Microreviews for December 1997 Micropendium by Charles Good INVOICE MANAGEMENT by Larry Tippet and Asgard Software The other day I was talking on the telephone to a well known TIer who told me that he owns a business that uses 99/4A computers and software for all record keeping and correspondence. The business involves lots of writing and this person uses the Funnelweb word processor exclusively. “The TI gives me all the computing power I need to make my business a success,” I was told. There is a lot of good public domain and commercial software written for the TI. This month I am reviewing one such software package. Inventory Management is an 80 column database designed for the small business or user group. Its primary function is to maintain records of delivered products. The software is written in extended basic using Alexander Hulpke’s X80 80 column extensions. It will run on a Geneve under GPL mode or on an 80 column 99/4A and will easily run directly off of floppy disk. You can also install the software on a SCSI or HFDC hard drive or a ramdisk. Inventory Management will print invoices showing your company name, address, phone number, the customers’ name and address and an itemized list of products delivered showing the quantity, the cost of each item, tax, and total owed. The software allows the immediate printing of an invoice, or you can save your invoices to files for a once a month print session. You can also print identical invoices showing the same list of itemized goods and services to all clients in a specified disk address file. This feature can be used by groups such as TI user groups to bill the members for annual dues, or by a company that regularly provides the same services to a group of clients. All data is saved to disk files which can be searched and viewed at any time. From these files you can print a detailed monthly or annual report of all invoices recorded showing the total monthly billing and sales tax. Accumulative totals are kept on disk and can be printed showing year-to-date totals of billing and tax. Mail Room, by Larry Tippet and Asgard, is one of the first software packages I ever reviewed for Micropendium. If you have Mail Room then you can use its name/address data base directly in Invoice Management without modification. The same basic data file can be used by both software packages! When you run LOAD on the Invoice Management disk you are presented with a menu asking if you want to run Mail Room or Invoice Management. Both programs can be conveniently placed on the same floppy disk or hard drive subdirectory, Invoice Management comes set up to print invoices on a particular type (“TOPS”) of fan fold tractor feed multicopy blank invoices that are commonly available at good office supply stores. The software prints all the data in the correct position on these preprinted invoices. The software package also comes with on disk invoice templates in TI Writer formatter and in Page Pro Posters format. Print out one of these templates, take it to your friendly neighborhood copying center and make a bunch of copies. Then insert a single sheet blank invoice into your printer every time you want to print a new invoice. Actually, you don’t need to use preprinted invoices forms at all. Just use blank fan fold tractor feed or single sheet paper. All the data is printed in a format that most folks can still understand, even without the nice preprinted boxes that divide up the area of blank preprinted invoice forms. When you first run Invoice Management you configure it. This only has to be done once a year or whenever configuration defaults change. Here is where you enter a path name for data files, the name of your account data file (could be an existing Mail Room file), the printer name, current year, starting invoice number, tax rate as a decimal, default “Shipped via” text, default “Terms” text (such as “Cash”), default bottom of invoice message (such as “Thank you for your order”), and an invoice header listing your company’s name and address. Now you are ready to invoice! You see on screen a full sized 80 column invoice in a WYSIWIG display. As you enter data the cursor jumps from one field of this invoice display to the next. You are first asked for a client code. This code puts the name and address of the client in the “To” invoice box. If you are billing a new client type “add” for the client code. Then as you type the new client’s code (you make one up), name, address, and telephone number in the “To” field of the on screen invoice display the data is also added to your on disk account file. Next enter the invoice date within the default year, and the invoice number if you don’t the consecutive number that is automatically generated by the software. You can then enter some “Attention” text or accept the default text which reads “Accounts Payable”. This gets printed as part of the address on the invoice. Next you enter a “job number”, a date shipped or accept the default invoice date, some “shipped via” text (default is “best way” but you might substitute something like “UPS” or “US Mail”), some “terms” text (default is “cash”), and a purchase order number. Any of these fields can be left blank and most have configurable defaults you may or may not decide to accept. Now you are ready to type in the merchandise description and cost. Here you can, from within Invoice Management, access a little pop up calculator if you need to do some quick arithmetic. Enter quantity, merchandise description, and unit cost. The software automatically figures out “amount” by multiplying unit cost and quantity and displays this number. Each invoice can have up to 12 items. When you have entered the data for all items you are asked if sales tax is to be added. If yes, then sales tax is automatically calculated (based on the tax rate entered when configuring Invoice Management) and displayed. You can now immediately print the invoice and save it to disk, or just save it to disk. Throughout the data entry process there is lots of error checking and opportunity to go back and correct mistakes. The programs gives you the opportunity to mark your data file “paid in full” if you want. At the end of each invoice’s printing you are asked if you want to print an envelope. Envelope printing is optional. You do all your invoices first and then under software control you insert envelopes into the printer and print envelopes for all your invoices. The client’s address and, optionally, your business return address is printed on each envelope. I find Invoice Management very easy to use. The program is very professional looking on screen and prints very professional looking invoices. If data entry errors occur there are plenty of opportunities to correct such errors. It is rarely necessary to refer to the documentation. Any store employee should have no trouble using the software. My only complaint concerns the calculation of tax. In configuring Invoice Management the sales tax rate can only be entered as an integer percent. The software will calculate sales tax of 5%, 6%, 7%, etc., but not 6.5%. In my state, Ohio, sales tax varies from county to county and from municipality to municipality. There is a state plus county and/or municipality tax. My local sales tax rate is 6.5%. Invoice Management will not automatically calculate tax at 6.5% and there is no way within the program of manually entering this tax prior to printing and invoice and storing its data in a file. You have to go into the program’s Basic code to make the necessary alteration, and I haven’t figured out how to do this yet. Invoice Management is commercial. Originally distributed by Asgard, you can now purchase the software from Ramcharged Computers. I think I paid $15. It comes on a DSSD disk with excellent printed documentation. FONT DESIGNER by Bruce Harrison If you have a 24 pin dot matrix printer or a Cannon Bubble Jet printer hooked up to your 99/4A or Geneve then you will like this. The software lets you easily design custom a custom font using the entire 24x36 pixel character grid. The font can be designed letter by letter and then save to disk and later downloaded into the printer. Any printer with epson 24 pin epson emulation should work and this includes many ink jet printers produced by other manufacturers besides Cannon. You can design a partial font, maybe just a few letters or characters, and the printer’s normal letter quality font will default for all the other characters. Here is how this is done when you select “Dump to printer” from the software’s main menu. First the software sets the printer to letter quality mode and then moves the printer’s default LQ character set to the printer’s download ram. Next the software sends to the printer each character you have redefined, overwriting the LQ code in ram for only that character. Thus any characters not defined in your font will print in the printer’s default LQ font. Finally the program sends the “select download” code so that as your printer is ready to print in the partially or completely redefined font. The program is easy to use. Reference to the on disk documentation may not be necessary. Results are really good looking with the included “bold” sample font. Font Designer is public domain and comes on a SSSD disk. Send me $1 and I will mail you the disk. ACCESS: Ramcharged Computers (source of Invoice Management) 6467 E. Vancey Dr. Brookpark OH 44141 Phone 216-243-1244 Charles Good (source of Font Designer) P.O. Box 647 Venedocia OH 45894 Phone 419-667-3131 email good.6@osu.edu