

January 2008 Company News \| From the Desk of \| Industry News Special Offer \| In-Depth Learning Meet Nancy Henschel Zerion’s product is its people. Since it’s rare that our friends and clients get to meet all of the outstanding professionals that make up our company, we’ll use the Company News section as an outlet to profile them. Residence: Sacramento, California Hometown: Palm Beach Gardens, Florida Position with Zerion: Consultant What did you do before joining Zerion? I was an implementation consultant for Hughes Supply and before that I gained experience in the field doing inside sales, operations and office management at a Hughes branch. What is your specialty at Zerion? I have a few, primarily in the Eclipse environment with accounting processes, sales and warehouse operations. I also help a great deal with documentation and standard operational procedure development. Oh yeah, and I manage our remote services, like the Help Desk and Webinars. What is the best location you’ve traveled to for your job? Number one is Ft. Collins, Colorado because it was the first time that I had ever really played in snow and where I really got to know my best friend. Arecibo, Puerto Rico is a close second. It is as beautiful as it looks, and then some. Everyone I worked with treated me like I was part of the family, and the food was fantastic! What do you like best about your job? I love being able to help customers resolve issues that no one else had been able to figure out. I love to hear the sound of relief in a customer’s voice. How do you spend most of your time when you’re not working? Chasing after my one-year-old daughter, McKenna. What is a little known, interesting fact about you? I played minor league ice hockey as a goaltender in an all men’s league. Did you get one gift this holiday season that stands out above the rest? Matchbox 20 concert tickets! I have tried to see them three times before and it’s never worked out, so I was very excited. In one sentence, describe your philosophy on life and work: I know it might be cliché, but “Work Hard, Play Hard.” Back to Top I’d like to take a moment to say Happy New Year and wish all of our friends and clients a prosperous 2008. The year has already started off with a bang for us, as we’re focusing on expanding our depth and breadth of IT and business consulting services. Partnering with Activant, the new owner of the Eclipse product, will enable both of our companies to reach deeper into the market while delivering more and better services to existing customers. In addition, with some areas of the economy slowing down, many of our existing and prospective clients are becoming more focused on improving their bottom line from within. The robust economy that we have been enjoying the past several years had allowed many companies to out-sell their problems, but now many are looking for solutions to improve their productivity, reduce costs and identify revenue leakage. Change and growth, however, do not change our mission, which is to help hard goods distributors maximize their IT investment. As well, that commitment continues to ring true with each and every project with which we get involved. Best wishes in the new year, Jack Whitwam President Back to Top What’s happening with distribution, software and business? Zerion is committed to being a resource for our clients and friends. In the newsroom on our Web site, we have an RSS feed supplying new articles all the time. We also have some links to industry news. Here are some of the recent articles we found most interesting: Descartes Acquires RouteView Technologies Global Outsourcing to Grow 8% in 2008 Distribution Center (DC) Automation: Taking the plunge HD Supply Sheds HVAC Operations Want more news? Visit us at: www.zeriongroup.com/newsroom/industrynews.html Back to Top Try Our Help Desk Service for FREE Start 2008 off right by getting some extra support and a handy resource. Try our help desk service free for one week. Your employees will get to call on the depth of the Zerion team when you have questions or problems with your software or operations. Contact Tony King at 321.229.1089 or by e-mail to sign-up. Offer available until Februrary 22, 2008. Back to Top January White Paper This month we’ve prepared an educational white paper about managing customer credit, which includes three steps to achieving complete credit control. Three Steps to Complete Credit Control By: Kathy Williams, Consultant For most companies, accounts receivable is often the largest and most liquid asset that you have. Managing the credit you extend to your customers is vital to your company’s financial health. It’s often a balancing act between offering your customer the right amount of credit while minimizing your risk of non-payment. Having seen extremes at either end of the spectrum, we’ve learned that many companies lack simple training that can aid a great deal in this process. For example, a client who had a successful business with lucrative sales found himself in an unfortunate situation when they were left a considerable amount of bad debt on their books. After just a few minutes of reviewing their settings, it was clear they hadn’t used their ERP system to control credit limits for their customers, and they were continuing