There’s nothing more rewarding than taking the time on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon to make dinner for later.  All we had to do when it was time for dinner was  cook the spaghetti noodles, warm up the sauce and enjoy. It’s a good feeling to know that you prepared a delicious meal for your family, no matter how busy the days’ earlier activities were.  And, here’s a newsflash all you busy moms and dads: cooking doesn’t have to be difficult, chaotic or intense.  Set all your ingredients out before you begin and clean as you go.  Remembering to do these two essential things will ensure you’re not angry, tired or crazy afterwards!

I started with the cookies.  Flour, baking soda, salt, butter, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, eggs, and chocolate chips.   Add chopped walnuts if you want.  Mix all that together and drop tablespoonfuls onto a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes at 375.  Cool, store in airtight container and that’s it!  You’ll have a happy family tonight!

The spaghetti and meatballs were just as easy.  For the sauce I used butter, onion, salt and two cans of San Marzano whole tomatoes.  Get San Marzanos if you can find them. Here in Knoxville, they’re easily obtained at Fresh Market or Food City.  To me, they have a stronger taste than regular canned tomatoes, and are sweeter and less acidic. For the meatballs it’s beef, pork, garlic, eggs, breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper.  Mix all together, chill for 15 minutes, then form into golf ball size meatballs, drop into the sauce and simmer for an additional 20 minutes.  Remember, for the meatballs, don’t overwork the mixture.

See?  That’s all there is to it.   I took the time to set out all my ingredients beforehand and cleaned up as I went along.  While the cookies were baking and the sauce was simmering, I put laundry away, responded to emails, swept the floors and wrote this article.  And I still had time to sit out on the deck, read and enjoy the summer rain showers that passed through. 

I’ve learned over the years that to truly enjoy cooking, take your time with the mundane tasks like chopping garlic or slicing onions.  If you don’t take the time to enjoy these simple acts, you’ll end up resenting cooking and seeing it only as work that has to be gotten through.  Enlist the kids when you can, let them be a part of the creating.  True, it will be a little messier and more chaotic, but remember, you’re creating memories with your children.  That’s worth a whole lot more than shooing them out the door just so you won’t have a big mess to clean up.  Have fun with it!  Cooking isn’t worth doing unless you can relax and  not be stressed about what you’re putting on the table for dinner tonight.

• C-184: Making Your Business Antifragile (Wednesday, July 24, 8:30am-10am, Chesapeake G) – Based on the work of author and professor, Nicholas Taleb, this session will raise the question of how we can apply the abstract concept of antifragility to strengthen our businesses and make them less susceptible to uncertainty. It will be a collaborative dialog between attendees and Ed Kless (Senior Director, Sage), Robert Wood (Owner, DDF Consulting Group), and me. The concept of antifragile is “beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”
• C-185: Creating Strategy in a Small Business (Wednesday, July 24, 10:30am-12pm, Chesapeake G) – Even small organizations can create and execute meaningful strategic plans. However, to reach that goal requires us to say “no” to stuff we usually say “yes” to. Ed Kless invites you to an open dialog about how best to go about creating a strategy for your small organization.
• C-183: Top Ten Business Myths (Wednesday, July 24, 2pm-3:15pm, National Harbor 11) – If you are interested in having a conversation about business myths, examining our most deeply held beliefs, and how to either dismiss them or at least think differently about them, join Ed Kless for this session.
• C-186: Panel: The Strategic IT Leader (Wednesday, July 24, 3:45pm-4:45pm, Chesapeake G) – If you are an IT leader or have one in your organization and would like to increase the strategic value you provide to your company, attend this panel session to learn from other IT leaders how they have increased their value by thinking differently from how they have in the past.
• C-188: On Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix It (Thursday, July 25, 2pm-3pm, National Harbor 13) – Almost five years ago, I read Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson. They described a concept they call a ROWE (results-only work environment). They were right, it was the perfect answer for making work not suck. I implemented a ROWE in my company and it has produced great results. The basic premise is I changed my mindset to focus on real results and not on efforts. In this session, I will lead a conversation about Cali and Jody’s new book, Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix It. We will look at the ROWE environment from a management perspective and talk about how to implement a ROWE in your organization.
• C-189: Initiating a Project in a Small Business (Thursday, July 25, 3:15pm-4:15pm, Chesapeake C) – Ed Kless and I would like to start a conversation around the idea that, in small organizations and teams, projects are rarely initiated properly and thereby achieve less than optimal results. We will open a dialog with you about how best to initiate new projects in your organization.
• C-201: In Defense of Business (Thursday, July 25, 4:30pm-5:30pm, Chesapeake G) – Is business a noble yet frequently rebuked calling? With the constant bombardment from the media questioning the nobility of business, it is oftentimes difficult to see how businesses profit not only themselves, but all of society. So much so that the notion of having to “give back” to the community is redundant. If you are interested in learning more about this defense of business and the market, please join the conversation with Ed Kless.

