to be planning ahead for End Of Year! Currently there are no major changes anticipated for 2003 W2s and 1099s, except for changes to 1099-DIV, and the inevitable changes to Q1 2004 Tax Tables. Sage Software will be releasing an IRD (Interim Release Disk) for download from the Best website to accommodate the 1099-DIV form changes later in the year. It has not been stated if Magnetic Media is affected, but if it is there will also be an IRD released for Magnetic Media. The new 2004 Tax Tables may be auto-shipped to current SMP clients, and will be downloadable from the Best website. Note: If you plan on using 4-per-page W2s, Sage Software recommends purchasing the W2 forms from Sage Software forms division to ensure MAS 90 compatibility. Apparently there are several different variations of W2 4/page forms available. To order W2s, call 800-538-5514. Tax Table Updates (or TTU) and IRDs can be downloaded from www.bestsoftware.com Support section.
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MAS 500 Promotions
Existing Customers
- Receive Up to a 15% Discount on eCustomer and eSalesforce*
- Receive Up to 15% Off Distribution Modules*
* Some restrictions may apply, please contact Stephanie Smith for promotion details and expiration dates.
MAS 500 6.3 Details
by Josh Thigpen
MAS 500 Version 6.3 was released in September and over the next few months DSD will be spotlighting some of the powerful new features made available. This month’s feature, the Business Insights Analyzer is an easy, flexible, visual reporting and analysis tool provided as part of the feature-rich reporting capabilities in MAS 500.
Business Insights Analyzer is an intuitive, easy-to-use analytics tool providing information in a logical grid format that lets you organize the data in a way most appropriate to the task at hand. In addition to grid views, pivot tables and charts are available, and since Business Insights Analyzer is built with Microsoft .NET and SQL Server technology, adding additional analytical views is easy.
Business Insights Analyzer allows you to increase productivity by shifting your focus from trying to find, organize and format data, to the analysis and application of your business data to better run your business. Real-time data is displayed in an interactive grid format with powerful filtering, sorting and grouping capabilities. Columns of data may be added and/or rearranged and adding summations and average calculations is quick and easy. Executives can make better-informed decisions about the operations of the business when critical, up-to-date information is available on demand.
MAS 500 holds a wealth of information about your business. Business Insights Analyzer presents this information in logical views that allow you to easily access critical information. Budget Analysis, Sales and Purchase History, Project Profitability and Production Analysis come standard, but anyone can create and save multiple settings of various analysis for future reference or generate new SQL views and hook them to Business Insights Analyzer.
Linking SalesLogix to your Accounting Software
Business Dynamics dictate that when you look at a customer record, you should get a 360 degree view of that customer. You need to see everything there is to know about that customer on one set of screens. That means that your CRM application needs to talk to your accounting program. It's hard, however, to make two big business programs talk to each other. These programs generally don't speak the same language - (geek versus nerd). However, the rewards for doing so are tremendous. That's why SalesLogix users should look at DynaLink.
DynaLink for SalesLogix is a program that seamlessly links your accounting program with SalesLogix. Imagine being able to call up a customer record and seeing their account balances, invoices, payments, and open orders and quotes. All that data is normally accounting data, residing in your accounting system. DynaLink, with it's powerful synchronization engine, presents lots of accounting information in SalesLogix, and allows you to create sales orders with the touch of one button.
Just having that type of information is extremely valuable to sales reps, customer support reps, and management. If a sales rep has a pending order for a client, but sees instantly that they are on credit hold for some back invoices, there are then no surprises. Believe it or not, with DynaLink, AR collections are reduced because everyone sees what's in the accounting system for that client.
Give your staff the tools to succeed. Get the 360 view of your customer. Contact us today for a demonstration of DynaLink.
Very Important Information for TeleMagic Users
This is the last official month of TeleMagic support from the manufacturer. After January 1st, TeleMagic will no longer be supported by the manufacturer. DSD Business Systems will still continue to provide on-site professional services for TeleMagic. We will not provide telephone technical support for the product.
The availability of TeleMagic software licenses after January 1 has not been communicated to us. Therefore, if you need to obtain additional licenses for TeleMagic, please call us immediately! We cannot guarantee that TeleMagic licenses will be available after January 1st.
