 Your awards are in the mail! Send us a picture. Here is the subject for the next TopForm TopGun Challenge. What G/L option do you need to run at year-end to roll over your ending balance? Send your answers to Anthony Mullins. Also remember that all correct answers are being entered into the grand prize drawing at our Spring 2003 Users Conference. Congratulations to Noel Choquette, owner of print distributor Enosis Graphic Solutions in Concord, MA, for winning the TopForm trip getaway to New Orleans! Noel purchased the Variable Print Option to qualify for the trip. Thanks to all customers, both new and long-time, for participating in this promotion. This is the third in a multipart issue regarding freight handling in TopForm. In this issue we will discuss in more detail the automatic Freight Mark-up Tables and how they can be used. As we are nearing the release of the Graphical User Interface for TopForm, scheduled late this quarter, we are using those panels to document this procedure.
Automatic Freight Handling Rules: In TopForm Order Processing Setup, you have an option to set up one or more Freight Mark-up Tables. To Access the Freight Mark-up Table Setup Program, from the Main TopForm menu, click on Order Processing.
If you check the box, "Require the Operator to accept the mark-up", during billing, TopForm will provide a prompt for the operator to accept or reject the mark-up. Therefore the mark-up will only be applied if the operator accepts it. If you leave this box unchecked, you are turning off this prompt and the mark-up will be automatically applied. Of course, you can set up many different tables to specifically address the preferences that you, and/or your sales staff, might have in managing freight for other customers. For instance, you might have landed an account where it was necessary to bear the cost of the freight without any billing to the customer at all. Below is another table that illustrates how this might be accomplished. Here we have specified that there is no freight mark-up at all, however, we do want TopForm to automatically create a line on the invoice that contains the actual freight cost so that this freight will be entered into the commission calculation. Commission code 0001 will apply in this case. In both tables, we have specified that we wish to keep order history and that the product code is 009. This will allow us to use ODBC or BERT to get reporting on the freight cost that was incurred and that which was recovered. The options in the drop down box are "NS" for Net Sales, "F" for Freight and Blank. If you had the table set as it is here, and the sale was $850, TopForm would mark-up the freight by 2% of the net sale of $850 or $17. Assuming a freight cost of $60, the freight charged to the customer would be $77.00. If the table values were exactly the same, but the method were set to "F" for Freight, the mark-up would be $3.00 (5% of $60) and the amount billed to your customer would be $63.00. Now that you know how to set up these freight tables, let's see how we assign them to your customer. From your TopForm Main Menu (shown at the beginning of this article), choose Accounts Receivable. From Accounts Receivable, Click on Customer Setup/Inquiry. Enter the customer code or use the magnifying glass icon to look up your customer. As you begin to type the customer's name, TopForm highlights the closest match to the letters you have typed. Press the enter key or double click to choose the customer. Choose Customer Default Option. Enter the Freight Mark-up Table Code to be used for this Customer. If you wish to apply different tables based upon the type of sales, choose the tab. The next scheduled Web.ec training class dates are February 19th - 20th. Additional information can be obtained by contacting Jean Dudek or by visiting us on the web at www.topform.com. Users Conference 2003 Mark your calendar, the annual TopForm Users Conference is on the horizon! This year's conference will be held at the beautiful Evergreen Marriott Conference Center in Stone Mountain, GA on April 24-26. "Spring Training" has appropriately been dubbed the theme for this year. Spring Training prepares baseball teams for action the rest of the season and we intend to get you prepared to maximize TopForm for the following year. Here are the planning details you need to know: Dates: April 24-26, 2003 Location: Evergreen Marriott Conference Center www.evergreenresort.com Time: Opening Reception begins at 7:00 p.m. on April 24 Conference Price: $765 (single early entry fee)Hotel Price: $139 (per night for single person)Transportation: A & M Limo $50.00 for round-trip from