The Business Master (3rd Edition)

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SOAR USERS GUIDE SECTION 1 INTRODUCTION SOAR (Service Oriented Accounts Receivables) has been designed to simplify customer billing, provide powerful and meaningful management reports, and allow one to rapidly obtain a "snap- shot" of their business income and its sources. Most importantly, SOAR is EASY TO USE! One need not be a computer scientist to use SOAR. SOAR is, to coin an overused phrase, "User Friendly". The key features of SOAR are: o Simplified billing for businesses that provide services as well as products. Charges can be fixed item (inventory item), services, hourly rates, fixed cost, or variable cost. o Each customer can be assigned a late charge rate so you can give special treatment to good customers. Any customer can be declared as tax exempt for dealing with government agencies or wholesale transactions. o Automatic billing of customers with fixed rate service or support contracts. o 22 summary catagories available to summarize you business activity. o Powerful reporting to identify specific areas of income and easy identification of items or services that are profitable for your business. o Reports can be sorted or ordered with up to five (5) keys to give you the specific information you need for your business and directing your areas of effort. o Three billing formats supported. Two industry standard general purpose forms as well as a "generic" form. o Mailing list generated from customer data base. Mailing labels can be prepared for customers billed, all customers, active customers, inactive customers, or customers with past due balances. o Mailing label file compatible with popular word processors such as PC Write for use in preparing form letters, etc. o Taxable sales and tax exempt sales automatically stored and reported. o Customer inquiries are rapid and provide an instant history of the customer's activity. Page 1 SOAR USERS GUIDE o Transactions are catagorized to simplify billing and applying charges; i.e., a transaction catagory can be a fixed price inventory item, an hourly charge or a variable charge. o Number of customers and transaction catagories or types limited only by available disk space. o Data files can be merged to allow your business to be reported in quarters or whatever increment you desire for tax purposes and/or management information. o SOAR will operate on any IBM PC, IBM XT, IBM AT or true compatible with 192K of memory and at least two floppy disk drives or one floppy disk and a hard disk. Reports and billing require an 80 column printer. Please note that SOAR is most efficient in a hard disk environment. IBM PC, IBM XT, and IBM AT are registered trademarks of the IBM Corporation. PC-Write is a trademark of Quicksoft. Page 2 SOAR USERS GUIDE SECTION 2 A BIT ABOUT SOAR PLEASE READ THIS SECTION!! The value and utility of SOAR can only be realized if there is a complete understanding of the mechanics and features of the program. This section is most important since it describes and defines the methods used by SOAR in handling transactions. There are five key elements of SOAR. These are the system file, customer records, summary catagories, transaction catagories, and charge or payment transactions. Each of these elements will be defined and then their interaction described. 2.1 System File: The system file contains all the information about your company including the company name and address to be put on reports and bills. This file also contains information about which of three billing formats you want to use, the last statement number used and the sales tax percentage for use in computing sales tax. Lastly, the system file provides information to tell SOAR where the data files are located in the computer system. 2.2 Customer Records: Charges and payments can only be applied to customers that SOAR knows about. Therefore, the customers must be entered into the system before they can be billed. Each customer record contains the name and address of the customer, their present balance, past due balance, current charges, and information about their last payment. The customer record informs SOAR of the late charge percentage to be used in computing late charges on past due balances and indicates whether or not the customer is "tax exempt". 2.3 Summary Catagories: A summary catagory is a means to allow you to identify specific areas of your business activity. For example, if your business involves retail sales, repair, service, and installation then you can setup summary catagories for PAYMENTS, TAXABLE SALES, REPAIR, SERVICE and INSTALLATION. Each time a payment or charge transaction is posted by SOAR, the amount of the transaction is added to the accumulating total in the summary catagory. Thus, at any time you can tell how much REPAIR business you have done. Every transaction must report to a summary catagory and you must therefore give some thought as to how you want to summarize your business. SOAR allows up to 22 summary catagories to be defined. Six of these are reserved for income and 16 are reserved for charges. Page 3 SOAR USERS GUIDE Five of the catagories are pre-defined and cannot be changed. These are PAYMENTS, TAXABLE SALES, TAX EXEMPT SALES, SALES TAX, and SERVICE CHARGES. The summary catagories that might be used by a computer consulting firm are shown below. INCOME CATAGORIES CHARGE CATAGORIES 1. PAYMENTS 22090.64 11. SOFTWARE SUPPORT 2810.00 2. CREDITS 0.00 12. REPAIR 150.00 3. DEPOSITS 0.00 13. CONSULTING 520.00 4. 