When LeftBrain Group's Shane Loomb first set up iQToys.co.nz in 1996, he says he was one of NZ's first online retailers with shop.co.nz.

"I wrote the first website using Microsoft FrontPage. It was pretty ugly," he says.

While initially based in Auckland, the business is now in Mt Maunganui near a number of other online retailers such as natureshop.co.nz and seriouslyboard.co.nz.

Read the full article (Article courtesy of NZ Herald.)

Ability to suppress deletion confirmation
This improvement was suggested by Accredo user Baden Prentice of Supply Services. When deleting a line in a document, such as an invoice or purchase order, Accredo offers a prompt to confirm the deletion. This can be a distraction when deleting many lines of information. Accredo now offers a toggle button on the grid toolbar which allows users to turn the deletion confirmation ‘on’ or ‘off’. Setting it to ‘off’ allows for lines to be deleted without the confirmation prompt activating each time. The default state for this button can be set in user settings and it is script-enabled so it can be automatically set to ‘on’ or ‘off’ for different types of forms.

Checking for Active jobs
Another handy reminder comes in the form of an automatic check to see whether there are active jobs for a customer in the Job Costing module prior to making a customer inactive. The software already checks for zero balances, outstanding invoices and orders, and now with this change it looks for any jobs that haven’t been flagged as complete. A small change that ensures there are no loose ends prior to making a customer inactive.
   
GST reporting code analysis
This improvement was acted on following a request from QSP Glen Wallace of Solve Consultants Ltd and relates to GST reporting. He asked for a way to easily review GST analysis where the GST Code has been changed by the user. As a result we have now created an easy way to identify where the GST code that has been used on an analysis dissection differs from the default GST code for the analysis code. This was achieved by adding a field to the GST Analysis Detail report layouts that provides the analysis GST code allowing users to run a filter across the report to pick up any mismatch between the GST code that was used and the default GST code.

“Our integration tool means Accredo can now talk directly to GXS, which will simplify the supply chain management for our customers,” says Carberry.

The integration automates key ordering and invoicing activities and significantly reduces paper processing.

John Kennett has been working with Accounting Systems for around 20 years.

As a Chartered Accountant John has an extensive understanding of the workings of accounting systems and has been involved in both implementations here and abroad.

His Bachelor degree in Commerce and Management has majors in both Accounting and Computing, so he is as comfortable with the debits and credits, as he is with programming the automation of the Accredo accounting system.

He says that “The staff of clients that use Accredo love its user-friendly interfaces and flexibility, but it is the automation of the back end that really makes Accredo stand out from the crowd. At Biz Soft we measure the success of our Accredo implementations on the efficiencies created in the client’s business and often the pay back period can be just a few months.”

Prior to setting up Business Software Limited, John owned a medium sized IT company for five years and prior to this was General Manager of an Australia-wide operation. This means that John also understands the “day-to-day” challenges facing management and can apply his experience to ensure that Accredo is configured correctly to help with the smooth running of his clients businesses.

city/town: Christchurch

phone: 027 470 0900

email: john@bizsoft.co.nz

Blue House Computing directors Jill Garrett and Jenni Parkinson established their software consultancy firm over 10 years ago in response to the number of small business owners who were struggling to properly manage their accountancy software systems.


“Both Jenni and I worked for chartered accountancy firms and we were often asked by clients to help with ‘challenges’ they were having with their business software,” says Garrett. “By helping out we gained experience in a wide range of software packages for business, including job costing, accounting, payroll and business systems management.”


Blue House services a range of small-to-medium businesses in the Gisborne and surrounding rural areas. It has three trained Accredo QSPs on staff, including the experienced Brett Fitzgerald, and around 20 Accredo customers.


“Most of these customers operate in the agricultural space, and include farmers and agricultural equipment suppliers. We also have a number of light commercial and industrial engineering clients,” Garrett says.


The firm provides implementation, training and support services for a number of different accounting and financial software packages. Garrett says their Accredo customers tend to be mature businesses, looking for a deeper level of functionality from their software system.


“Accredo is for people who want to move beyond the simple functionality of MYOB. Typically, our Accredo customers are looking for a flexible business software solution to underpin a broad range of business activity – including job costing, inventory control and foreign currency.”


