Enhancements in This Version

This is IOA version 4.3 for Access 2000, XP and 2003

This version contains full Multi-Currency and a number of enhancements to IOA, based on feedback from customers.  Another major enhancement is the New Maintenance Utility. Version 4.3 also addresses several performance and usability improvements, as well as any errors detected by our research and development department or by customers.

New Features   

• In IOA 4.3 we have made several changes and enhancements.  Some are listed below. 

• In Utilities, Setup, Installation Module you will find that we have created an area where you can now consolidate several companies.  This is controlled by a matrix you setup.

• In the Accounts Receivable form, a Customer Refund program has been added.  Here you can refund any Outstanding Credit Memo.

• In the Accounts Receivable form Reports you can now sort by Customer Name or Customer Number.

• In the Accounts Payable form Reports you can now sort by Customer Name or Customer Number.

• In the Inventory Module you will find several changes.  In I/C Items form you can now store pictures of your items, Mark Up, Tariff Class #, Country of origin, and many more.

• In the Order Entry form you can now enter an order and upon Saving the Order you can have the system automatically create a MF Order in the Manufacturing Module if Items on the Order are to be manufactured.

• In the Job Costing and Management Module you will find several changes.  Here we have been making enhancements as per customer feed back.  You can Setup Employee Cost Factors, Time Billing Wizard, or Reopen a Closed Job if needed.

Reporting Features

• A/R Analysis Report includes the ability to report on sales by currency grouped A/R account.
• By utilizing customer type as a method of reporting you can easily obtain valuable sales information grouped by country. This report is a percentage breakdown by country of total sales complete with a summary and breakdown by percentage of total sales.
• A/R Aged & Retroactive reports can be prepared to help analyse the effect international customers will have on your cash flow depending on which currency they pay in:

• Selecting all customers will convert entire A/R report to home currency.

• Selecting a particular customer will report on that customer in their default currency.

•  Selecting a particular currency will report all customers with defaults in that currency unconverted.

• New Gross Profit by customer, coupled with existing Gross Profit by Item reports provide a great tool to monitor Gross Profit margins that are essential to maintain healthy bottom line.
• In the Order Entry – Reports sub-module, A new commercial invoice & customs declaration report has been added to satisfy the conditions of Canada customs.

The New Maintenance Utility

A new feature introduced in IOA V3.2 SR-1b, the maintenance utility replaces the compile utility that came with previous versions.  The utility is pictured in Figure 1. below. 

In addition to compiling the application, the maintenance utility provides an easy database compacting feature as well as an upgrade function for older company databases.  To run the maintenance utility, choose Start | Programs | IOA Software | Maintenance from the Windows Start menu[1].

The three application maintenance functions are described below.

Compile

To compile the IOA Application, select the Compile button, enter the IOA pathname in the IOA Path field, then click the Run button.  The default IOA path is C:\Program Files\IOA\Main\IOACODE.MDB.

Compact

To compact the IOA Application, select the Compact button, enter the IOA pathname in the IOA Path field and the pathname of the database to compact in the Database to Compact field, then click Run.

Update

As IOA has been revised and improved, database structures have been modified new structures have been created in order to accommodate the new features.

The update function can upgrade an old IOA database from any prior version to the format used by the version you now have.  To update a company database from an earlier version, select the Update button, enter the database paths, and click Run.

Import

As you move from one version of IOA to another you always need to redo your custom reports in the new format, the new import feature in v4.0 will now allow you to patch your custom reports and custom tables to your new IOA version.

To import objects from an earlier version, select the Import button, enter the database paths, and also the Import Code, and click Run.

Notes:

1.  You must choose a new name for your updated database.  You cannot enter the name of a file that already exists.  You can rename the company database later if you wish.

2.  Earlier releases of IOA came in several sub-versions, which we here refer to as series.  We call the most common release “series A” in each case.  When you are converting your older database to use with V3.3, choose series “A” first.  If your database happens to be a different series an message box will appear displaying the error message “The current user does not have permission to convert or enable this database” and database conversion cannot proceed.  If this happens, click OK, then click Cancel in the next dialogue box.  Then, simply select the next series and try again.

Figure 1.  Maintenance Utility provides easy-to-use application compiling and database utilities.

Figure 2.  Easily update your old database to the current IOA version.

Figure 3. Easily import custom objects into a IOA database file

Enhancements in Recent Versions

Long-time users of IOA may wish to review what changes and enhancements have been implemented in recent versions.

