Graphical Formats in Ventus: "Drop & Drag" Invoice Formatting

For this month’s Featured Article, we are going to continue with a more in-depth presentation of the Graphical Format Design feature for Ventus. 

Whereas format design and maintenance in the GUI product has been described as confusing, requiring that the user possess a high level of familiarity with the format design process.  In Ventus, the process will be simplified to a series of drag-and-drop procedures, the end product of which will give you all the functionality of our Crystal Reports integrated forms, but without the hassle of counting lines, columns and spaces.  Moreover, you will be able to review and examine your formats quickly, easily identifying which fields are set to print where.

We will demonstrate this added functionality by manipulating the Accounts Receivable Invoice format.

From the main Ventus screen, go to Maintain -> Accounts Receivable -> Formats -> Invoice Format Code.

Select the format you wish to modify – in this case, the standard VMS1 format – from the Invoice Format drill-down at the top of this screen.

The tabs for format maintenance largely follow the same structure as those in the GUI product, so those of you who are familiar with designing formats in the current product will easily recognize what you are seeing in Ventus. 

At the bottom of the screen, however, is the Designer button.  Clicking here will take you into the new Graphical Format Designer.

At the top left-hand corner of the Designer, you will see the name of the format on which you are working, as well as expandable Field Name “trees” that correspond to the different sections of the format.  In this case, we have a Bottom, a Header and Line types.  Clicking the  icon to the left of these Field Names will expand them, showing a listing of all the fields available under that “tree.”

Any of these individual fields can be added to and positioned on your format, simply by selecting that field with a Left-Click, and then Dragging it to the position where you would like for it to appear.

As you can see here, I have selected the Tax code field on the left, and dragged it onto the format, immediately adjacent to the TAX amount field.

You may also “audit” the fields that appear on your format by holding the positioning cursor over them.

As shown, holding the cursor over the blue-outlined field to the right of SUB TOTAL will display a small pop-up that identifies which field has been placed where on the format template itself.  This enables you to make certain that you have included all the fields you wish to include, and gives you a real-time visual representation of where these will print on the final document.
Likewise, fields that are present on the format, but are misaligned or misplaced, can be relocated simply by Left-Clicking and Dragging them to the location you wish for them to appear on the final document.

When you have made all the changes to your format that you wish to make, Click Save at the bottom left hand portion of the Graphical Format Designer.

You may then click Close, and all changes you have made will be retained.

Although the scope of this article only addresses Invoice Format design for Accounts Receivable, all other formats in Ventus will be manipulable with the same ease of access as demonstrated above.

VMS Presents an Internet Training Course on:

Payroll, Year End Closing, and W2 Processing

Date: Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
Session Length: 2 hours
Session Time: 1:00pm Central Time
Location: Internet WebEx
Cost: $200 per connection
Trainer: Nelda Schoppert
Topics will include:

• Discussion on closing the year for payroll and what files should be backed up before closing.
• What affect closing the year has on payroll when checking 'remove terminated employees'.
• How to make changes to tax withholding tables for state and federal.
• Do you need to close the previous year (2009) before doing the first payroll for 2010?
• Will VMS print the transmittal copies?
• Can W-2's be printed for municipality and state with or without federal information?
• Discussion on how to determine if year end closing has been done, so this year we do not have users closing twice and losing their information.
• What reports need to be printed before closing?
• Discussion on how W-2 information can be edited after closing the year for federal, state and local information.
   

Please NOTE: Normal VMS documentation on year end processing will be available via the normal web update/download procedures.

To register please call or email Linda Bishop: (800)-476-0094.

W-2 Printing for 2009

With W2 season approaching, now is good time to make sure the company’s employee names are setup correctly in Employee Maintenance.  IRS W2 reporting requirements for W2’s format are Last_name suffix, first_name middle_initial.  The employee name can be corrected before W2’s are printed to avoid error messages during W2 processing, and allow for processing W2’s faster (i.e. Thomas Jr., Chad R.).

To correct the employee names, go into Payroll.  Select File Maintenance and Employee File.

Click the NXT button in the bottom menu, and find an employee with an incorrect W2 format.  Click EDT, and change the Name to the correct IRS W2 Format.  Click OK.

Meet Tom Collins

This month we are pleased to spotlight a long time member of the VMS team, Tom Collins.  

While still a college student Tom was actually one of the first employees hired by VMS in 1985 –86.  He worked in production, fulfilling software sales and delivering updates.  He even delivered updates to our current support manager, Linda Kennedy, who at the time worked for a local VMS client!   After graduating from college in 1990 with a BS in Marketing, Tom worked for Cellular One in Fort Walton Beach, Florida as an Account Service Representative doing telemarketing, service and inside sales. He worked closely with officers from the US Air Force Special Operations Group ensuring that they had secure cell phones for use in other countries.  In 1994, Tom returned to VMS and his present position is Regional Sales Manager.

Personal Profile:
Originally from South Boston, VA, Tom relocated to the Pensacola area a day after his high school graduation.  He loves scuba diving and is a member of the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, where he has earned Dive Master status. One of the things he enjoys most is teaching children to scuba dive.  In the future, Tom is looking forward to teaching his girlfriend’s son Gavin to dive and taking him along on dive vacations.  He tries to spend as much time as he can under the water, scuba diving in the Caribbean, and hopes to take his dream vacation to Fiji and Palau sometime soon. 

Payroll Year End

The most common error in doing the year end closing is just simply knowing if you need to close or if you have already done it.  The quickest way to tell is by going into an employee file and look at the W2 tab:

In this example you see there are dollar amounts in all three “buckets”.  When you do a month end it will zero out the Month column.  When an end of quarter is done it will zero out the Month and Quarter “buckets”.  And finally when you have done the Year end procedure all “buckets will be zero as show below:

By checking to see if this screen has been cleared of all dollar amounts you will know if year end has been done.

This Cat Caught a Mouse: