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PLUSS
Corporation Newsletter February 2005 - Archived newsletters are here
1.) PLUSS
Corporation New
2.) PTM -
Quick Tips
3.) Securing PTM Data
4.) Control & Effective Management of
your Business (Part IV of 8)
5.) Internet phones: The telephone evolution
6.) PTM
ES auto updating service
7.) BASIC INVENTORY OPERATION Classes:
1.) PLUSS Corporation
News
Mitsubishi Fuso Truck of America, PLUSS
Corporation, and Mitsubishi Fuso dealerships are developing a powerful
partnership. “Our dealers are
very happy with the relationship they have established with PLUSS Corporation
and with the support they receive from their Specialists. They are extremely pleased with the return
on investment along with the degree of reporting, efficiency, company controls,
and proper financial record keeping" - Orin Black. VP Business Operations,
MFTA.
2.) PTM - Quick Tips
TimeClock users
* Did you know, when at the main work order menu, if you press the hotkey F12 then enter a tech number that the system will show you which work order they are logged into?
* Did you know, you have the ability to report on technicians time that is logged into work orders, non-billed categories such as shop clean up or training, idle time, which is the elapsed time between jobs, as well as lunch time. If you want to know where all of the 160 hours you paid a technician for last month went, then run the Productivity Idle report in the Admin program.
* Did you know, users have the ability to charge out their technicians shop time at Flat Rate and or Time and Material automatically by using SmartCodes?
Haven’t got TimeClock? Call for a free on-line demo. Call Jim Hutchinson at 800-835-9609.
3.) Securing PTM Data
PTM software is programmed to protect your data from changes or unapproved viewing in specific areas of the program. The following is a list of the options available.
Main Menu Password Protection:
The first level of security will lockout users in four specific areas of PTM at the main menu: Inventory, Crediting Customers, Purchase Orders and Customer Maintenance. To password protect these areas, simply enter (up to a) seven digit password in E. System Setup, I. Password Protection in the Enter Level 1 Security line. Only employees with the password can gain access to these areas since the system will not open these areas until the password is entered.
The second level of security will protect the areas of System Setup, Income Receivables, Print Statements, File Utilities, Bookkeeping, Reports, Deposits, and Payroll. As with the first level of security, it also accepts up to seven digits for the password and is entered in E. System Setup, I. Password Protection in the Enter Level 2 Security line.
If you choose to leave the second level of security blank, (i.e. do not enter a password in that area), then the level one security will prompt for a password when trying to access these areas, however employees can still gain access by pressing the [Enter] key.
Assigning Access to Individual
Employees:
PTM has another method of password protection that will allow you to determine which areas specific employees can access. This is called Pick and Choose Security. This also is setup in E. System Setup, I. Password Protection in the Enter Level 2 Security line. The password must begin with two zeros (i.e. 00pass). Note: This is a generic password that allows you to setup individual passwords for each of your employees.
This opens up a data entry box that requires you to enter a unique password for the employee, that employee’s user name, and the menus that this employee is allowed to access. For each employee that you want to setup, you will need to setup this information: their password, their username, and the areas (menu selections, like A. for work orders).
Bookkeeping Passwords:
When assigning the individual passwords, using the 00pass, (entered in E. System Setup, I. Password Protection under the second level of security…this password must start with two zeros and any other combination of numbers or letters), and entering in the three conditions as described above, the password, the username, and the areas they may access, if you include bookkeeping (N. Bookkeeping at the main menu) in the areas they may access, then another entry box will appear to enter in bookkeeping access areas (menu items). When accessing the N. Bookkeeping area at the main menu, a prompt will appear to enter a password.
Checking Account Password Protection:
Any or all checking accounts may be password protected to prevent access, regardless if the employee is granted access to the bookkeeping area. To achieve this, use the 00pass (entered in E. System Setup, I. Password Protection under the second level of security…this password must start with two zeros and any other combination of numbers or letters). Enter the password, username, and areas available for access and include “N” for bookkeeping. Press enter. This will open up the bookkeeping menus available area. Press F10. A prompt will appear with, “Enter Checking Data Base to Block, Current Workstation Will Have Access”. Enter in the number of the checking account that you want to lock out. At this point, any other bookkeeping menus may be entered or left blank. Press [ESC] to return to the setup utility.
Other Protective Features That Allow Access But Not Changes:
A password can be entered in E. System Setup, J. Sales Tax, S. Credit Password that will allow specific actions and prevent specific actions at the point-of-sale and in the areas of Inventory and Customer Maintenance depending on the password and the preceding letters of the password.
· A password entered as a simple alpha-numeric password in the black box of “Set password for credit limit” will prevent anyone without the password from: Viewing cost and percentages in Inventory, change terms at the point of sale in Invoices and Work Orders, amend cost at the point of sale, and amend information in K. Customer Maintenance.
· A password entered with a dash (-) at the beginning of the password will prevent users from changing terms at the point of sale in Invoices and Work Orders and amend cost at the point of sale.
· A password entered with two asterisks (**) at the beginning of the password will prevent users from viewing cost and percentages in Inventory, amend information in Customer Maintenance and change terms at the point of sale in Invoices and Work Orders, and amend cost at the point of sale.
· A password entered with an equal sign (=), (anywhere in the password) will prevent users from amending information in Customer Maintenance and view margins in Inventory and amend cost at the point of sale.
· A password entered with a plus sign (+), (anywhere in the password) will prevent users from amending information under Customer Maintenance, view margins or cost in Inventory or at the point of sale, and amend cost at the point of sale.
Any user needing to make the above type changes will need the password to do so.