0.00 14. TRAINING 80.00 5. 0.00 15. CUSTOM SOFTWARE 100.00 6. ADJUSTMENTS 2.70 16. INSTALLATION 240.00 17. SHIPPING/HANDLING 24.28 CHARGE CATAGORIES 18. 0.00 7. TAXABLE SALES 13697.35 19. 0.00 8. TAX EXEMPT SALES 65.00 20. MISCELLANEOUS 0.00 9. SERVICE 1785.96 21. SALES TAX 821.84 10. HARDWARE SUPPORT 1060.00 22. SERVICE CHARGES 3.30 Note that catagories 4, 5, 18 and 19 are not used. The amounts shown to the right of each catagory reflect the charges or incomes for that catagory. 2.4 Transaction Catagories: A transaction catagory specifically defines a transaction and is the central feature of SOAR. A transaction catagory can be an inventory item you sell, an hourly charge for a service, a fixed charge for task, or a variable charge. Each transaction catagory is composed of the following: 1. Catagory Number: A number assigned by SOAR when the catagory is created and is used to reference the catagory for entering transactions or changing the catagory data. 2. Title: Wording that will be printed on the bill and describes the transaction. For example, "hrs Consulting", "widgets @ $4.00 each" and "bxs computer paper" are all valid titles. There are some special features of the title that are more fully described later in this document. 3. Charge Factor: A unit charge associated with the catagory. The actual charge applied to a customer is the charge factor of the transaction catagory times the amount/quantity entered with the transaction. Or, AMOUNT = CHARGE FACTOR X (AMOUNT/QUANTITY) For example, if you sell three widgets then the trans- action catagory defines the price per widget (Charge Factor) and the quantity sold is entered as part of the transaction. The total price is the quantity sold times the unit price. Page 4 SOAR USERS GUIDE If the transaction catagory defines an inventory item or fixed price charge, the charge factor is the price. If this represents a service based on an hourly charge, then the charge factor is the hourly rate. If this is a var- iable item, then a charge factor of 1.0 is entered. A charge factor of 0 can be entered to indicate a service or action for which no charge is to be applied. 4. Taxable: Informs SOAR whether or not to apply sales tax to the transaction. In California, for example, most retail sales have a sales tax applied. However, time- based services do not have a sales tax applied. The amount of tax is derived from the sales tax rate in the system file and the amount of the transaction. 5. Automatic Billing: Tells SOAR whether or not to auto- matically bill a customer each billing period. Suppose you provide a service to Ajax Company for a fixed fee of $150 per month. You would create a transaction catagory for that service and enter a Charge Factor of $150, indicate Automatic Billing, and specify Ajax Company to bill each billing period. 6. Bill To: When you specify Automatic Billing you must also specify the customer to bill. This is entered as the customer id or reference. The customer id will be discussed in more detail later. 7. Summary Catagory Number: Every transaction must report to a summary catagory. Using the Ajax Company example above, the Summary Catagory Number would be the one you set aside for SERVICE. If this were a taxable sale item, it would report to 7, TAXABLE SALES. Transaction Catagories also contain fields that indicate the number of times used, the total quantity, and the total amount. As transactions are posted, the transaction catagory they ref- erence is updated. If a transaction catagory refers to an inventory item, you can tell at a glance the number of items sold. If it refers to an hourly charge, you can tell how many hours of this work have been done. The transaction catagory concept may at first appear cumbersome, but you will find it to be very easy to use and will provide you with meaningful data. 2.5 Charge or Payment Transactions: Once you have defined your customer base, created summary catagories, and defined transaction catagories then all pay- ments or charges are entered as transactions. Transactions are entered by specifying the customer, transaction date, trans- action catagory number, and quantity or amount. You may also Page 5 SOAR USERS GUIDE enter a comment that becomes a permanent part of the trans- action. An example of what appears on the screen during transaction entry is shown below. Customer Id: AJAX Record No: 21 1. Date (MM/DD/YY): 03/11/87 