Mark these on your calendar.  You will not regret attending these great sessions.  I hope to see you there!

Summit 2013 will be held July 21 through July 26 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center located just across the Potomac River from Alexandria, VA in National Harbor, MD. The first three days of the conference are geared toward Sage partners and the customer days are July 23 through July 26.

Why would you want to attend?

• See first-hand all of the new products and technology that Sage is working on for your business.
• Participate in Sage City. Want to learn about what’s working for other customers in your industry? Join in the exchange of ideas that is all part of the innovative Sage City.
• Exposure to new ways of thinking, working, and improving your business. I’ll be posting another Summit-focused article this Friday with many more details about sessions that will help you bring innovative ideas back to your company.
• Visit the Expo to receive hands-on demos of the latest add-on’s and enhancements for Sage products. Have you been thinking about implementing an EDI or bar code system? If so, the Expo is the place to be. And those are just two examples of the many products that will be exhibited at the Expo.
• Soak up the history of Washington, DC, Old Town Alexandria, and Mount Vernon. Or catch a Washington Nationals or Baltimore Orioles game (both teams have home games during Summit).

To help make your decision a little easier, you can use the promo code of PTOC2013 and receive $200 off of the registration fee.

Here is a link to the list of sessions.

I hope to see you there!

Accounts Payable

• The invoice number is expanded to 20 characters.
• Vendors can be marked as ‘inactive,’ along with a reason code.  All historical transactions will be maintained, but can be deleted by an authorized user.  You can also hide inactive vendors in lookup lists for faster lookups and data entry.
• Cleared checks will be displayed in the Invoices, Transactions and Checks tab in Vendor Maintenance and Vendor Inquiry.

Accounts Receivable

• Customers can also be marked as ‘inactive,’ with reason codes.  When marked as inactive, the customer cannot be used in data entry, except for cash receipts.  Inactive customers can also be excluded from lookups.

Paperless Office

• Support for public mail servers, including Google email, Yahoo, AT & T and Hotmail.

Sage CRM

• Multiple ERP companies can be mapped to a single Sage CRM system.  This will facilitate a consolidated view of customer activities and salespeople can move more easily between their customers.

Credit Card Processing

• All cardholder data will be stored in cloud-based Sage Exchange Vault.
• Also allowed will be a one-time credit card payment transaction without saving that credit card information.
• Mobile payments will allow payments to be processed via smartphones.

These are just some of the features in Sage 100 ERP 2013.  Additional new features are also found in Inventory Management, Bank Reconciliation, Federal and State eFiling and Reporting, and more.  Access the full release guide here.

Below is  a general timeline for product updates and release dates:

Two changes of note are the addition of Sage 100 ERP Shipping by SmartLinc.  SmartLinc is a replacement for the prior Starship solution (Starship is sill supported by V-Technologies, independently) and is available in two versions

• Process Shipper – on-premises, browser-based
• Ship One –  cloud-based

SmartLinc includes complete carrier & shipping support for the US and Canada, as well as rate shopping, email notifications, and Bill of Lading support.

Another announcement is the Sage ERP Payroll module for SQL.  This will be a standalone payroll module and will integrate only to Sage 100 Premium (SQL).  This payroll module is based on the former Sage Accpac Payroll.

Another note of interest is that Sage Payments will play an even larger role in the Sage 100 ERP credit card transaction processing.  Payment data is not stored in the software itself but instead is stored in the Sage vault for tighter security and compliance.