Julie Strong - Accounting Specialist
MISCELLANEOUS
4.) Control & Effective Management of your Business (Part VI of 8)
Dealing with ‘Gray Areas’ in your company is the topic for this month. The Specialists here at PLUSS Corporation have learned over the years it is not so much what clients tell us, it’s what they don’t tell us. Expertise has taught us to keenly listen to the “unspoken” and for comments such as “I don’t care about that” or “that isn’t a big deal to me”. Each and every one of those things we consider to be ‘Gray Areas’. What most business owners do not understand or want to admit is that those ‘Gray Areas’ are unmanaged, revenue draining areas. So, lets discuss ‘Gray Areas’!
DEALING
WITH GRAY AREAS
Over the years, PLUSS Specialists have studied what makes one company wildly successful, another mediocre, and another poor. Although the findings were extremely varied in content and scope, the most common area that hurt the success of a company was the unknown. We found that successful companies worked very diligently to eliminate “unknown” areas.
I am sure you are wondering what I mean by the term ‘Gray Area’ so let me define what we consider it to be. ‘Gray Areas’ are the areas of your business that you are not sure of. These areas might be inventory control, labor costing, overheads, purchasing, selling margins and any other area of your company lacking good control. These areas may be working to some degree and for that reason are often overlooked. Successful companies are very black and white with procedures and they have little if any ‘Gray Area’. They have identified those areas over time and worked hard to eliminate them to gain greater success. Our PLUSS Specialists work daily with companies everywhere, big and small, to identify their ‘Gray Areas’. After the unknown areas are defined, a customized program is developed and implemented to start the eliminating the ‘Gray’. Our Specialists work with owners and managers to identify procedural problems that need to be solved and then incorporate operating characteristics of other successful companies achieving “higher than average” profits. The purpose is to create benchmarks of your company’s performance against your peers in the industry. Then, we analyze expenses as a percentage of gross margin rather than gross sales to gain insight into expense management. By doing so, we can help eliminate differences resulting from the varying sales mix. A comparison of your company numbers is then done with other similar size companies in your industry to show you where your company standing is. The numbers we use for comparison are a confidential cross-section of industry data averages. You will come to realize PTM, by design, will provide nearly every tool to help a company eliminate the “Gray Areas” in their company.
I challenge you to look into the depth of all areas of your company and list what you think may be ‘Gray Areas’. I suspect many of you will be surprised by what you find. If you don’t like what you find, call the PLUSS Sales department NOW for more information on how we can help! Until next month when we move on to “Dealing with Employees”, I wish you great business and great selling!
Kenny Nau - Director of Sales
5.) Internet phones: The
telephone revolution
Everyone is looking for ways to save money on phone service. With the popular growth of the Internet, there are far more possibilities then there used to be. Using the Internet for day-to-day business transactions has become more and more standard, and so has using the Internet for phone service. There are many services out there that use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) as a substitution for a regular phone line. Many cities even have large area of WiFi or wireless Internet access available for the average user to log on and check their email, stock quotes, and even Internet phones. The spread of WiFi has allowed wireless equipment to become much lower and allowed small businesses to afford it, making networking and Internet phones far more appealing. Many people have had great success with using VoIP providers over the Internet for their phone service and have replaced most of my basic Telco services. Some services even offer adapters for a regular phone to use the VoIP. Here is a list of a few services that you may want to look into.
Vonage – Vonage.com currently offers unlimited long distance phone calls to anywhere in North America for only $24.99/month. They will even give you a toll free number starting with 100 minutes for $4.99/month.
Stanaphone – Stanaphone.com offers a great service that includes a FREE real phone number, voicemail, and Stanaphone customer-to-customer calling. They offer low rates for outgoing phone calls to more then 30 countries across the globe. Stanaphone’s voicemail feature instantly emails a .wav file to the email on the user’s account.
Skype – Skype.com offers free net2net calls and even lower rates to their customers, but does not offer a real phone number.
Google’s GMail – gmail.google.com is a free email service that gives the user 1 Gig of space to store email messages and allows the user to download a GMail notification program to let the user know when a new message has arrived.
Now, here’s a good combo to take advantage of. Use:
· Either Skype or Stanaphone for free Net2Net calls
· Skype for outgoing calls to regular phones
· Stanaphone for a real phone number, unlimited incoming calls, voice mail to email, and call forwarding (Forwarding costs the same as a call)
· Goggle’s Gmail to store and retrieve the voice mail messages from Stanaphone
· Google’s Gmail notifier to instantly let you know a new message is waiting
Jeremy Martin CISSP, ISSMP, ISSAP, …
Director of Communications, PLUSS Corporation
PRODUCTS AND SALES
6.) PTM ES live
updating service.
PLUSS Corporation is now offering a live
updating service to help simplify the updating process of updating your PTM
built software. The current software
that supports this service it PTM Echelon Suite. The PTM Echelon modules like the timeclock and administration
programs are expected to support this feature in the near future.
7.) BASIC
INVENTORY OPERATION Classes:
ü BASIC INVENTORY: This course covers basic
language, theories and inputting a basic part explaining the seven main areas, margins
vs. markup, basic location and x-reference.
ü BASIC CORES: This course teaches a user
how to setup and use the core system
ü BASIC POINT OF SALE: this course is
designed to show the new user how to use the PTM point of sale system.
ü
BASIC
PO’S: this course teaches the user the
basic operation of the purchase orders.
ü
BASIC KITS:
This course is used to teach the user the basic rules involved in creating
kits.
You
can contact us at (800) 835-9609
PLUSS
Corporation
5565
Hwy 2 West
Columbia Falls, MT 59912