Atlanta Hartsfield Airport to Evergreen resort www.aandmlimo.com Golf Tournament: Tee Time is 11:00 a.m. on April 24. The tournament will be held at the Stone Mountain Golf Club. More details coming soon. This year's sessions will have a heavy emphasis toward hands-on training for the new Graphical User Interface of TopForm. Be on the lookout for an email containing more information regarding the conference and a link for you to register early. In our September Newsletter, it was announced that all TopForm reports or continuous style forms could be printed or viewed in HTML format. Although viewing TopForm reports was always an option, this enhanced viewing capability provides the following:
Access the TopForm Printer setup option (ZZX C4). Here you will answer the questions following the example illustrated below. Note that this is a one time setup. Device name: PH Description: Print to html Device type: 2 (1=Terminal, 2=Printer, 7=On-Line Services)SAMBA/HTML Only Samba/HTML Printer?: Y Queue Path: [WDX]C:\TEMP\TFOUT.HTM Output Command: TITLE=&TITLE &DATETIME;SHOW;FONT=Courier New Create a device name. In the example, we named the device "PH". Enter a description so that when a user performs "look up" at the printer field in any Output Options screen, they will see that PH will trigger the "Print to html" function. Enter "2" for the Device type. Enter "NOHEX" for the printer type. For Device name, enter /Cmd: /tmp And for the Device Driver, enter tf_tohtml. For Samba/HTML Printer, enter Y (Note: On older releases this will only say Samba, not Samba/HTML). Queue Path: [WDX]C:\TEMP\TFPUT.HTM When using the TopForm html printing option, the report is actually being printed to disk first. The Queue Path will be the path and file name for the HTML report. If you wish the report to be viewed on the operator's PC then the [WDX] prefix is used. This will write the report to a file on the operator's PC. In that case the path name specified should be the path to someplace on their PC. Note: The file is not removed when the report is done. HTML Report File Names The Output Command is used to pass options to the HTML driver. The options are generally of the form: OPTION=option_value; OPTION=option_value;, etc The available options are: SH Causes the file to be passed to your default browser (Windows only) This option is included to cause the HTML page to be shown on your PC as soon as the report completes printing. FO Sets the default font. This should be fixed font such as Courier, Courier New, Fixed Sys, Lucida Console, etc. TITLE Defines the document title. The default title is the TopForm program name.BACK Defines the background color using standard HTML RGB color representation TEXT Defines the text color For example TITLE=Sample;SHOW;BACK=000000;TEXT=FFFFFF;FONT=Courier New produces a page that is titled Sample, with white text on a black background using the Couier New Font. To generate useful file names and useful options, the tf_tohtml driver replaces tokens found in either the Queue Path or Output Command with relevant info. Customizing Your Report Titles To generate useful file names and useful options, the tf_tohtml driver replaces tokens found in either the Queue Path or Output Command with relevant info. The tokens available are:
TITLE=&TITLE - &DATETIME would produce a page with the title: A/R Open Invoice Report - Sep 20, 2002 14:20:10 A file name (Queue Path) of /reports_out/&PROG.&SEQ would produce a file name of /reports_out/AR2RAA.09201566848818 /reports_out/&TITLE_NS.&SEQ would produce a file name of A_R_Open_Invoice_Report.09201566848818 A Great time to implement html printing. For those of you who are on a calendar year, now is a great time to implement the html printing. By doing so, you can preserve on disk all of your important year end reports. You may also wish to burn these reports onto a CD as an additional year-end archive. Using the tags shown above, each report will be titled appropriately for easy later reference. For more information on how to implement TopForm html printing, please contact Robyn Shumaker at TopForm Support. Since TopForm has completed most of the Thoroughbred to ProvideX conversions, there is no better time than now to remove the old Thoroughbred Basic programs and associated data files. We converted the Thoroughbred basic data files to run on ProvideX so these files are just taking up valuable hard disk space on your TopForm server. This can be done while in production and will not effect your daily operation and only takes less than 1 hour for most clients. Give our Support department a call and request your spring-cleaning today. |