to sell on a regular basis to those that were not paying their bills. The good news is that if you’re on the Eclipse system, you can greatly reduce that risk while also improving efficiency and providing customers with excellent service. By using credit control parameters, you can set and restrict your customers credit limit as much or as little as you’d like. All it takes is using three easy settings, and you’ll have complete control that is seamless for your customers. Step One - Credit Limits The first step is to establish a credit limit for each customer. This amount represents the maximum credit you would like to extend to your customer and can be any where from $0 to $999,999,999.99. The use of limits is critical to the credit management process. Without them, Eclipse will allow orders to be shipped even if the customer is severely past due on their account. Once an account has reached the predetermined credit limit, Eclipse can put the account on hold and notify the writer of the sales order, as well as notify the credit personnel to review the ticket. Step Two - Credit Control Parameters The next step is to assign a credit control parameter. This will tell Eclipse how to manage the account once that customer has reached its credit limit, but you need to be sure you understand the impact each has before choosing. Eclipse provides you with several options: Always COD - When this parameter is selected, all orders will be set to COD and will require payment upon delivery. COD when credit limit exceeded – The account will become COD and will require payment upon delivery once the customer has reached the designated credit limit. Print approval required message on all shipping tickets - Eclipse will print an approval required message on shipping tickets. Print approval required message when credit limit is exceeded – You will get an approval-required message on shipping tickets only when the designated credit limit is exceeded. No Order Entry – Eclipse will lock the account and will not allow any orders to be placed for this customer. No users will be able to override this setting regardless of their authorization levels. No Order Entry when credit limit exceeded, unless authorized – Eclipse will set the account to No Order Entry once the customer has reached their credit limit. Only users with the authorization may override this setting. No Order Entry, regardless of credit limit, unless authorized - The account will be set to No Order Entry and only users with the authorization may override this setting. No printing of shipping ticket when credit limit exceeded, unless authorized – The customer may place orders once credit limit is exceed, but the ship ticket will not print unless approved by authorized personnel such as your credit manager. No printing of shipping ticket, regardless of credit limit, unless authorized - All orders must be approved and released by an authorized users, such as your credit manager, before the ship ticket will print. One of the most widely used settings is the “ No Order Entry when credit limit exceeded, unless authorized” setting. This allows your sales personnel to continue to enter sales orders and bids; however, when a sales order is entered that exceeds the customer's credit limit, printing the Ship Ticket is prohibited. You get an added layer of protection without interrupting the order taking process. A setting typically used only for problem customers is “No printing of shipping ticket, regardless of credit limit, unless authorized.” This setting can present a problem in certain situations, like a customer we worked with that marked all of their customers with this term, creating a major backlog in their tickets. Every sales order had to be approved by a credit manager before they could print the ticket, and customers were waiting much longer than they should have for their material. Step Three - Past Due Limit and Past Due Days Lastly, you can assign a customer a past due limit and past due days. This will notify you when a customer has money past due before their credit limit is exceeded. By doing this, you manage past due accounts before you have exposed yourself to the entire amount of the limit. For example, if the customer has a credit limit of $20,000.00, the Past Due Limit is set to $10,000.00, and the Past Due Days is set to 90 days, then Eclipse will place the customer on hold when they have $10,000 in the 90-day aging bucket even though they have a credit limit of $20,000.00. Managing your customer credit limits correctly can help protect your company’s financial stability. Now you can establish these three easy settings in the Eclipse system – credit limits, credit parameters and past due limits – in a way that makes sense for your business, and you’ll reduce risk and improve service. Back to Top	This month’s tip is on using widgets in Solar Eclipse. Solar Eclipse now offers widgets, which are user-defined toolbars that serve as shortcuts to your most commonly used menu items. You can review how to enable widgets by clicking here. Once you do, any widgets you add will display in the widget toolbar at the bottom of the Solar Eclipse main window. It makes daily functions easily accessible and quick to run, just like having an icon on your Windows desktop.