2. Transaction Catagory: 20 Description: Miscellaneous Taxable Sales 3. Amount or Quantity: 12.95 Taxable (Y or N): Y 4. Comment: 1 ea Widget Sales Tax: 0.78 Amount: 12.95 In the example, a transaction catagory (number 20) was defined to be 'Miscellaneous Taxable Sales" with a Charge Factor of 1. Therefore, the amount of the transaction was entered (12.95) and a comment was used to identify what the sale was. This makes use of what is called a "variable transaction catagory". Note that SOAR computed the sales tax since the transaction catagory was defined to be "Taxable". Also note that the lines with numbers preceeding them can be changed during entry. All other data are supplied by SOAR either from the transaction catagory record or by computation. You do not have to memorize all transaction catagories since SOAR provides you with a windowed list that can be scrolled during transaction entry. 2.6 Transaction Interactions: As you enter transactions the following actions take place: 1. When you enter a customer id, SOAR quickly checks to see that there is such a customer on file. 2. When you specify the date, SOAR checks to see that it is a valid date. 3. When you specify the Transaction Catagory, SOAR checks to see that such a catagory exists and that you may manually use it; i.e., automatic billing transaction catagories cannot be entered manually ... only SOAR can do this. SOAR then displays the Transaction Catagory Title and whether or not it is taxable. 4. When you specify the quantity or amount, SOAR computes the total amount and sales tax (if any). Note that the total amount is the quantity or amount you entered times the Charge Factor in the Transaction Catagory record. 5. The transaction record is added to the current transaction file. This file should contain only the current billing period transactions (charges and payments). Page 6 SOAR USERS GUIDE When you apply late charges the following actions occur: 1. Payments are automatically posted to ensure that the customer's payments are applied before late charges are computed. The customer records are scanned for past due amounts. A late charge corresponding to the past due amount times the late charge rate (in the customer record) is appended to the transaction file. If the late charge rate is zero but there is still a past due amount, then an entry is still made to ensure that the customer is billed. When you post charges or payments the following actions occur: 1. The Transaction Catagory is updated to reflect this transaction in the times used, quantity, and total. 2. The Summary Catagory (specified as part of the Trans- action Catagory record) is updated to reflect the amount of the transaction. 3. The customer record is updated. If the transaction is a payment then it is applied against the Past Due Balance and the Present Balance and the payment history data is updated. If the transaction is a charge, then the Current Charges figure is updated. 4. The transaction record is marked to show that it has been posted. When you bill a customer the following actions occur: 1. The transaction file is sorted by customer and date. 2. The transaction record is marked to show that it has been billed and prevents multiple billing. 3. A bill for the specified customer(s) is prepared. This can be printed and/or filed on disk. 4. A billing summary and register are prepared as disk files that can be printed from the REPORTS MENU. When you perform End of Period Processing the following occurs: 1. Automatic Billing flags in the Transaction Catagory records are cleared. You can only automatically bill once each billing period. 2. Customer records are updated such that: if the Present Balance is positive (they owe you) Past Due Balance = Old Past Due + Old Present Balance Present Balance = Current Charges Current Charges = 0.00 if the Present Balance is negative (they have a credit) Past Due Balance = 0.00 Present Balance = Current Charges - Credits Current Charges = 0.00 Page 7 SOAR USERS GUIDE SECTION 3 CREATING CATAGORIES If you skipped Section 2 you really should go back and read it. We are about to setup SOAR so it will run on your computer and you need to understand the meaning and utility of Summary Catagories and Transaction Catagories since we are about to set them up for your business. 3.1 Selecting Summary Catagories: Before actually running SOAR it is best to do some paperwork and select the Summary Catagories you are going to use. You can always go back and change these at a later time, but it is best to try to select the ones you will need now. Summary Cat- agories are needed for INCOME and CHARGES. 