Some Beach, Somewhere

3 minute read time.

I believe that is the name of a country music song by Blake Shelton. Regardless of whether you are a country music fan or not, I’m sure just about all of you would love to have more time to be on some beach somewhere. Or maybe on a mountaintop. Your choice of location.

If you could save 10 hours a month for the next year (120 hours per year), would you do it? I’m willing to bet you would say yes.

Now if I said you might have to spend ten hours of initial set up time, you might say, “But I don’t have ten hours to do that!”  I hear that a lot from clients.  But when you think about it, ten hours now to save 120 hours over the next year.  That’s a no brainer.

So here are some thoughts about features in Sage 100 you might not be taking advantage of.

Paperless office – Invoices

How much time do you spend printing invoices and stuffing them in envelopes, putting stamps on or running them through the postage meter and running them to the mailbox? If you do only 120 invoices a month, I would estimate at one minute per invoice you might spend  two hours a month, plus paying for all that postage. Using paperless office electronic delivery you may be able to accomplish this in a half hour.   Estimated time savings: one and a half hours.  Plus you will probably get paid faster because your customer gets the invoice faster.

Estimated set up time:  An hour or two and then checking off the boxes for the customers to enable delivery to them.

Note that I have seen many clients who print to Adobe or some other PDF writer and then manually attach them to an e-mail. It’s much simpler to send them directly out of Sage 100.

A similar analysis would apply for doing monthly customer receivable statements.

ACH Electronic Payments for Payroll and Accounts Payable

Included out of the box is the ability to pay your employees and vendors electronically and e-mail them direct deposit stubs and remittance advices. You don’t have to use your check stock and stuff envelopes and postage.

When you get to your bank reconciliation, that one hundred check run will show up as only a single entry to clear too.  So you save time reconciling as well.

You do have to spend a little time configuring and working with your bank, but in the long run you are going to save time.

Customized Reports with Crystal

Do you manually use and Excel spreadsheet to create reports and they take you hours each month?   A large number of these manual reports can be automated by creating a crystal report to accomplish the same thing.

Are you not versed in Crystal Reports (yes, it can take a little time to learn and understand)?  Talk with your Sage Partner. Their staff is more than willing to help you create a report.

Many reports can be created using Sage Intelligence as well. Remember, it’s not just for financial statements.   With the designer add in, you can customize and create your own reports from just about any module.

IN CONCLUSION:

This is just a very limited subset of things you may or may not be taking advantage of.  There are many more features that can save you time if you know that they are there. If you have something that you think is time consuming and wish it could be done more easily, please do talk with your Sage Partner and see if they have suggestions. I have found that many times someone has been afraid to call because they fear getting a bill for a few dollars.  When they finally ask and I can give them a tutorial on something that is simple that can save them much time they are often ecstatic.

In addition, there are other modules that cost a little, but more than pay for themselves in short order.  Examples of some that my clients are using successfully are Sage Alerts, Sage Sales Tax and Scanco.

Talk to your Sage Partner and start spending more time at some beach, somewhere!

Thomas “TomTarget” Rogers Jr.
Target System Technology, Inc
SOMETIMES THE BEST SOLUTION IS NOT OBTAINED BY ANSWERING THE QUESTION ASKED BUT IN UNDERSTANDING WHY THE QUESTION WAS ASKED