Professional Services Rate Changes effective January 1, 2004
After three years of providing top quality service and holding the line on our billing rates for CRM Professional Services, we find it necessary to increase our hourly billing rate. These increases are necessary in order that we may continue providing the excellent service you've come to expect when working with DSD Business Systems. Effective January 1st, TeleMagic and ACT! professional services will be billed at $150 per hour. SalesLogix professional services will be $175 per hour. There is also a charge for travel time if you are over a certain distance from our offices. If you are currently working on a project with us, we will honor that original service fee until the project is completed. For more information on this, please contact your account representative, Stephanie Smith.
ACT! Tech Tip
by Doug Wolf
ACT!’s series scheduling feature saves you the trouble of adding each activity individually to each contact. If you attend a trade show and collect hundreds of leads, you will want to follow-up with each opportunity. You could enter each new lead and then add several activities to each as per a designed campaign. By creating a series once, you can add the activities to all the leads easily. In other words, a marketing campaign consisting of a series of actions can be applied quickly to a single contact or to a Lookup/Group.
1. Open the Contact menu and select Create/Edit Activity Series. The resulting dialog box presents two choices: You can create a new series of activities or edit an existing series.
2. For this example, click the radio button to Create a New Activity Series.
3. Click Next. The Series Date dialog box asks if the new series has a Start date, or a Due date. Entering a start date schedules activities from that date into the future. Providing a due date schedules the activities working backwards from that date. Select the Start Date option and click Next. The First Activity dialog box appears.
4. Select from the drop-down lists or enter the Activity Type, Duration, Priority, and Regarding attributes for the initial activity.
5. Determine the number of days, weeks, or months after the start date for the initial activity to occur and determines whether a weekend date is appropriate for the activity.
6. Click Next and the Series Activity dialog returns.
7. At this point, add the subsequent activities to the series. To begin, click the Add button. The Add Activity dialog box appears, in which you can add a second activity. Enter the attributes for this activity. You can drag the dialog box so that you can see the previous activities scheduled and determine the date spacing.
8. Add all the activities you want, and then click Next.
9. In the Finish dialog box, enter a name for the series and a description so that you can recall the purpose of the series. Click Finish to close the dialog box.
SalesLogix Tech Tip
by Mike Mahoney
When creating a group in SalesLogix, you can create a dynamic condition to select "current user" on any field that contains a Userid, such as MODIFYUSER, ACCOUNTMANAGERID, etc.
To do this yourself, create a new group, select the ACCOUNTMANAGERID field as a condition, set the operator to "starting with", type in ":Userid" (without the quotes), then check "Use Value as Literal" and when you save the group, the condition will dynamically change based on the user that is logged on to SalesLogix.
Product of the Month:
POPC P/O Purchase Order Copy
The POPC enhancement for the MAS 90 and MAS 200 Purchase Order module allows the user to quickly copy one Purchase Order to another. This enhancement is especially valuable when the user has recurring Purchase Orders with multiple line entries.
All header and address information is copied to the new Purchase Order.
All of the Order lines are copied over with their original Quantity Ordered, Unit Cost, and Extension.
The user has the option to choose the new Order Type when making the copy: Standard Order, Repeating Order, Master Order, Drop Ship, and Material Requisition.
For more information, contact Kim Clark at 619-683-9900 or KimC@dsdinc.com.
Combining Microsoft Word Files
Description: When you want to combine one Word document with another, use the Insert command on the File menu. This is a great way to combine the parts of a document written by several people into one final document.
1. Start Microsoft Word, and open the first file.
2. Select Save As from the File menu, and give the combined file a new file name so you always keep the original file as is
3. Position the insertion point where you want the next file to begin. This can be below the last paragraph of the first document, for example, or at the top of the next page.
4. Select File from the Insert menu
5. Browse and locate the word document you want to add to your existing document.
6. Select your file and click on Insert.
7. Your document is now added with all the original formatting
8. Remember to save your work often
For more information, contact David Yaeger at 619-683-9900 or DavidY@dsdinc.com.
All prices and offers are subject to change without notice. Copyright 2004 , DSD Business Systems, San Diego, CA. All rights reserved.