3.1.1 Income Catagories: SOAR provides up to six income catagories that can be used to summarize the income portions of your business. Catagory 1 is predefined as PAYMENTS and is used whenever you receive a pay- ment from a customer. Some other income catagories you might consider include: CREDITS ....... To summarize any credits given to customers for whatever reason. DEPOSITS ...... Summarizing deposits received for equipment, goods, or whatever. DISCOUNTS ..... Since discounts are considered as income, you might wish to create a catagory for this so you have an instant record of discounts given. Write your income catagories down on a piece of paper and look over your list to see if there are any other catagories you wish to add. Once you are satisfied with your list, proceed to the next section. 3.1.2 Charge Catagories: SOAR provides up to 16 charge catagories to be used to identify the source of your income. Four of these catagories are pre- defined by SOAR as: 7 ... TAXABLE SALES 8 ... TAX EXEMPT SALES 21 ... SALES TAX 22 ... SERVICE CHARGES Page 8 SOAR USERS GUIDE Catagory 7 totals all sales requiring sales tax and can be used for filing your sales tax reports. Note that this catagory DOES NOT include the tax charged for a transaction; Catagory 21 summarizes all taxes charged. Thus, you instantly have the sales tax picture of your business readily at hand. Catagory 8 is used for customers that are exempt from sales tax. This might include government agencies or customers with resale permits that allow them to buy from you without paying sales tax. Catagory 22 reflects the service or late charges you apply against customers with past due amounts. SOAR treats a service charge as any other transaction but summarizes the total in this catagory. You may now select any of the catagories between 9 and 20 to summarize your sources of income other than taxable sales. You should jot these down on a piece of paper and give them some serious thought. Some catagories you might consider are: REPAIR ......... Summarize repair charges involving labor or fixed fees. SERVICE ........ If your business provides a service to your customers. SHIPPING ....... If your business requires you to ship items to customers at their expense. TRAINING ....... Does your business provide training services to customers? CONSULTING ..... If you do any kind of consulting, summarize it here. MISCELLANEOUS .. Always a good one because something is going to come up that you can't tie to an existing catagory. It is your business, so decide how you want it summarized so you can instantly see how much of your income is tied to cer- tain areas of effort. Review your choices and, when you are satisfied, proceed to the next section. 3.2 Transaction Catagories: Transaction Catagories, as described in Section 2, are a major feature of SOAR. Some general guidelines will be presented, but you must decide the catagories that make sense for your business. 3.2.1 General Purpose Catagories: There are many transactions that fall into a general catagory and need no further resolution. For example, PAYMENT RECEIVED is a general purpose catagory that can be used whenever a customer makes a payment. Another general purpose catagory is Page 9 SOAR USERS GUIDE MISCELLANEOUS TAXABLE SALES and is used for the sale of items for which a specific catagory has not been established. Ex- amples of general purpose catagories used by the author are: Payment Received ... THANK YOU Credits Applied Deposit Received ... THANK YOU Credit Adjustment to Account ' Note Software Sales Hardware Sales -hrs Consulting @ $80/hr Miscellaneous Taxable Sales The list above is actually the title line that would be printed on a bill. The first character of a title can have a special meaning and will be discussed in a later section when we actually enter the Transaction Catagories. However, it must be pointed out that you can create a catagory that can be used to include a special message or note to a customer. This catagory will not print the title line or the amount, but will only print what you enter in the comment field for a transaction. Thus far the Transaction Catagories look very similar to the Summary Catagories. This is because we are dealing with general purpose catagories. Also remember that a transaction is entered via a transaction catagory and reports to a summary catagory. In many cases the totals accumulated for a transaction catagory will be the same as for a summary catagory; e.g., Payment Received ... THANK YOU should have the same cumulative total as Summary Catagory 1, PAYMENTS. 3.2.2 Specific Transaction Catagories: Specific transaction catagories include inventory items, fixed price services or tasks, and automatic billing items. Inven- tory items can be assigned a unique transaction catagory such that a transaction merely references the catagory and the quantity sold. Fixed price services or tasks includes those things you do for a fixed amount. For example, a maintenance firm might clean a swimming pool for a fixed cost. Therefore, a transaction catagory would be setup for Pool Cleaning and the cost entered as the Charge Factor. Automatic Billing is important to businesses that provide a service to a customer on a regular basis and receive a fixed amount for that service. This could include retainers, service