Garrett says Accredo is a good system for business owners who want to add value to their company performance by ensuring their software functionality is closely aligned to their day-to-day work practices. “The software readily accommodates that type of process improvement.”


She says Accredo also provides considerably more firepower when it comes to reporting than many other software packages. “Accredo is able to index a great deal of information, and makes it easy to extract that information. It provides plenty of smart features that give more in-depth and up-to-the-minute performance visibility.”

city/town: Gisborne

phone: 06 863 2275

email: jill@bluehouse.co.nz

“As a government agency it needs to have clear visibility of where money is coming from and where it is going to. As a result, it runs around 70 branch codes, 70 department codes, 30 different cost centres and around 8000 account codes in its general ledger. And, it also runs multiple budget codes.”

When the Accredo solution was originally developed encountering a customer with this degree of general ledger complexity wasn’t foreseen. But Fisher says Accredo was up to the challenge of restructuring the software and providing the level of reporting the customer wanted.

“It is a good lesson in how to respond to user demands. In this instance the customer was really pushing the software and in response Accredo re-factored it to accommodate not just this particular customer, but any other that has a similar need.

After alerting Accredo, Fisher says the company’s development team came back with a solution in double quick time. “They altered the way the reporting mechanism operated so it could handle an increased number of general ledger data parameters. They put three people on the job immediately and had a solution for us within three days.”

Fisher says Accredo also improved the speed at which the reports were running. “They were taking too long to execute which was frustrating for the customer, but Accredo looked at it and found a solution within two days.”

Complex general ledger variance reports can now be completed in under a minute, says Fisher. “The speed improvement is quite incredible and the customer now has the confidence to execute the reports quickly and easily whenever they are needed.”

Both software updates are now included in the general release version of the software.

Fisher says Accredo is not afraid to act on customer requests for enhancements and is always willing to challenge its own thinking.

“It has also changed the way the Accounts Payable expense grid operates, which has resulted in further significant speed improvements for the agency.

“It is this type of service that keeps me loyal to Accredo. In my opinion, it would be extremely hard to find that level of instant response and quality of service at any other software company.”

“People are manipulating spread sheets to see what’s happening and there are all these little information silos because the core package isn’t going far enough and there’s a lot of manual work involved in pulling off reports.” Read the full story here.

The simPRO digital pen system lets on-the-job workers record information on specially printed service forms, and delivers the data back to the office via a mobile phone. In doing so, it improves productivity, reduces errors and saves administration time, says simPRO's New Zealand Country Manager, Rob Francis.

"By allowing field technicians to send job details electronically back to the office, the digital pen system frees up time allowing the technician to continue on to the next job. They don't have to return to the office to do administrative follow-up tasks and as a result can spend more time on billable work."

Francis says many Accredo users are service-type organisations that deploy mobile staff to visit customers in order to sell or service products. "The digital pen system is ideal for those in field situations where a laptop cannot be used due to a lack of internet connection, or for senior workers who are more comfortable using traditional pen and paper," says Francis.

Without undertaking any training field workers can fill out a job sheet or create an invoice using simPRO's special camera pen and paper-form. The information is uploaded to the technician's mobile phone via Bluetooth and then sent via the cellular network back to the office.

"The digital pen job form looks very similar to the forms available in Accredo. It provides all the necessary fields for the technician to insert job numbers and record details about the work performed and materials used."
Francis says Accredo users also have the ability to customise the generic forms to suit their own particular needs.

"Accredo is renowned for its flexibility when it comes to capturing information. With simPRO a customer can literally convert a current paper-based form to a digital pen form, allowing them to include any information that is pertinent to the transaction. This could, for example, include diagrams, customer signatures and timesheet information," says Francis.

Once sent back to the office electronically the forms can be viewed, printed and edited from the simPRO forms portal.

"The application converts the handwriting into on-screen text. The operator can open the form as an editable PDF document to check the text conversion is accurate and if necessary make edits on screen. Meanwhile the application queries the Accredo system in order to match the job number against the client that the form relates to."

Once the form is approved all the information can be exported to the Accredo system.

"This massively reduces the risk of errors caused by data entry and saves time as most of the data entry is already completed," Francis says.

