Welcome to the July Issue of Professional Advantage News

New Product Releases

Excel slashes reporting time
New Excel Add-in (free to download from Microsoft) and Webhouse provide a fast and flexible reporting alternative

• Generate reports much faster due to the underlying OLAP structure

• Produce both fixed format reports in Excel and ad-hoc queries in Webhouse

• Achieve an 'Up-and-go' fast end user adoption, due to their familiarity with Excel

Current Webhouse customers can download the free Excel Add-in and start using it immediately by clicking here. For inquiries please contact your account manager.

Interested? Click here to register for our webex DemoOnline on 20 August to view the demonstration!

In this issue:

Microsoft places Professional Advantage in the top 1% of partners worldwide
Professional Advantage has achieved inner circle membership for the fourth year in a row!

Professional Advantage now sells DELL!

If you are planning to update your infrastructure and will be thinking of purchasing a number of PCs, contact Winnie Wong on 02 9919 8960 for the best price available! In most cases we are able to beat Dell's web price and offer real value to our customers.

Customer Spotlight

House with No Steps
House With No Steps (HWNS) is a project of the Wheelchair and Disabled Association of Australia, established in 1962 to provide quality support services for people with disabilities.

To read the story on how House With No Steps has worked with Professional Advantage to implement Great Plains to help cope with the company's fast growth and consolidate reporting, please click here.

You can support the cause by using HWNS's supported employment services, offering donations or sponsorships. For more information visit http://www.hwns.com.au/

Online Training and Demonstrations

How many times did you miss an important demonstration or training session because you could not afford time out of the office? Now you don't have to leave your desk and you can still learn more with our online WebEx sessions. All you need is a telephone and your PC!

'.these online sessions are so convenient. I don't have to leave my desk and therefore I don't waste any of my valuable time!'

'The Webex session was quick and informative'

Some of the upcoming training sessions include:
'Microsoft Great Plains Version 8 preview' DemoOnline - August 6
'Business and SharePoint Portal' DemoOnline - August 13

Click here to view the full schedule for this quarter as well as time and registration details.

Year-End frequently asked questions

Q. If an adjustment is posted to a closed year, can I print a corrected Trial Balance for that year?

A. Yes, set up a new Report Option for the Trial Balance (Reports > Financial > Trial Balance). Change the Year to History and choose the closed year. The Historical Trial Balance will include any adjustments posted to the closed year.

Q. Must I specify a Posting Account for the Retained Earnings Account on the General Ledger Setup (Setup > Financial > General Ledger) window?

A. No, the retained earnings account that you specify can either be a Posting Account or a Fixed Allocation account that has postings accounts as it distribution accounts.

Q. Must I run the Fixed Asset year end routine before I enter transactions in the new financial year?

A. No, Fixed Assets year end closing can be run at a later date. However, you will not be able to run depreciation for the new financial year until this procedure has been run.

Clients thought they were backed up.. Are you certain about your own system?

When all of a sudden the system 'froze', the manager decided to reboot it. It never started up again. What made the matter worse was that no restorable back up existed. All efforts to extract the data from the server were in vain and the company lost years worth of accounting data.

Sounds like a horror story? Recently we encountered a number of real life situations just like this. That's why we can't stress strongly enough the importance of the proper off-site back ups! For your own peace of mind please make sure that your back ups are not only running correctly, but that they can be restored successfully.

To perform a backup for a SQL Server implementation:

As a minimum, you should be backing up your SQL databases to tape (either via a SQL Tape Agent, or grabbing the scheduled SQL Agent database files from disk)

To perform a backup for a Btrieve or Ctree implementation:

As a minimum, you should be backing up the Dynamics server folder, including sub folders containing your company directories and information.

If the company uses Frx Financial Reporting, also backup your Sysdata directory and any other files that might be shared for the Great Plains users on the Database server (i.e. Reports Dictionaries).

If you are not certain that your backups are running correctly please investigate it with your IT department today! You can also check on the health of your system, by booking your FREE Technical Site Audit with Professional Advantage, or if you have any questions or concerns or need assistance, please email microsoftsupport@pa.com.au or speak to your Account Manager.