contracts, day-care centers, building or yard maintenance, and so on. Each customer to be automatically billed would have a transaction catagory created with the amount entered as the Charge Factor. Page 10 SOAR USERS GUIDE Some examples of specific transaction catagories are: DFS Shipping & Handling Smith's Monthly Pool Service -bx DF51-4 Multi Form _ea Printer Ribbons An automatic billing transaction catagory is shown as the second example. The monthly cost to service Smith's swimming pool is entered as the Charge Factor. The third example is for an inventory item sold in units of boxes. The leading hyphen informs SOAR to include the quantity as part of the transaction description. If two boxes were sold, the transaction record (and bill) would read: 2 bx DF51-4 Multi Form The final example uses an underbar as the lead-in character and informs SOAR to print the quantity as part of the description line and to print the unit cost (Charge Factor) on the comment line of the transaction record. If three ribbons were sold then the following would appear: 3 ea Printer Ribbons Per Unit Price is $7.95 3.2.3 Miscellaneous Transaction Catagories: It was mentioned earlier that a personal note or message could be included as part of a customer's bill. The single quote mark as the lead-in for a Transaction Catagory title informs SOAR that a message is forthcoming and not to include the Title, Charge Factor, Date, or Quantity in the transaction record. The only thing included is the comment that is supplied when the transaction is entered. A Transaction Cat- agory of this sort would look like: 'Note for customer The last special lead-in character to be discussed is the asterisk. This tells SOAR to ignore the catagory since it is only being used as a filler. Thus, a Transaction Catagory file can be built-up with fillers and then changed when a new catagory is needed. For example, * Just a Filler Record 3.2.4 Partitioning Transaction Catagories: The following suggestions are offered for setting up your Page 11 SOAR USERS GUIDE Transaction Catagory file. They are derived from the Author's experience and have worked quite well. 1. Assign the first 20 catagories for general purpose and miscellaneous uses. These should be the most commonly used catagories. During transaction entry SOAR displays on a split screen 20 Transaction Catagories at a time. The first 20 represent the first screen displayed. You might use 1-9 for income purposes (e.g., Payment Received ... THANK YOU), number 10 for customer notes (e.g., 'Note), and 11-20 for general purpose uses such as -hrs Consulting @ $35/hr. Please note that each Transaction Catagory must report to a Summary Catagory. Therefore while compiling your list include the Summary Catagory and Charge Factor as part of the list. 2. You should now group all your automatic billing catagories together and enter them following the ones described above. Leave some space (filler catagories) for future growth. While building your list keep including the Summary Catagory and the Charge Factor. 3. Now organize all your fixed price inventory items. Try to make a logical sequence by keeping similar items in the same numerical area. For example, if you are selling three types of widgets, then put them in sequence in you list. If there is a chance of adding more widgets, allow space by using fillers. Page 12 SOAR USERS GUIDE SECTION 4 GETTING STARTED This section describes the things you must do to get SOAR setup in your computer. You should follow the procedures just as they are presented. 4.1 Some Conventions: Throughout the remainder of this document the following conventions will be used: <E> ......... depress the ENTER key on your keyboard ESC ......... depress the ESC key on your keyboard <filename> .. the name you have given to a file without the extension. For example, a transaction file might be given the name "JUL-87". In the computer directory this would be listed as "JUL-87.TRN". However, SOAR knows when it is looking for a transaction file and only requires the "JUL-87". 4.2 SOAR Distribution Diskettes: SOAR is distributed on two 360K 5.25 inch floppy disks. The following files are included on the disks: Disk Number 1: SOAR.EXE ........ The main SOAR program file and Main Menu. SOARUTIL.EXE .... SOAR utilities linked from the Main Menu. SOARTCM.EXE ..... Summary Catagory and Transaction Catagory maintenance programs linked from the Utility Menu. SOARCUST.EXE .... Customer Maintenance programs linked from the Main Menu. Disk Number 2: SOARTMNU.EXE .... Transaction Menu and transaction programs linked from the Main Menu. SOARBILL.EXE .... Billing program linked from the Main Menu. SOAR-1.DOC ...... This document. SOAR-2.DOC ...... More of this document. SOAR-3.DOC ...... And more of this document. READ.ME ......... How to get going and final notes. MAKEDOC.BAT ..... A batch file to print this document. FILES ........... A list of the distribution files. 