January 2008

Company News | From the Desk of | Industry News
Special Offer | In-Depth Learning

Meet Nancy Henschel
Zerion’s product is its people. Since it’s rare that our friends and clients get to meet all of the outstanding professionals that make up our company, we’ll use the Company News section as an outlet to profile them.

Residence: Sacramento, California
Hometown: Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
Position with Zerion: Consultant

What did you do before joining Zerion?
I was an implementation consultant for Hughes Supply and before that I gained experience in the field doing inside sales, operations and office management at a Hughes branch.

What is your specialty at Zerion?
I have a few, primarily in the Eclipse environment with accounting processes, sales and warehouse operations. I also help a great deal with documentation and standard operational procedure development. Oh yeah, and I manage our remote services, like the Help Desk and Webinars.

What is the best location you’ve traveled to for your job?
Number one is Ft. Collins, Colorado because it was the first time that I had ever really played in snow and where I really got to know my best friend. Arecibo, Puerto Rico is a close second. It is as beautiful as it looks, and then some. Everyone I worked with treated me like I was part of the family, and the food was fantastic!

What do you like best about your job?
I love being able to help customers resolve issues that no one else had been able to figure out. I love to hear the sound of relief in a customer’s voice.

How do you spend most of your time when you’re not working?
Chasing after my one-year-old daughter, McKenna.

What is a little known, interesting fact about you?
I played minor league ice hockey as a goaltender in an all men’s league.

Did you get one gift this holiday season that stands out above the rest?
Matchbox 20 concert tickets! I have tried to see them three times before and it’s never worked out, so I was very excited.

In one sentence, describe your philosophy on life and work:
I know it might be cliché, but “Work Hard, Play Hard.”

From the desk of Tony King I’d like to take a moment to say Happy New Year and wish all of our friends and clients a prosperous 2008. The year has already started off with a bang for us, as we’re focusing on expanding our depth and breadth of IT and business consulting services.

Partnering with Activant, the new owner of the Eclipse product, will enable both of our companies to reach deeper into the market while delivering more and better services to existing customers.

In addition, with some areas of the economy slowing down, many of our existing and prospective clients are becoming more focused on improving their bottom line from within. The robust economy that we have been enjoying the past several years had allowed many companies to out-sell their problems, but now many are looking for solutions to improve their productivity, reduce costs and identify revenue leakage.

Change and growth, however, do not change our mission, which is to help hard goods distributors maximize their IT investment. As well, that commitment continues to ring true with each and every project with which we get involved.

Best wishes in the new year,

Jack Whitwam
President

What’s happening with distribution, software and business?
Zerion is committed to being a resource for our clients and friends. In the newsroom on our Web site, we have an RSS feed supplying new articles all the time. We also have some links to industry news. Here are some of the recent articles we found most interesting:

Descartes Acquires RouteView Technologies

Global Outsourcing to Grow 8% in 2008

Distribution Center (DC) Automation: Taking the plunge

HD Supply Sheds HVAC Operations

Want more news? Visit us at: www.zeriongroup.com/newsroom/industrynews.html

Try Our Help Desk Service for FREE
Start 2008 off right by getting some extra support and a handy resource. Try our help desk service free for one week. Your employees will get to call on the depth of the Zerion team when you have questions or problems with your software or operations.

Contact Tony King at 321.229.1089 or by e-mail to sign-up. Offer available until Februrary 22, 2008.

January White Paper

This month we’ve prepared an educational white paper about managing customer credit, which includes three steps to achieving complete credit control.

Three Steps to Complete Credit Control
By: Kathy Williams, Consultant

For most companies, accounts receivable is often the largest and most liquid asset that you have. Managing the credit you extend to your customers is vital to your company’s financial health. It’s often a balancing act between offering your customer the right amount of credit while minimizing your risk of non-payment.

Having seen extremes at either end of the spectrum, we’ve learned that many companies lack simple training that can aid a great deal in this process. For example, a client who had a successful business with lucrative sales found himself in an unfortunate situation when they were left a considerable amount of bad debt on their books. After just a few minutes of reviewing their settings, it was clear they hadn’t used their ERP system to control credit limits for their customers, and they were continuing to sell on a regular basis to those that were not paying their bills.