V3.2

• Bank - Print Cheques - On the cheque stub the Amount is the amount of the invoice even if an AP Invoice is partially paid. Previously, the Amount had been Amount Paid + Discount.
• Banks - Quick Cheque Writer - A control account may no longer be chosen as the off setting GL account.
• Banks - Quick Cheque Writer Cheque number must be a whole number. Previously, decimals were allowed causing the error "Unable to proceed at this time, cheque should be destroyed."
• Banks Reconcile - Bank Accounts - Adjustments - Program no longer terminates if the account or description is left blank. The account and description are now required in order to Add.
• Banks Reconcile - Bank Accounts - Adjustments - A control account may no longer be chosen as the off setting GL account.
• General Ledger - Close a Fiscal Year - If you close the year to an account with departments and print the Trial Balance and it is no longer out of balance by the amount of the close.
• General Ledger - Comparative Income Statement - Run the income statement choosing the options, compare to None, By Departments and choose 2 or more departments. Second department and all departments that follow no longer show the Percentage compared to total revenue for all departments, but instead prints percentage compared to revenue for its own department.
• General Ledger - Journals & Posting - GL posting report for GL entries - suppress printing of zero if trans # is zero.
• General Ledger - Journals & Posting - Journal Printouts - totals are now aligned.
• General Ledger - Journals & Posting - Manufacturing journal now validates whereas previously, if a manufacturing variance occurred, the journal would not validate.
• General Ledger - Setup Accounts and Budgets - If you change the account that is used as the Default CURRENT PERIOD NET INCOME account (on the Ledger tab of Company Profile) to NON POSTING, the message will appear as "Cannot change this account to Non Posting as it is used as one of your default accounts from the Company Setup - Ledger tab."
• General Ledger - Setup Accounts and Budgets - If you change the account that is used as the Default GST PAID account (on the Ledger tab of Company Profile) to NON POSTING, the message will appear as "Cannot change this account to Non Posting as it is used as one of your default accounts from the Company Setup - Ledger tab."
• General Ledger - Setup Accounts and Budgets - If you change the account that is used as the Default WORK IN PROGRESS account (on the Ledger tab of Company Profile) to NON POSTING, the message will appear as "Cannot change this account to Non Posting as it is used as one of your default accounts from the Company Setup - Ledger tab."
• General Ledger - Setup Accounts and Budgets - In Add mode - create a new account then before saving, change the account number to an existing account number. The message appears as "Account number already exists. Please select another." click OK and previously all the information of the new account disappears. Now, only the Account # field clears.
• General Ledger - Setup Accounts and Budgets - Create new company using any default chart of accounts, the Financial Type field is no longer blank for accounts 9999 and 6000.
• Inventory Control – Adjustments - Part # combo box is now sorted by ascending Part #.
• Inventory Control - Inventory Warehouse transfers - When a warehouse transfer spans multiple costing records, the new costing record is rounded to 4 decimal places instead of 2.
• Inventory Control - Physical Adjustments - Removed Warehouse builder button.
• Inventory Control – Reports - Inventory Activity - using Average Cost, the Retro.Cost Adjustment line no longer appears. Previously, if the cost of the returned item is different from the average cost then the Retro.Cost Adjustment line causes the Average Cost to be incorrect.
• Inventory Control – Reports - Inventory Activity Report: Extended total uses currency format and aligns with detail. Date uses medium date format.
• Job Costing & Management - Buy Items From Inventory - Part # combo box is now sorted by ascending Part #.
• Job Costing & Management – customers - If you only have Job Costing rights, and you try to delete a sales rep the message will appear as "You do not have permission to perform this function."
• Job Costing & Management - Update Payroll - If the Earning ID is hourly, the message no longer appears as "The sum of the units must equal 1 for earning ID: Hourly." It is now checking tblPREmployeeEarning. Fixed is true for the specific Employee and the specific EarningID instead of all Earning Ids.
• Manufacturing - Complete Manufacture Orders - COGS is properly calculated when unit of measure is other than 1. For example: Finished Product has a unit of measure of 10. Raw material has a unit cost of $1.00. It takes 1 Raw material to create 1 Finished Product. Create an MF Order for 10 Finished. Cost is now $0.01, instead of $1.00. Costing is now being divided by Unit of Measure.