The application continues to operate when a worker is beyond cell phone range as both the camera pen and mobile phone have a memory capacity. "Once cell phone coverage is regained the message and information is sent automatically."

The benefits to small business are obvious says Francis. "Using simPRO to instantly and electronically transfer information back to base saves time and money on travel, and removes technology barriers for workers uncomfortable using tablets and laptops. With job forms and invoices being issued on site and then communicated instantly back to head office, cash collection processes can be streamlined, and the cost of administrative overhead reduced."

For more information about the simPRO digital pen please email kevin@accredo.co.nz

Accredo General Manager Tish Brindle says the release of Version 3.0, one of the largest in the company’s 25 year history, is extremely timely.

“We have a large number of growing small to medium sized New Zealand companies who operate importing and exporting businesses. This release provides them with a robust, full function foreign exchange capability at a time when our volatile exchange rate has made foreign exchange management a pressing concern for New Zealand businesses.”

She says the current economic downturn coupled with the ongoing fluctuation in the New Zealand dollar requires businesses to better manage their foreign exchange processing.

“The unpredictable nature of the kiwi dollar is having a direct effect on the bottom line of many businesses. Its current variability means companies can go from making a significant margin, to making a loss, over night.

“Version 3.0 is designed to make it easier for business owners to manage exchange fluctuations and revaluations,” Brindle says. “It is designed for those businesses that have to manage complex ongoing foreign currency calculations and processes, right down to those who simply need to fix an exchange rate for the occasional offshore transaction.”

Brindle says Version 3.0 facilitates foreign currency hedging. “Businesses can lock an exchange rate for any given transaction and it will flow on through the system based on what it was set to when the original purchase or sales order was entered.”

The new release contains significant new non-foreign exchange functionality as well, says Brindle, with enhancements to budgeting and sales analysis – areas of key concern to customers.

“The increased power of Accredo’s budgeting functionality will give better visibility of business performance. It will help answer the ‘what if’ question, allowing owners to examine forecasted performance against actual performance, across a wide number of key business areas.”

Version 3.0 also includes a revision to Accredo’s sales analysis reporting. “The new version of sales analysis is a simple to use but powerful tool which lets users query the sales history in the system. You tell it what you want to know, how you want it grouped and summarised, and it figures out how to do it,” says Brindle.

She says the sales analysis tool delivers specific information without producing pages and pages of data which then needs to be manipulated in a spreadsheet.

“We have concentrated on making it simple for the business owner to operate. Once installed, the user it does not require any technical knowledge to run report queries.”

Located in Melbourne, the business will be led by Ian Crates who has been appointed as CEO for Australia.

“We came to Australia because the NZ market has gotten quite tight,” Crates said. “We looked at other options such as the UK, and realised that Australia has had fantastic growth and will continue to do so. We have already had good results with our products here, and they work well as they were designed for the A/NZ market.”

Accredo currently has 20 customers within Australia.

The vendor’s primary goal is building its reseller network within the country to accompany its own expansion which will see sub-offices in Sydney and Brisbane in May, with Perth to be up and running by July, and Adelaide further down the track.

Read the full story

“We believe now is the right time to build our Australian presence further," says Crates. "There is a strong demand from companies who have outgrown their legacy accounting system and are looking for software that not only provides robust financials but also offers a broad business management platform. By establishing our first dedicated Australian office we are signaling our firm commitment to the Melbourne and wider Australian market,” says Crates.

Read the full story here

Consolidated Batch Emailing for Invoices
Email Invoices can now consolidate emails and attachments. We have added new IN Settings to control this with selections for Batch Emailing separated onto an Email tab.
If Consolidate Emails is selected then Email Invoices will generate one email per unique email address instead of one email per invoice.
If Consolidate Attachments is also selected the Email Invoices will generate one attachment for all invoices on an email instead of a separate attachment per invoice.