4.3 Making Copies of SOAR: It is recommended that you make working copies of the SOAR Page 13 SOAR USERS GUIDE distribution disks using the DOS DISKCOPY program. Store your original disks in a safe place and use the copies from now on. DISKCOPY can be used as follows: Type DISKCOPY A: A: <E> ... remember <E> is the ENTER key. Follow the instructions and make a copy of SOAR Distribution Disk number 1. Then repeat the procedure for Disk Number 2. 4.4 Installing SOAR For Your System: SOAR was designed to operate in a hard disk environment, but can be used in a floppy disk system. Because of the number and size of the files, two 360K diskettes are required to hold the programs. If you are using a high-density 1.2M floppy disk, all of the programs can easily fit on one disk. 4.4.1 SOAR In A Hard Disk System: The following procedures will allow you to establish a separate sub-directory for SOAR and its data. 1. Turn on your computer and go to the root directory. After the DOS prompt type: CD \ <E> 2. Type: MKDIR SOAR <E> CD \SOAR <E> MKDIR DATA <E> The above sequence created a sub-directory titled "SOAR" and a sub-directory within SOAR titled "DATA". 3. Place your SOAR Distribution Disk #1 in floppy disk drive A, close the door, and type: COPY A:SOAR*.EXE . <E> 4. Remove SOAR Distribution Disk #1, replace it with Distribution Disk #2 and type: COPY A:SOAR*.EXE . <E> All of the SOAR program files are now loaded into your SOAR sub-directory. This completes the initial installation of SOAR and you are ready to setup your data files. Put your SOAR distribution disks in a safe place. You may skip the following sections about floppy disk based systems and go directly to Section 4.5. Page 14 SOAR USERS GUIDE 4.4.2 SOAR In A 360K Floppy Disk System: The performance of SOAR is greatly enhanced in a hard disk system. If you do not have a hard disk, you should give some serious consideration to buying one. However, since you want to operate this with floppy disks, the following allows you to do so. 1. Format three (3) floppy disks. You may want to put the operating system on the two to be used to hold the program files. The third floppy disk will be used to setup the data files. 2. Load the SOAR Distribution Disk #1 in Drive B and one of the formatted blank diskettes in Drive A. Type: COPY B:SOAR*.EXE A: <E> 3. Remove the diskette from Drive A and label it as SOAR DISK #1. Include the names of the files on the label. 4. Load a blank formatted diskette into Drive A; Drive B still contains SOAR Distribution Disk #1. Type: COPY B:SOAR.EXE A: <E> 5. Remove SOAR Distribution Disk #1 from Drive B and re- place it with Distribution Disk #2. Type: COPY B:SOAR*.EXE A: <E> 6. Remove the diskette from Drive A and label it as SOAR DISK #2. Include the names of the files on the label. 7. Label the third disk as SOAR DATA DISK. Put your SOAR distribution disks in a safe place and proceed to Section 4.5. 4.4.3 SOAR In A 1.2M Floppy Disk System: A 1.2M floppy disk system will allow all the SOAR programs to fit on one disk and the other to be used for data. 1. Format two (2) diskettes. The one to be used as the program disk should contain the DOS operating system. 2. Place the SOAR Distribution Disk #1 in Drive B and a blank formatted disk in Drive A. Type: COPY B:SOAR*.EXE . <E> Page 15 SOAR USERS GUIDE 3. Remove the SOAR Distribution Disk #1 from Drive B and replace it with Distribution Disk #2. Type: COPY B:SOAR*.EXE . <E> 4. Remove the disk from Drive A and label it as your SOAR PROGRAM DISK. 5. Label the remaining disk as SOAR DATA DISK. This completes the initial SOAR installation. Put the distribution disks in a safe place and proceed to the next section. 4.5 Setting Up The SOAR System File: SOAR needs to know how your system is configured and where to store and fetch data. The system file contains the information used throughout SOAR. Hard Disk Users: It is assumed that you are in the SOAR sub- directory. If you would like to be able to start SOAR from the root directory, type the following: CD \ <E> COPY CON SOAR.BAT <E> ECHO OFF <E> CD SOAR <E> SOAR <E> CD \ <E> F6 <E> Note that the last line, F6, means the function key on the left or top of your keyboard. Now you can enter SOAR after bootup from the root by typing: SOAR <E> Floppy Disk Users: It is assumed that your program disk is in Drive A and that Drive B will be used for data. If you are using 360K floppies, make sure that SOAR DISK #1 is in Drive A. If SOAR cannot find a program it is looking for, you will be prompted to load the disk containing the required file. If you load the wrong disk, SOAR will exit to the operating system; i.e., SOAR will try the new disk once and then quit. This is why you were asked to include the program names on the labels. Page 16 SOAR USERS GUIDE 4.5.1 Starting SOAR: OK, its been a long haul getting here but now you are ready to run the program and get the data files setup. Type: SOAR <E> Once the program loads you should see the following message: A system file has not been