• Order Entry - Create New Order - Quick Add customer - Tab Order is customer Name, customer #, Contact, Mailing 1, Mailing 2, City, Province, Postal Code, Phone, Fax, GST, PST, Terms, Account type, FC Group, Salesman and Sales, COGS and Returns (if applicable).
• Order Entry - Create New Order - Available field currently take the Allocated value under consideration when calculating the available quantity. Available = In Stock - On SO - Allocated.
• Order Entry - Create New Quote - Quick Add customer, previously, if you delete the City, the message appears as "The mailing city can not be longer than 25 characters." Now, allows the City to be left blank with no error message or if the City field is greater than 25 characters, the message appear as "The mailing city must be 25 characters or less."
• Order Entry - Create New Quote - Quick Add customer - you can now leave the province blank without the error appearing as "Field 'tblOEOdersQuote_Client.State' cannot be a zero-length string."
• Order Entry - Create New Quote - Quick Add customer, previously, if you delete the Province, the message appears as "The mailing province can not be longer than 3 characters." Now, allows the Province to be left blank with no error message or if the Province field is greater than 3 characters, the message appears as "The mailing province must be 3 characters or less."
• Order Entry - Create RMA - The Return GL field only lists posting type Revenue accounts. Previously, the Return GL field only lists AR accounts.
• Order Entry - Edit Orders - Order cannot be saved if the discount is blank. If discount is blank, then it is defaulted to zero. Previously, if the discount is blank then it caused the invoice not to appear on the GL/Journals & Posting.
• Payable - Edit Invoices - The fonts modified to match the standard IOA fonts. Previously, the words would appear truncated.
• Payable - Edit Invoices - Previously, after importing a PO into an AP invoice, you could edit the Unit Price of a line item where the costing record Used field <>0. Now, you cannot edit the Unit Price of a line item where the Used field <>0 in the costing record otherwise the message will appear as "You may not adjust the price as some or all of the quantities for this item have been sold. Please enter an Accounts Payable Debit Memo to reverse or adjust this entry."
• Payable - Enter Invoices - Previously, allowed an invoice to be Saved, if the GL Account is null. Now, the message appears as "You must enter an expense account for all items".
• Payable – Reports - Retro Aging. If you created an AP Invoice with an invoice # of ADVANCE the aging report now recognizes the payment against that invoice. Previously, the aging report did not recognize the payment against that invoice and showed it as outstanding. You can no longer create an AP Invoice/Debit Memo with an invoice number of ADVANCE.
• Payable – Reports - Retro Aging. Previously, when using an Advance Payment Debit Memo as part of a payment, the Debit Memo did not zeroed out. Now the Debit Memo is zero.
• Payable – Reports - AP Retro Aging. Where an advance payment debit memo is dated earlier than an invoice but applied to the invoice using Handwritten Cheques or Payment Wizard, the aging report no longer shows the Debit Memo as a negative balance.
• Payable – Vendors - In Edit mode, if you add an ' is in the Vendor name and then tab off the name field it no longer results in "Execution of this application has stopped due to a run-time error. The application can't continue and will be shut down."
• Payable – Vendors - Drill down on the invoice tab. If the invoice has been paid it opens the Payment detail screen on below instead of on top of the Invoice Detail.
• Purchasing - Create Purchase Return - The fonts modified to match the standard IOA fonts. Previously, the the words would appear truncated.
• Purchasing - Create Purchase Return - If you save without entering any line items, the message appears as "Please enter at least (1) line item." instead of "No current record."
• Purchasing - Create Purchase Return - Using Average Cost, if the price at which the item is returned is LOWER than the average cost, the difference is a credit (instead of a debit) to the inventory account and debit (instead of a credit) to the COGS account as a Previously Posted COGS Adjustment. If the price at which the item is returned is HIGHER than the average cost, the difference is a debit (instead of a credit) to the inventory account and credit (instead of a debit) to the COGS account as a Previously Posted COGS Adjustment.