Access the full roadmap here.

Tired of playing the lottery with your technology projects?  If so, then we can show you what it’s like to work with a Firm of The Future…forget about the lottery and work with certainty.

Highlights for Abra HR:

• Support for Active Directory logons.  By linking your Abra login id to your Windows login id, you can eliminate the need for a separate login and password to get into Abra.
• Ability to access Sage Abra Support through a chat link located within Abra.
• Employee Find is faster and includes searches for both first and last names.
• Increased security with SSN/SIN masking for all reports (standard and those created through Secure Query).

Highlights for Payroll:

• Greater flexibility for creating custom payment forms.
• Ability to choose whether or not a check should display in Employee Self Service.

Highlights for Employee Self Service (ESS):

• Sage Employee Analytics has the ability to create custom graphical dashboards (when used in conjunction with Sage Crystal Dashboard Design).  Combine workforce cost and performance data into a high level overview and quickly drill down for more detailed analysis.  These dashboards can be viewed from most web browsers (Safari, IE, Chrome and Firefox).
• The ESS user interface has been overhauled to provide easier navigation and the ability to customize the look and feel of your ESS system.
• The new Time Off Calendar provides managers with a monthly view of employee’s’ pending, approved and rejected time off.
• Employees and managers can access ESS on their mobile devices including iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows CE, Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile.
• SSN masking for dependents and beneficiaries in Open Enrollment.
• The new Provider Enrollment Details report allows you to send open enrollment information to the benefit provider prior to sending the enrollment updates to Abra.

For more details about all of the enhancements in version 9.1, please click on the What’s New in Sage Abra v9.1 document.

Highlights of the roadmap include:

• Release of Version 4.5!  The roadmap includes an overview of new features in this new version.
• New features in Product Update 6 for Version 4.4
• An overview of Sage Connected Services (like Federal and State e-Filing, Sage Sales Tax and Credit Card Processing)
• Sage ERP MAS 90 Online
• An update on Sage MAS Intelligence, Sage’s new financial reporting tool
• Information on Sage CRM
• A preview of Sage MAS 90 and 200 Version 5.0

SMI is Sage’s recommended replacement for FRx (which has been discontinued by Microsoft).  SMI is Excel-based and can be used to generate financial statements and is capable of generating reports for other MAS 90 and MAS 200 modules such as Accounts Receivable, Inventory Management and Sales Order.  In addition, reports can be created using multiple databases (even non-Sage databases).  For example, a report which combines data from MAS 90 and Abra HRMS.

For a more in-depth look at what you need to learn to get started with SMI, check out the list of Customer Resources that Sage has made available.

I am presenting a session at the conference for other Sage partners who have attended Ed Kless’ Sage Consulting Academy (SCA).  Ed conducts the SCA several times a year to assist partners with becoming better consultants and project managers.  It is a fantastic program that, to my knowledge, has no equal in the world of software publishers.

While every attendee I have talked with feels that they received valuable knowledge from SCA that has made them better consultants, the one comment that Ed and I hear on a regular basis is “we really want to implement these new ideas at our firm but we can’t quite figure out how to do it.”  With that thought in mind, my goal for this session is to provide several real world examples of how we have implemented SCA processes into our business.  Specifically, my focus will be on how to use the project management tools from SCA.

I’m bringing examples of the following tools from several of our projects:

• Business process diagrams
• Issues List
• Project Charter
• Project Manager Selection
• Project Scope

And examples of additional tools that we have developed including:

• Vision Statement
• Pricing Proposal
• Knowledge Transfer Agreement (KTA)

Since this session in an interactive one, I’m encouraging dialog from the group about how you have used knowledge from SCA in your organization.  How has SCA helped you move from a firm of the past to a Firm of The Future?  Please feel free to bring sample project management documents (it doesn’t matter if they are for small projects or large ones) to share with the group.  If you would like, you can e-mail copies of them to me at jshaver@ariestech.com so we can present them to the group.

I’m also open to talk through any aspect of SCA that may be of interest.  Please share those ideas via the comments on this article.

I’m looking forward to seeing all of you on Tuesday, July 12th at 10am!