found. After depressing a key you will be transferred to the UTILITY MENU. Select option 1, System File Maintenance, to create a system file. Key to CONTINUE ... You are now stuck! You must create a system file to continue. Of course you could get out by turning off the power or re- booting the computer. Lets create a system file. Note that the Utility Menu has a value of "0" after "Option:" at the bottom of the menu. This is the default value and de- pressing the ENTER key will accept this value. The use of defaults is widespread in SOAR to minimize your typing. To get to the System File Maintenance program type: 1 <E> You should now see a display similar to the one shown below. SYSTEM FILE MAINTENANCE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX X 1. Company Name: X X 2. Company Address 1: X X 3. Company Address 2: X X 4. Company City: X X 5. Company State: X X 6. Company ZIP: X X 7. Company Telephone: X X X X 8. Data Drive/Path Specification: X X 9. System Drive Type (H or F): X X 10. Preprinted Name on Statements (Y or N): X X 11. Statement Format (A,B, or C): X X 12. Last Statement Number: X X 13. Sales Tax (e.g., .06) X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Line to Change (0 when DONE): 0 Type 1 <E> and enter your business or company name as you would like it printed on bills and reports. You may use up to 30 characters and they may be upper or lower case. Note that you may edit your entry with the back-space key. Also note that the highlighted area indicates how many characters you may use. Page 17 SOAR USERS GUIDE Select 2 to enter your company address. If you need an additional line, go on to change Company Address 2. Continue entering your company information (1-7). You need only enter the two-letter abbreviation for your state (e.g., CA) and you can only use a 5-digit ZIP code for line 6. Line 8 informs SOAR where your data files are to be located. This will depend on whether you are a hard disk or floppy disk user. Hard disk users: If you created the suggested sub- directories enter: C:\SOAR\DATA\ <E> Otherwise, enter the drive/path specification leading to your data file. SOAR assumes the program files are on the de-falult drive in the current directory. Floppy disk users: Enter: B: <E> Your data files will reside on Drive B. For line 9 enter an H if you are a hard disk user and a F if floppy disks are used for the data files. Line 10 tells SOAR whether or not to print your company name and address at the top of the bills. If you do not as yet have preprinted forms then enter "N". Note, you may change this at any time should you wish to use preprinted billing forms. Line 11 allows you to select the billing format to be used in preparing your bills. SOAR supports three formats; two standard forms and a "generic" form. The forms are: A ... DF50 9.5 X 7 (8.5 X 7 detached). Available in 1 or carbonless 2 and 3 part sets. Your company name and address would be preprinted at the top. B ... DF51 9.5 X 11 (8.5 X 11 detached). Available in 1 or carbonless 2, 3 and 4 part sets. Your company name and address would be preprinted at the top. C ... Bill is printed on 9.5 X 11 standard white computer paper (8.5 X 11 detached). SOAR will print your company name and address at the top of the bill if you answered "N" to line 10. The DF50 and DF51 forms and window envelopes may be ordered directly from: Business Automation Co. P.O. Box 1330 Camarillo, CA 93011 (805) 388-3383 Page 18 SOAR USERS GUIDE Line 12 is for the LAST statement number you used on a bill. This must be a number (no letters) and is limited to 6 digits. You might use something like "870123" to indicate number 123 in the year 1987. Remember this wants the LAST statement number, not the one you wish to start with. If you want your first bill to be statement number 87000 then you must enter 86999. The final line, 13, sets your state and local sales tax. This must be entered as a decimal. For example, enter 6% as .06. SOAR only directly supports one sales tax; other methods are described in the manual for multiple sales taxes. This completes the setup of the system file. Just press the ENTER key and you will save your system data and return to the Utility Menu. At the Utility Menu depress the ENTER key (or hit the ESC key) and you will go to the SOAR Main Menu. If you want to verify or change your system data you may do so by returning to the Utility Menu (6 at the Main Menu) and going to 1, System File Maintenance. The data you entered should be displayed. Floppy Disk Users: SOAR requires SOAR.SYS to be on the default drive when trying to run a program. Therefore, if you are using 360K floppy disks, you need to copy the system file to all program disks. You should currently have SOAR Disk #1 in Drive A. Put SOAR Disk #2 in Drive B and type: COPY A:SOAR.SYS B: Please note that the Last Statement Number in the system file will only be updated on Disk #2; the disk containing the billing program. Page 19 SOAR USERS GUIDE Page 20