• Purchasing - Create Purchase Return - When running GL/Journals & Posting, the date is now the purchase return date instead of the system date for the Returning Reversal, Purchase Return and the Retro.Cost Adjustment transaction.
• Purchasing - Edit Purchase Orders - Select a part number from combo box, click on inventory selector. Inventory Selector Part # combo box now shows the the part number from PO instead of blank.
• Purchasing - Print Purchase Returns - Change purchase return report margins to .5" Left justify, Part # Left justify Description Change Issue Date to Medium Date format
• Receivables - Create New Invoice - If you delete the Discount % (i.e. null) and tab off or Batch or Save, the Discount changes to 0 (zero) instead of displaying the message "This field can not be greater than 100..."
• Receivables - customer Payments – Individual - When entering a cheque # there is no longer a line for the input mask.
• Receivables - customer Refund - Selection of customer is sorted by customer Name instead of customer Number.
• Receivables - customer Refund - When adding a cheque number greater than 10 characters, the message no longer appears as, "This application has stopped due to a runtime error", and the program no longer shuts down. The maximum cheque number is now 2147483647.
• Receivables – customers - In Edit mode, if you add an ' is in the customer name and then tab off the name field, it no longer results in "Execution of this application has stopped due to a run-time error. The application can't continue and will be shut down."
• Receivables - Edit Invoices - Previously, if you enter a new line but did NOT put in a description. Click on any field of the previous line and then click the Builder box to select another Invoice then the system saves the new line with no description. Now, the system verifies that the description is not blank.
• Receivables - Edit Invoices - If the invoice is UNEDITABLE you are no longer able to change the Ref#.
• Receivables - Recurring Receivables - Previously, if you did not enter an account in the Revenue Acc field, the message appears as "The field tblARDetail_Rec_Client.CreditGLID cannot contain a null value…." Now, the message appears as "Please enter a Revenue Account for all lines."
• Receivables – Reports - Adjusted margins on customer Statements to allow report to fit on 1 page instead of over flowing to 2 pages.
• Receivables – Reports - Aging Retroactive Detail and Summary - the Account Name is no longer truncated.
• Receivables – Reports - Aging Current Detail and Summary - the Account Name is no longer truncated.
• Receivables – Reports - Retro Aging Report - previously, if there are split payments between two or more customers, all the payments appeared for the customer who made the payment. For example, if customer A paid off customer A's invoice and customer B and customer C's invoices then the payments for customer B & C appear under customer A. Now, the payments appear for the customer account for which the invoice was paid.
• Utilities, Setup, Installation - Company Setup - Correct spelling error when switching to Average Cost from the Ledger tab, the message appears as "This action is irreversible" instead of irreversable.
• Utilities, Setup, Installation - Company Setup - Tax Jurisdiction - Purchase Tax account lists the accounts according the GL Account number.
• Utilities, Setup, Installation - Company Setup - Tax Jurisdictions: the Purchase Tax and Sales Tax field ONLY allows non-control posting type Accounts Payable or posting type Other Current Liabilities accounts to be chosen instead of ALL non-control posting type accounts to be chosen.
• Utilities, Setup, Installation - File Copy - After running File Copy, the unit cost, average cost and inventory value are zero for the new company created. Previously, the unit cost, average cost and inventory value amounts were retained from the source company.
• Utilities, Setup, Installation - Import Transaction - GL Import no longer allows you to import into an account that is marked as a 'control' account.
• Utilities, Setup, Installation - Import Transaction - If the date of the transacton falls in a closed Period, then the transaction cannot imported.
• Utilities, Setup, Installation – Reports - Imported GL Transaction report now prints, previously the GL transactions would appear under the Imported Payroll report instead.
• Workstation Preferences - Company Defaults - Inventory Tab - new GST rates will now appear in the GST combo box. Previously, it did not unless you press F9 to refresh the query.
• Workstation Preferences - Company Defaults - Inventory Tab - new PST rates will now appear in the PST combo box. Previously, it did not unless you press F9 to refresh the query.
• Workstation Preferences - Company Defaults - When creating a new tax jurisdiction, the Purchase Tax combo box is now sorted by account # ascending.