The good news is that if you’re on the Eclipse system, you can greatly reduce that risk while also improving efficiency and providing customers with excellent service. By using credit control parameters, you can set and restrict your customers credit limit as much or as little as you’d like. All it takes is using three easy settings, and you’ll have complete control that is seamless for your customers.

Step One - Credit Limits
The first step is to establish a credit limit for each customer. This amount represents the maximum credit you would like to extend to your customer and can be any where from $0 to $999,999,999.99. The use of limits is critical to the credit management process. Without them, Eclipse will allow orders to be shipped even if the customer is severely past due on their account. Once an account has reached the predetermined credit limit, Eclipse can put the account on hold and notify the writer of the sales order, as well as notify the credit personnel to review the ticket.

Step Two - Credit Control Parameters
The next step is to assign a credit control parameter. This will tell Eclipse how to manage the account once that customer has reached its credit limit, but you need to be sure you understand the impact each has before choosing. Eclipse provides you with several options:

Always COD - When this parameter is selected, all orders will be set to COD and will require payment upon delivery.

COD when credit limit exceeded – The account will become COD and will require payment upon delivery once the customer has reached the designated credit limit.

Print approval required message on all shipping tickets - Eclipse will print an approval required message on shipping tickets.

Print approval required message when credit limit is exceeded – You will get an approval-required message on shipping tickets only when the designated credit limit is exceeded.

No Order Entry – Eclipse will lock the account and will not allow any orders to be placed for this customer. No users will be able to override this setting regardless of their authorization levels.

No Order Entry when credit limit exceeded, unless authorized – Eclipse will set the account to No Order Entry once the customer has reached their credit limit. Only users with the authorization may override this setting.

No Order Entry, regardless of credit limit, unless authorized - The account will be set to No Order Entry and only users with the authorization may override this setting.

No printing of shipping ticket when credit limit exceeded, unless authorized – The customer may place orders once credit limit is exceed, but the ship ticket will not print unless approved by authorized personnel such as your credit manager.

No printing of shipping ticket, regardless of credit limit, unless authorized - All orders must be approved and released by an authorized users, such as your credit manager, before the ship ticket will print.

One of the most widely used settings is the “ No Order Entry when credit limit exceeded, unless authorized” setting. This allows your sales personnel to continue to enter sales orders and bids; however, when a sales order is entered that exceeds the customer's credit limit, printing the Ship Ticket is prohibited. You get an added layer of protection without interrupting the order taking process.

A setting typically used only for problem customers is “No printing of shipping ticket, regardless of credit limit, unless authorized.” This setting can present a problem in certain situations, like a customer we worked with that marked all of their customers with this term, creating a major backlog in their tickets. Every sales order had to be approved by a credit manager before they could print the ticket, and customers were waiting much longer than they should have for their material.

Step Three - Past Due Limit and Past Due Days
Lastly, you can assign a customer a past due limit and past due days. This will notify you when a customer has money past due before their credit limit is exceeded. By doing this, you manage past due accounts before you have exposed yourself to the entire amount of the limit.

For example, if the customer has a credit limit of $20,000.00, the Past Due Limit is set to $10,000.00, and the Past Due Days is set to 90 days, then Eclipse will place the customer on hold when they have $10,000 in the 90-day aging bucket even though they have a credit limit of $20,000.00.

Managing your customer credit limits correctly can help protect your company’s financial stability. Now you can establish these three easy settings in the Eclipse system – credit limits, credit parameters and past due limits – in a way that makes sense for your business, and you’ll reduce risk and improve service.

This month’s tip is on using widgets in Solar Eclipse.

Solar Eclipse now offers widgets, which are user-defined toolbars that serve as shortcuts to your most commonly used menu items.

You can review how to enable widgets by clicking here.
Once you do, any widgets you add will display in the widget toolbar at the bottom of the Solar Eclipse main window.
It makes daily functions easily accessible and quick to run, just like having an icon on your Windows desktop.