Print Product Labels directly from your document
A new Print Product Labels option has been added to the Advanced menu on IN Invoices, OE Sales Orders, PO Purchase Orders, AP Shipments and IC Transfers (Saturn only). This prints IC Product labels for all Diminishing Product Codes (and Manual Kitset Product Codes) and quantities on the document, information from the source document and line can be included on the labels. For example print pricing or barcode labels for the stock you have just receipted on a shipment; print a label per item with packing slip number from an order or an invoice.
New Document Default selections have been added for each document allowing different IC Labels to be designed and assigned for each type of document, and IC Label Designer Objects now include Head and Line objects for each type of possible source document.

Copy and view budgets in the General Ledger
Bulk copy added for GL Budgets. Navigator > Tasks > General Ledger > Budget Copy.
Copy budget figures from one year to another / one budget to another, optionally updating by a percentage or amount.
Budget tab added to the GL Account Maintenance form. View detail of the budget figures for an account or all accounts over a specified range of periods.

• Colin Van Praseuth, Business Wise Consulting Ltd, (colin.vp@slingshot.co.nz), Napier/Hastings
• Dominic Hawtin, Positive IT (info@positiveit.co.nz), Auckland
• Gopala Lucken, Top Flight Computer Services (gopala@topflight.co.nz), Auckland
• Barbara Sinclair, Top Flight Computer Services (Barbara@topflight.co.nz), Auckland
• Grant Jackson, Zeal Systems (grant@zealsystems.co.nz),  Tauranga
• Stuart Fraser, Online Computers (stu@onlinecomputers.co.nz), Invercargill

Accredo General Manager, Tish Brindle, says the company has completed its nationwide QSP (Qualified Support People) training for the new release and customers and QSPs can contact Accredo to request their software upgrade key whenever they wish.

“When they feel they are ready to upgrade they can contact us by phone or email and we will then send them the key that enables them to install the new release,” says Brindle.

She says the response from QSPs to the new release has been very positive. “I think they are pleased with the level of new functionality and the number of improvements we have been able to incorporate.”

Accredo QSP, Sue Spindler of Eicor Resources in Christchurch, says there are some new features in 3.5 which will be extremely useful for many of her clients.

“The latest release automatically adjusts GST when giving settlement discounts to a customer, whereas in prior releases GST adjustments had to be done manually.”

Spindler says the new forced exit feature will simplify back-up procedures for customers with multiple users. “It will give the system administrator more control over access and exit when it comes time to perform system back-ups.”

David Scott of Top Flight Computer Services in Auckland, says the new ‘Links’ feature will be one of the most useful for customers. “This allows users to attach external documents and other file types to invoices, allowing them to access those records much more easily.”

Scott says bulk emailing to customers has been improved in the latest release thanks to the incorporation of new HTML formatting capabilities.

“It is a good release and we will be encouraging customers to upgrade over the next few months.”

Accredo Channel Manager, Kevin Carberry, says the integration allows Foodstuffs’ suppliers to link Accredo’s order processing and invoicing with the new Foodstuffs electronic ordering system, Exchange.

“Foodstuffs now require all their suppliers to exchange order and invoice documentation electronically. Over the last few months we have worked in conjunction with some of our key resellers to develop these features, and, as a result, we now have several customers automatically transferring order information with Foodstuffs.”

He says Foodstuffs’ change to a centralised order processing system has reduced the duplication of work for customers and the Accredo product integration has automated key ordering and invoicing activities.

“Prior to this, suppliers had to print out invoices and manually send them to each individual store. The whole ordering process was paper-intensive and time-consuming.”

Accredo can now receive product orders from Foodstuffs directly, entering them as purchase orders into the system. An email is then sent back verifying quantities and confirming that the order can be delivered.

“The integration also means we no longer have to physically send out a packing slip. We now capture that information on a shipping notice, which is sent electronically to the particular supermarket. It tells them the order has been received, that the quantity is available and that it will be heading their way shortly.”

Printing individual invoices is a thing of the past, says Carberry.  “Accredo turns the order into an invoice and that automatically triggers an event in our program scripts which exports the invoice to Foodstuffs – either by email or electronic data interchange.”

The impact of the changes to system users is minimal says Carberry. “All the necessary document creation and exchange occurs behind the scenes. We have made it easy for customers to install this functionality and we have got a unified data validation script that ensures the customer’s implementation matches the requirements Foodstuffs’ demands.”

For more information about the Foodstuffs’ software integration please contact your Accredo QSP.