V3.3

• With Average as the costing method, the average cost and inventory value become inaccurate for an inventory item if an order was filled that resulted in negative inventory for that item.
• In the Credit Memo Adjustments form, if an available discount were taken, both the Cr and Dr entries of the discount amount would be applied to the discount G/L account.
• In the Create New Order form, if the user imported a kit from inventory and then immediately attempted to add an additional (non kit) item to the order, an error would occur.
• In the Bank Reconciliation form, a credit balance of $0.01 would sometimes remain after all items had been cleared. This prevented the reconciliation operation from processing. This has been corrected.
• The Trial Balance report would cause the application to crash if “direct to printer” and “Include $0.00 balance transactions” options were simultaneously chosen. This has been corrected.
• In the Purchase Return form, the audit trail was not updating properly when a new purchase return was being created. This has been corrected.
• A cheque void date can now be modified.
• When posting a purchase order, the Job field can now be edited.
• In the Quick Cheques form, allow easier entry of an account number.
• In Advance Check Printing, detail lines would print twice if two cheques were advanced to the same vendor at once. This has been corrected.
• In Order Entry, when two or more RMA records were created for the same part, the COGS journal entry would be incorrect. This has been corrected.
• Journals and Posting screen now allows transaction posting for inventory items with zero cost.
• In customers form, the status text would not change from edit to view when the view button was clicked. The form mode would change correctly. This has been corrected.
• In the Account Setup form, a run-time error in the Account History tab of GL Setup has been eliminated.
• In the Vendor Selector dialogue box, an error occurred when selecting by vendor no. This has been corrected.
• In the Inventory Items form, switching views would cause a run-time error under certain conditions. This has been corrected.
• Multi-user contention problem in Journals and Posting screen has been corrected.
• Under some conditions the Access window would remain open after the application was shut down. The user would have to invoke the task manager to close the window. This has been corrected.
• Date formats have been changed to avoid ambiguous dates associated with the short date format.
• Improvements and error corrections in the Aged Receivables, Aged Payables and Balance Sheet reports.
• Updated Calendar control. The previous calendar control had problems on some computers.
• An error in the Orders screen would cause a message box to pop up unexpectedly. This has been corrected.
• Improvements to the maintenance utility.

• In the Commissions Report, a new option has been included to sort by date or invoice number.
• Enhance the filtering for the Adjustment Journal report and add a new Adjustment History report.
• In the Edit Orders form, Import From Quote and Import From Kit features have been added.
• A new application maintenance utility replaces the former compile utility.
• Form backgrounds and button styles have been modified to give the application a more consistent appearance throughout.
• More income statement options.

V4.0

• All Modules have been upgraded to support full Multi-Currency.
• There is the ability to setup a variety of currency descriptions and codes. While critiquing wanted or unwanted currencies and descriptions user can indicate appropriate G/L accounts for realized & unrealized gains or losses relative to the usage of or fluctuation in those chosen currencies.
• The Exchange Rates form provides the ability to input exchange rates  and set up dates as to when these exchange rates are to take effect.
• There is the ability to setup a Home Currency to identify your companies default currency under the company setup sub module. This feature will tell the system which currency to use to calculate the transactions relative to the selected account. This will also be the currency that financial reports are provided in.
• The currency to be reflected by customer and vendor transactions and reported on through aged A/R and A/P reports, is determined by the selected customer/vendor default A/R, A/P, G/L and/or bank accounts as under the customer/vendor financial setup screen.
• When processing orders through A/R, A/P, O/E & P/O the system provides the calculated values of the order in the operating currency and in your designated home currency for comparative purposes.
• Under Inventory Control, a new View Price Matrix sub-module features the ability to view the selling prices of inventory items searched by category, part number or all items in pertinent currencies.
• Our existing Job Costing and Management module has been restructured to the Estimate, Contract & Job Costing module, which proves the ability of estimating and job costing through segments and/or phases.
• In the Enter New Order/Edit Order sub-module, A Quick Add Inventory Items feature has been added.
• In the Enter New Order/Edit Order sub-module, An automatic create manufacturing order feature has been added.
• Automation of Purchase Orders by Importing Order into Purchase Order Feature has been added. This terrific feature automates the purchasing process which basically eliminates the existing untimely purchasing process. An individual order can initiate several PO’s depending on the primary vendors as are set out in the inventory setup module.
• In the Accounts Payable – Enter Invoice sub-module, Import Purchase Order Feature has been modified to allow the import of more than one PO to a single invoice.
• In the Accounts Payable sub-module, A new form call Enter Invoice – Visa has been added for invoices paid by a Visa account.
• In the Manufacturing sub-module, A new auto complete manufacturing sub-component feature has been added.
• In the Order Entry sub-module, An new Order Ship Date on the order entry screen helps to organize purchasing, manufacturing, shipping and scheduling processes.
• In customers sub-module, an email button has been added to open your email client software with the customers default email address as the receipt
• In Vendors sub-modules, an email button has been added to open your email client software with the vendors default email address as the receipt